Bog Myrtle & Peat

When I came to plant new hedges in 2010, I was hungry and impatient for progress. I wanted everything to happen all at once, so I made a virtue of celerity and favoured the fastest-growing species. I was willing to try anything back then, and I was even prepared to bend my rules on native… Continue reading

I wrote an essay about eels for a competition in 2021. I was pleased when it was longlisted, but it went no further than that. After the dust had settled, I went back to my words and rewrote them in the spirit of practice and refinement. I wanted to be utterly precise, and I was… Continue reading

Carlisle cathedral is 900 years old. To celebrate that anniversary, a number of events have been held in and around the old building during the course of this summer. I’ve been to visit several times, and I start to realise how complex and fascinating this place really is. There’s always something new to make me… Continue reading

I did the walk I always do in the middle of August. I picked a moment before the rain came, then I looped out through the calving fields to the moss. It’s a three mile lap, and I’ll walk it one hundred times in a normal year. The difference is only that in the middle… Continue reading

They took a small herd of galloway cattle out to graze at Tory Island off the coast of Donegal. A priest was ready to bless the beasts when they arrived, and I read about it on the internet afterwards. The article explained how cows would improve the grassland habitat for corncrakes, and galloways were the… Continue reading

A piece of land near here was sold in the autumn. It went to a local farmer, and that was a relief because almost nothing is bought by local people now. It must’ve been too small or awkward to attract the major investors; the bankers and investment fund managers from Austria and Denmark. So in… Continue reading

I got almost everything I needed from the Tourist Information Office in Donegal. The woman there was very helpful, and when I asked for a map of walking routes into the hills, she gave me a laminated card with a red line marked neatly across its middle. “It’s called the Bluestack Way”, she said. “There’s… Continue reading

I’ve often apologised for this blog and the tangents I’ve taken here, but many of those apologies stem from a sense that I’m writing away from my designated space. I wrote a book which was marketed as nature writing, although it also gave me a platform to write and think about farming, food and rural… Continue reading

I saw the famous wolfhound at the Ulster Museum. Stuffed in 1923, he stands panting in a Perspex box. Above and behind him, the petrified bones of a triceratops loom beside a narwhal’s tusk and a “Chambers” automobile with spoked wheels. These exhibits are novelties, and part of their fun is just how noisily they… Continue reading

When I was a child, I used to wear a Scotland rugby shirt. I loved the team, but I also felt it was important to badge myself with a clear sense of who I was. Later in more adolescent years, I took to wearing pins and t-shirts which flagged up the bands I liked and… Continue reading