Bog Myrtle & Peat

It’s only fifteen miles across the Solway to the Cumbrian coast. On certain summer nights as I fish for bass into the darkness, I can see car headlights bumbling around in England – and on New Year’s Eve, it’s fine to watch how they celebrate with fireworks on the stroke of midnight to a point Continue reading

My enormous thanks to everybody who has been over to see Bog Myrtle & Peat’s sister blog at And the Yellow Ale – and my particular thanks to those who have chipped in to support this project. Recent articles on Substack have included: A Donkey – in which I try (and possibly fail) to explain Continue reading

There are no small responses to the poetry of Ferenc Juhász. The man’s an explosion – a detonation of brightness, savagery and pressure which has no real parallel or reference point. Writing from the depths of rural Hungary during some of the most immense and disturbing tragedies of the Twentieth century, Juhász stands on the Continue reading

It was clear and bright in Toledo, but the high-sided streets were chilly with shade. The city is famous for its Cathedral and the Alcazar which withstood an extended and disastrous Republican siege during the Spanish Civil War. There are famous photographs of Franco and Himmler striding through the busted wreckage of the old fortress Continue reading

I carried the same cartridges to the fox drives for many years. They’re heavyweights, but they’d begun to rust up because I am never in line for the moment of truth. I stand and wait for hours at a time, and often I am so far away from the action that I don’t even hear Continue reading

Big flocks of lapwings have spent the winter down on the wetlands, but individual pairs are now breaking off to speculate inland as the days lengthen and thrushes sing for the twilight. Lapwings are unusual waders for the sake of their curiosity and flexibility. Birds like curlews are duty-bound to return to the same places Continue reading

The bale-grazing experiment continues – and taking such a focussed look at how and where my cows are feeding, it’s possible to tighten up on aspects of their overwintered behaviour. I worried that I was wasting silage by unrolling the bales and driving cattle out to graze upon it. It’s certainly true that they don’t Continue reading

I’ll never see inside the caves at Altamira, just as there’s no chance they’ll ever let me climb down into the gloomy reaches of Lascaux. Europe’s brightest and most extraordinary cave art is too precious to share with rubber-neckers like me; those paintings are so fragile that even my associated humidities would be intolerably corrosive. Continue reading

The fourth and final instalment of Henry Williamson’s The Flax of Dreams series is simply called The Pathway. The name has an evangelical ring to it; it echoes Christ’s exhortation that “He is the way”, and it’s fair to say that mystical zeal rings throughout this book. I’ve sometimes been flippant in my criticism of Henry Williamson, first Continue reading

Snow has found the horses raw and tall as pillars in the dawn. They had moved to the leeward edge of the beech trees when light began to fail, and now they are not moving but standing with three square hooves on the frost-baked mud and their fourths held off at softly shedding angles.  Their Continue reading