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"Two great wars demanded and bequeathed regimentation, science lent her aid, and the wildness of these islands, never extensive, was stamped upon and built over and patrolled in no time. There is no cave in which to curl up, and no deserted valley." E.M. Forster
"...thatcavernous, deadened heart of south England which now runs more or less uninterrupted from Norwich all the way to Bristol." Mark Cocker
"This is one of the few places left in England where you can actually open your ears and listen. Everyday we are bombarded by sound and noise, but so rarely have the opportunity of really listening." Chris WatsonEven Robert Macfarlane, in his generally uplifting paean to The Wild Places, gives the impression that only a skilled landscape horse-whisperer such as he is able to locate special places of wildness:
"The losses to the wild places of Britain and Ireland were unignorable, and the threats that they faced - pollution, climate change - appeared greater in number and vigour than ever before. But I knew that the wildness had not entirely vanished."Thecredo of exclusivity and a diminishing stock of remote places is taken up by Christopher Walton:
"Even in England there are still places where it is possible to feel as if you are the first to stand there. These places are few and far between, lost deep in the hills where nobody ever goes, or hemmed in by humming railway lines; but if you look hard...you will find them."
My contention would be that if people feel that wildness has gone, been corralled into carefully stage managed nature ghetto's or is simply out of bounds, then how can we ever expect them to feel a sense of value for the areas of natural tranquility and beauty that surround them? And, by extension, feel a personal - rather than abstract - stake in pulling back from the pillage of the planet's natural resources?
So hereis a gently dissenting voice; a hosanna to exploring and revisiting special places:
"On springy heath, along the hill-top edge/ Wander in gladness, and wind down, perchance/ To that still roaring dell, o'erwooded, narrow, deep/ And only speckled by the midday sun." This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
And such places really are not hard to find with a little bit of imagination and willingness to see beyond the guidebook,heritage trail and landscape-lite country park or open farm.
"There is a stream, I name not its name, lest inquisitive tourist/ Hunt it, and make it a lion, and get it at last into guide-books." The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich, Arthur Hugh Clough
"Thoreau was to transplant exactly this sense of mystical otherworldness to his own surroundings, transforming his daily walks through the local countryside - an area which, far from being virgin wilderness, has been settled for two hundred years - into a journey into the unknown."
Perhaps being alone is another essential element of the experience. A 'solitary landscape' is required. There is great pleasure in walking with friends and family, but I favour lone perambulations, usually routes planned on the map or on the hoof rather than taken from a guidebook. A days walking off the main drag in any National Park and, during most of the year, hardly a soul will be met. Upland gullies, combes and valleys are particularly gratifying arenas for exploration: mini climates, mini ecosystems, mini landscapes; with a maskof impenetrability concealing their secrets."The Combe was ever dark, ancient and dark/ Its mouth is stopped with bramble, thorn and briar/ And no one scrambles over the sliding chalk/ By beech and yew and perishing juniper/ Down the half precipices of its sides, with roots/ And rabbits holes for steps." (The Combe, Edward Thomas).I regularly spend time in the Black Mountains, which form the eastern portion of the Brecon Beacons National Park; miles of upland ridges to wander lonely as a cloud (and often in one). But there is also spatial drama to be had away from the tops. Discovering hidden cascades and waterfalls to refresh body and spirit, like a balm of stone and water; or entering what local literary mystic Arthur Machen describes as "the secret darkness of the valley" whilst negotiating an old sunken path through heather and bracken and then stands of thorn, hazel and ash, to descend intothe empty Eden of upper Olchon, Ewyas or Grwyne Fechan.
Hill country, open countryside and rural ruins are certainly not the only way to find the wild. A vigorous strand of new nature and psychogeographic writing delves into stirrings in the undergrowth of our towns and cities; territory scouted out in my review of the recently published Urban Wildscapes. Unexpected patches of greenery, often planned or unplanned reclaimed industrial land, can slake the thirst for mystery and secret space. The challenge is to ensure such places are not tidied up and developed out of existence.
