5 out of 5 stars

The first place that I lived in Guildford was called Sheepfold Road. Never thought much of it until I opened up the most recent of Andy Goldsworthy’s book that I got from the library and realised that this collection of art was based around sheepfolds. These simple structures were used for corralling, washing and sheltering sheep from the harshest things that the Cumbrian weather can throw at them.

Goldsworthy approached Cumbria County Council with the idea of renovating them to enclose some of his artworks or to actually be the artwork in some cases. To complete this task would require more than one man and he set about it with a team of stonewallers and big machines. By the time he had gone to 2006 a total of 35 folds had been created and it is those that are documented and photographed in this book.

And as with all of his other books that I have read, it is just beautiful. Not only does he take a pretty good photo of his creations, but it is those creations that make this book so special. A lot of his art is normally more transitory, made from leaves, ice and sticks, but these are very much more permanent installations. There are sheepfolds with huge boulders in, some with cairns and others with substantial parts of a tree built in. Some of the folds are lovingly restored and others he has pushed what he can do with the structures incorporating elements in the walls that surprise and delight. If you have ever come across his work before this is another book that you should read.

4 out of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

In the late 1990s, Sarah Jane Douglas lost her mother to the horrid disease that is breast cancer. Sarah was only 24 at the time and she felt very alone in the world. Even though she felt live giving up, she had promised her mother that she wouldn’t give up and would keep going. The shock of having to deal with the grief pushed her towards drink and drugs, but thankfully it didn’t consume her.

Her mother had been a single parent, the man she was going to marry, Gerry had died when on an expedition in the Himalayas shortly before they were supposed to be married. Sarah became a single parent too, having a son to one guy and then a second son to another partner, but neither relationship worked out and she relied on the support of her grandparents to fill in the gaps in her family life.

What carried her the most though was the love for the hills and mountains of her native Scotland. She sought solace in these hills, and they repaid her many times over. With various friends and family members, she conquered Monroe’s, headed to Africa to climb Kilimanjaro and embarked on a trip to Nepal with her new partner to take some of her mothers ashes to be with the man that she never married. Each of these small and large challenges gave her the strength to face her own diagnosis two decades later.

Douglas is not the most lyrical of writers, she writes in a matter of fact way with an honesty about the trials and tribulations that she has overcome by herself and with the support of family and partners. She takes inspiration from being outside and this has helped her cope with her tough and sometimes painful life because of decisions that she has made and things that have happened to her, this still manages to be an uplifting book.

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

Since 1953 when the tallest mountain was conquered by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay the number of people reaching the summit has grown exponentially year on year, with well over 5000 people having made the ascent. Climbing to that height is not without risk, and with those numbers of people climbing there have of course been fatalities for a whole series of reasons, as well as the amount of junk left on the mountain has also grown too. Plus there is the cost of doing it, from somewhere you with have to find around £25k; most people will not ever reach this roof of our planet.

Conquering is a dreadful business, a blighted gene. I want nothing to do with it

Peter Owen Jones had another idea though, why not ascend the same vertical distance of 29,016 feet over a similar period of time that an ascent of Everest would take, but do it on some of the most beautiful hills that the UK has to offer. This has several advantages, you can get there quite quickly, you do not need to find large sums of money to do the challenge, you do not need oxygen and it you are still within reach of pubs and tea rooms for the required refreshment and recuperation.

Climbing up, walking to the summit, is a calling a summoning, for what can only be known, seen and heard on the edge of the land and the sky in the space between them.

In this book, Jones has collected together eighteen routes and climbs to achieve the total height that he wanted. These climbs begin in Cornwall and he heads up the west side of the country before reaching the summit on Scafell Pike in Cumbria. But there is much more to this book than just a series of walks. Jones is completing this partly as a personal pilgrimage but also as a way of taking a step away from the relentless stream of information from the internet, becoming an observer of people and things around his and taking time to reconnect with the natural world.

5 out of 5 stars

Every town on Discworld has a story about rat infestation and a piper who can blow a magical tune to lead the rats away. Maurice, a streetwise tomcat saw this as a business opportunity and had cobbled together a bunch of rats who had been affected by the same magic as him. They had persuaded a young lad called Keith to be the piper and ‘lead’ the rats away.

The group are on their way to a small town called Bad Blintz and the rats persuade Maurice that this should be the last town that they pull this stunt on. But on arrival, they realise that there is something strange about the town, there are no other rats around. The residents of the town think they already have an infestation and have been paying two rat catchers to clear them. Their food still keeps disappearing and yet the rat-catchers hang up large numbers of tails from rats they have caught. Except these tails look suspiciously like shoelaces.

Malicia, the mayor’s daughter has concluded that the rat-catchers are up to something, but quite what she has no idea. As they investigate more, they realise that the rat-catchers have created a King Rat called Spider. This entity is pure evil and its presence is starting to affect the rats and Maurice realises that he knows what he has to do.

I thought that this was a really enjoyable book and the first set on the Discworld that is specifically aimed at a younger audience with simpler plot lines. However, it is still suitable for those of an older generation though (i.e. me), as the later part of the book really is quite dark. If there was one tiny flaw, things work out too well at the end for my liking. Great stuff and can highly recommend.

2.5 out of 5 stars

Two decades ago a man disappeared in mysterious circumstances. His son ponders why he vanished in such mysterious circumstances and memories from that time keep flooding back to him. The one lead that he does have was that his father rode off on a particular bicycle and it helped him remember the bicycles that his father that had stolen or lost after particular family events.

