Bog Myrtle & Peat

The Ayrshire village of Glenbuck was flattened to make way for a coalmine in the 1990s. Local mining enterprises had been failing for some time, and as the terraced cottages were demolished by Scottish Coal, the last few residents were folded into nearby Muirkirk. The result is not an abandoned village or a ghoulish row Continue reading

As part of my work, I’ve travelled around Scotland in the first two weeks of March to meet farmers and gamekeepers involved in wader conservation. Along with a friend and colleague, we’ve been holding events to stir enthusiasm and encourage people to stick at the job, but it’s also been an opportunity to gather information Continue reading

Having written at extreme length on And The Yellow Ale about an otter killed in the traffic near my home, a reader got in touch to say that he’d spotted a dead pine marten on a local road. He’d moved the corpse to the verge, but it was already pretty mangled and heavily pecked by Continue reading

Calving began without warning, and mistakes I made during the summer came back to haunt me on a cold morning in early March. I hadn’t planned to begin calving until much later in the spring when the grass had risen – but I had kept a young bull back for the chance of a sale Continue reading

The planets have arranged themselves in a sweeping curl like a string of lights at a festival. I can see them all above the fat black shape of the scots pine tree which hangs beyond the yard, and it’s been my pleasure to watch them roll through gaps in the cold and heavy cloud. Standing Continue reading

The hillforts of Khorazm are littered with broken glass. It’s hard to walk far without the sound of footsteps crunching in the sand, and four hundred miles east of the Caspian Sea at Ayaz Qala, the ancient walltops twinkle with fragments of shattered rubbish. There’s nothing old or venerable about this mess. It’s largely made Continue reading

Storms rode in from the sea and forced the cattle to the dykebacks. The thorn trees cracked with the weight of the rain, then bales burst on the bike and wasted themselves in tumbling piles which flew before the sheep like gulls. It wasn’t light until after eight and the day was done by half-past Continue reading

Twenty five million elm trees were killed by disease between 1960 and 1980. By the time I was born, the survivors had become a novelty, and it’s hard to imagine how common these trees were until the beetles and the sickness came. I can think of only three or four elms in this entire parish, Continue reading

The storm pushed down a crab apple tree on my boundary fence. No real harm was done, but the trunk was tilted to forty five degrees and the tip of the branches trailed into my neighbour’s silage field. It’s my tree and it would have bounced back from the derailment, but to leave it there Continue reading

There are several biographies of Henry Williamson, and each one sheds different light on the man himself. The best and most useful books are probably Tarka and the last Romantic by Anne Williamson and Henry Williamson – a portrait by Daniel Farson. Both were published after Williamson’s death, and they offer a similarly defensive perspective Continue reading