“I wish I were out of doors—I wish I were a girl again, half savage and hardy […] I’m sure I should be myself were I once among the heather on those hills. Open the window again wide […].” (12.46) – Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
Author: baronvoncrow
Dry Moors: Marsden to Hebden Bridge
the touchy fuse-wire
of parched grass,
tapers of bulrush and reed,
any tree
a primed mortar of tinder,
one spark enough to trigger
a march on the moor
by ranks of flame. – Simon Armitage, ‘The Dew Stone’
Rest Day Photo Quiz: Spot the Spoor!
Hikers! Know how to recognise what you are stepping in, with our handy DIY droppings identification brainteaser.
God’s Own Country
The huge music/ Of sightlines,/ From every step of the slopes – Ted Hughes, ‘The Word that Space Breathes’
High Moorland: a Sense of the Scope of the End-to-End trail
The fleeting hour of life of those who love the hills is quickly spent, but the hills are eternal. Always there will be the lonely ridge, the dancing beck, the silent forest; always there will be the exhilaration of the summits. These are for the seeking, and those who seek and find while there is still time will be blessed both in mind and body. – Alfred Wainwright
Continue reading High Moorland: a Sense of the Scope of the End-to-End trail
Stately Homes and Millstone Grit
. . . and at that moment she felt that to be mistress of Pemberley might be something! Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Dovedale: Decisively out of the Midlands
My hypothesis may indeed be unsound; but, whether or not, it is clear, taking organic remains as upon the whole a faithful chronicle, that the deposition of these limestone beds was coeval with the existence of the earliest, or all but the earliest, living creatures upon earth. – Richard Chambers, Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844)
Battle
The path here follows the edge of huge Prairie-like fields of crops, and it seems to take forever to get anywhere. It’s possibly the low point of the whole trail. – Andy Robinson, The End-to-End Trail
A certain circular aspect to the Staffordshire Way
… canal life, the work of barges, the simple pleasure of watching the water creatures. – Berlie Docherty
Continue reading A certain circular aspect to the Staffordshire Way
From green and pleasant land to dark satanic mills?
The Industrial Revolution has two phases: one material, the other social; one concerning the making of things, the other concerning the making of men. – Charles A. Beard
Continue reading From green and pleasant land to dark satanic mills?
Walking The Landscape 