The son’s investigation into his father begins to uncover all sorts of things and details in the overlapping histories between his family and others in the neighbourhoods that they lived. Discovering the little known world of those that collect antique bicycles brings all sort of revelations for him and a moment where he finds a tangible link. Draped over this is a history of Taiwan all the way back to the Second World War.

I was recommended this by Jessica J. Lee, the author of Turning as she described it as one of her all-time favourites. I didn’t fall for it in the same way that she did and I think that is because some of the cultural references are lost on me. However, I did enjoy the wistful and dreamlike writing, though the plot seemed to almost be stretched to gossamer-thin at times.

3 out of 5 stars

The piece of music behind the title of the book was first played in 1921. Ralph Vaughan Williams’ evocative piece has filtered its way into the national consciousness to portray a gentle countryside of meadows, quiet country lanes and of course, skylarks. But this rose-tinted view of a past that probably didn’t even exist. Unless you were in the upper echelons of society, living on the land was hard and relentless. But that emotive connection we have to our landscape is the same one that connects us to music.

King meanders through the links that have existed between a variety of music genres and the countryside. Some of the connections are obvious, folk music has very strong ties to the landscape and the farming seasons, but there are chapters on political action, Greenham Common, hippies and druids and most recently the Acid house scene and rave parties that were the precursor to clubbing.

I thought that this was an interesting take for a subject on a book. People connect to the landscape in all sorts of ways, and I had never thought of it with regards to music. I was more interested in the more contemporary accounts to do with the travelling community and rave culture in the later chapters in the book. It was interesting how this bought all sorts of draconian laws to curb their excesses. It did feel for a couple of the chapters that connections between the music elements and landscapes were an afterthought. There is a playlist to go with the book here.

4 out of 5 stars

The insane craziness of London gets to people in many different ways and in 2015 it happened to Stephen Rutt. Rather than just downsize and move out to the country, he decided to take himself as far away from London as he could. This was why he found himself in North Ronaldsay, the most northerly of the Orkney Islands, at the bird observatory there. It is in these places where the open ocean meets the land where the birds that he is seeking, live. They thrive in these dynamic environments and Rutt’s experiences on these windblown edges of our coasts are the closest he can come to experiencing what an ocean-going bird feels. Most of our seabird colonies are located in Scotland and he is naturally drawn to these places, but he travels all over the UK,  from Wales to Northumberland to experience other colonies of birds and to uncover a little of the history between us and the seabirds.

Rutt has a really nice writing style, informative without feeling that you are being lectured too. He describes enough detail in the scenes that he sees in his prose that you feel like you are stood alongside him as he watches the skuas stoop towards his head, or standing in the dark listening to the shearwaters return to their nests, when he takes off in tiny rickety places to hop between the islands and is buffeted by the same winds that they fly in every day in the open ocean. Woven into all of this are his observations on the landscape and geology of the places with just enough history to add context. It is a great insight into the life of the birds he is following and has a wonderful resonance.  I can recommend this if you wish to know about the birds of the open ocean, skua, gannets and fulmars and also to be read in conjunction with the Seabird’s Cry by Adam Nicolson, to get some idea of the threats that these birds are under.

4.5 out of 5 stars

Shortly after the decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1972, Reg and George moved to deepest rural Wales from Bournemouth. They had a couple of homes before settling into a house that would become a B&B and be their home until 2011. In total, they were together over six decades, the first two of which their relationship was deemed to be illegal by the state. In 2006 they formally became a couple with a short civil partnership ceremony in the town of Machynlleth. They had two witnesses to this momentous occasion, Peredur and Mike Parker.

Mike Parker was another exile from England having first gone to Wales to write a Rough Guide and realised that he actually quite liked the place. Discovering his sexuality, Parker had had a large number of flings and very short term relationships in his younger days but arriving in Wales calmed him and it was there that he first met Peredur. Finding excuses to go and see him in the shop he was working they both realised that they were attracted to each other and both fell in love.

Reg, George, Preds and Mike were to become close friends, hence why the younger guys ended up as witnesses and came to love the house that the older guys owned. They started to save up with the intention of purchasing it after they had passed away; but in a remarkable turn of events, Reg and George left the property to them in the will. For the first time, they had some proper financial security and Preds was living in the home that he always dreamed of. They didn’t change much, to begin with, but added a swimming pond for bracing dips

After moving in they begun to sort through their home and discovered a rich history of Reg and George’s younger lives through their diaries, letter and personal effects. This is not just the story of the older and younger guys and their lives. Rather it is a layered and multi-faceted memoir of Parker’s time growing up, Preds life in a small Welsh town and the way that the community supports each other. The book is split into the four parts and he writes about the seasons, the four elements of earth, wire, fire and water and about each of them. Central to all of this though is Rhiw Goch, or the Red Hill, and how it changes every single day with the seasons, the way that kites hang in the air and the thrill of snow cutting them off sometimes, though the thrill of being isolated wears off after a brief period of time. I had read Parker’s previous books on maps and this was recommended to me. I thought this was a really enjoyable book about a new life in Wales coupled with a touch of history, landscape, social history and the natural world of Wales that captivates him every time he steps outside the door. It is a book full of deep love for the man and the land he now inhabits.