Clik here to view.
Seven crossings of the River Severn
This is the story of a day spent exploring seven crossings of the River Severn below Gloucester as it morphs from a meandering river into a mighty tidal estuary flowing through the Bristol Channel and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The New English Landscape - forthcoming
Here is advance publicity for an intriguing forthcoming book, review to follow soon...The New English LandscapeBy Jason Orton & Ken WorpoleTo be published by Field Station | London, November...
View ArticleClik here to view.
We had eyes for phantoms then
As the dying light of summer drifts through the snap of autumn, and life and the land are readied for the murk of winter, a sense of gloom begins to pervade, or so received wisdom dictates. But...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Hill people and sites of misadventure in the mountains
If you find that landscape photography can often be quite formulaic and ever so slightly dull - despite the beauty of its subject matter and the technical excellence behind it - then its nice to come...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Extracts from The Hollow On The Hill
“An artist can settle down behind his easel and paint whatever he sees. For him a distant field requires no special understanding of glume or palea, no ability to distinguish between meadow fescue and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Grantchester Meadows
1969, amid the general strangeness of Pink Floyd's Ummagumma album sits the 7m26s of pastoral calm that is Grantchester Meadows; Syd Barrett's legacy pulsing through Roger Waters lyrics. Autumnal...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The New English Landscape: A Review
This is a longer version of a review that was written for the Caught By The River web site.This is a view from the west of a book about the far east of England. Although a relatively short work, The...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Winter In - Gene Clark
Gene Clark was always the most melodious voice of the many who graced the records of The Byrds. Although Clark's career stuttered after his brief period with the group, and he suffered a - perhaps...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Wales Visitation by Allen Ginsberg
Wales VisitationWhite fog lifting & falling on mountain-browTrees moving in rivers of windThe clouds ariseas on a wave, gigantic eddy lifting mistabove teeming ferns exquisitely swayedalong a green...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Soft Estate - wild motorway landscapes
Left: M2 Medway Services Eastbound 2013Oil on shellac on linen 180 × 140 cmThank you to Edward Chell for alerting me to his forthcoming book, Soft Estate, featuring his words and artwork and also...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Landscape in Particular: The Uffington White Horse and Wayland's Smithy
"I write with very cold hands, the White Horse twenty to thirty yards below me to my right ... and the sun breaks through suddenly and warms my aching soul. Long shadows across the man-made...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A midwinter hand-list #2
I have succumbed to the urge for reflective list-making that the end of the year brings. Here are ten works and discoveries, all loosely related to landscape and sense of place, that, for whatever...
View ArticleClik here to view.
On lynchets
Hinton, South GloucestershireAnyone with an interest in landscape archaeology and landscape history will know well the earthworks, mounds, ditches and ancient trackways that abound across the British...
View ArticleClik here to view.
We are the mountain people
This photograph was taken in the gloaming time as a clear-skied winter night was drawing in, following a perfect day on the Hatterrall ridge in the Black Mountains; walking and working on the watershed...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Wyrd Britannia
The current popular narrative on libraries is generally pretty negative: under threat, marginalised in the digital age etc. How refreshing to come across Calderdale Libraries in West Yorkshire curating...
View ArticleClik here to view.
'If any solitary wanderers read these notes...'
The delight of opening a book at a random page and finding ...“This aerial photo might be of many of the hundreds of hidden places in England: here it is used as a diagram to illustrate the fate of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Scarp; Black Mountains
North facing scarp of the Black Mountains towards Twampa, from Rhiw Constab
View ArticleClik here to view.
Soft Estate: Edgelands as wilderness, or the new Picturesque
M2 Medway Services Eastbound 2013Oil on shellac on linen 180 × 140 cm; Edward ChellSoft Estate is the title of a fascinating and handsomely produced new book by the artist Edward Chell, with other...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Keatsian edgelands
Continuing the motorway-edgelands-psychogeographical theme of my last post, thank you to Christopher Ian Smith for alerting me to his short film, Arterial: an interpretation of John Keats poem La Belle...
View ArticleClik here to view.
There is no time like Spring
"There is no time like Spring, when life's alive in everything." Christina Rossetti, Spring.This post is nothing more than a visual reminder; a reminder that beauty and simplicity are still very much...
View Article