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Kenilworth, Warwickshire: The Castle and Castle Meadows; Chase Lane; Hollis Lane and Crackley Woods; The Common.
Worth Valley, West Yorkshire: Oldfield - hamlet, Dixon Hill farm, fields and Blue Stone Delph; Wolf Stones and Icornshaw Moor; Ponden Kirk; Top Withens and Haworth Moor; Watersheddles and Wycoller; Crimsworth Dean; Walshaw Dean.
Black Mountains, Monmouthshire: Llanthony Priory and Siarpal; Cwmyoy; Grwyne Fawr; The Castle and Hatterrall Ridge; Nant Bwch and waterfalls; Oldcastle and Trewyn; Olchon Valley; The Sugarloaf and St Mary's Vale; Rhiw Cwnstab; The Skirrid.
Around Bristol and Bath: Frome Valley, Oldbury Court and Frenchay Common; Purr Down; Leigh Woods and the Gorge; Bury Hill; Hinton Hill Fort; Golden Valley, Wick; Dyrham Park; Cold Ashton and St Catherine's Valley; Dodington Park; North Stoke and Kelston Round Hill.
Wye Valley and the Forest of Dean: Caswell Woods and Brockwier; Cuckoo Wood; Blakeney Hill Wood; Garanew.
Gloucestershire Cotswolds: Hawkesbury Upton; Slad Valley; Haresfield Beacon; Sapperton and Daneway; Ozleworth Bottom; Brackenbury Ditches.
Herefordshire: Garway Hill; Kilpeck; Hergest Ridge; Sellack; Hentland; Titley.
Somerset: Goblin Combe; Priddy and Ebor Gorge; Mendip Forest; Brean Down; Bagborough Hill; Barle Valley; Timberscombe.
Yorkshire Dales: Bolton Abbey; The Strid and River Wharfe; Broadshaw and Valley of Desolation; Littondale; Malham Moor.
North York Moors: Wheeldale Moor and Beck; Great and Little Fryup Dale; Westerdale Moor; Danby High Moor; Upper Rosedale; Northdale Scar.
Carmarthenshire: Carreg-yr-ogof; Cennan Cerrig.
London: Highgate Woods;Hampstead Heath; Totteridge; Hadley Common; Trent Park and Enfield Chase; Richmond Park.
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"I began to wonder - I hope not just rationalising my own naivety - if wilderness was really what I wanted, or should want...what I missed was some common ground between the wilderness and the thoroughly domesticated, some accessible country - real and metaphysical...I realised that what touched me most was not wilderness as a special, defined place, but the quality of wildness...the untidy, energising edge of all living systems."
Bibliography
Baker, Kenneth (Ed.), 2000. The Faber Book of Landscape Poetry. London: Faber and Faber.
Clare, John, 1990. Selected Poems. London: Penguin.
Cocker, Mark, 2008. Crow Country. London: Vintage.
Coverley, Merlin, 2012. The Art of Wandering: The writer as walker. Harpenden: Oldcastle.
Creswell, Tim, 2004. Place: A short introduction. Oxford: Blackwell
Jorgensen, Anna and Keenan, Richard (Eds.), 2012. Urban Wildscapes. Oxford: Routledge.
Mabey, Richard, 2008. Nature Cure. London: Vintage.
Macfarlane, Robert, 2007. The Wild Places. London: Granta.
Machen, Arthur, 2010. The Great God Pen. Cardigan: Parthian
Storey, Edward, 1990. The Solitary Landscape. London: Robert Hale.
Thomas, Edward, 2004. Collected Poems. London: Faber and Faber.
Walton, Christopher, 2012. The Secret Place in Earthlines issue 3.
Watson, Chris, 2012. The River Coquet in Barrett, Jeff, Turner, Robin and Walsh, Andrew (Eds.) Caught by the River: A collection of words on water. London: Caught by the River.