03 January 2012 by Tristan Gooley
Happy New Year!
I do not share everything in this blog, you will be pleased to know. Most matters familial and ablutionary are kept from these pages.
So too are exact locations from time to time. It is not usually necessary to pinpoint the precise spot where a natural navigation technique revealed itself, or to give a 16 figure grid reference of the perch from which a photograph was taken.
Sometimes, I must confess that I deliberately fail, as unostentatiously as possible, to reveal even a general location if I am keen not to encourage visitors for any reason. This is rare, but it does happen. I have walked on certain routes in the Lake District and felt guilty for having let my boots join the millions of others that etch too deeply into these rocks at times. The guilt would worsen if I then added in any way to…
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Tags: altitude, black mountains, book, brecon beacons, britain's wild places, hay-on-wye, Llanthony, mountain, trees, Vale of Ewyas, wales, wild places |
29 December 2008 by Tristan Gooley
A Christmas present that I hesitate to share, or even share the idea of… is ‘Britain and Ireland’s Best Wild Places’ book. It does exactly what it says on the tin and in an appetising way.
Try this paragraph for size:
‘Nothing grows in the shadow of the yews. They preside over empty, shady slopes of flint chalk and their own tindery flakings and droppings. Druids worshipped them and armourers harvested them, but nothing can live with them.’
Before you sigh and mutter that this book will threaten the few remaining wild places, and that my blogging about it isn’t helping much either… fear not, I have a plan. Perhaps we could all agree to buy the book, read it and then not visit any of the places in it, satisfying ourselves instead in a cathartic way by just daydreaming of expanses of wonderful wildness? Or, as the collective…
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Tags: britain's wild places, yew trees |
Happy New Year!
