Kes: A Kestrel for a Knave

"The wood ended at a hawthorn hedge lining one side of a cart track. Across the track and beyond an orchard stood the Monastery Farm, and at the side of it, the ruins and one remaining wall of the monastery. Billy walked along the hedge bottom, searching for a way through. He found a hole, and as he crawled through a kestrel flew out of the monastery wall and veered away across the fields behind the farm. Billy knelt and watched it. In two blinks it was a speck in the distance; then it wheeled and began to return. Billy hadn’t moved a muscle before it was slipping back across the face of the wall towards the cart track.

Half-way across the orchard it started to glide upwards in a shallow curve and alighted neatly on a telegraph pole at the side of the cart track. It looked round, roused its feathers, then crossed its wings over its back and settled. Billy waited for it to turn away, then, watching it all the time, he carefully stretched full length in the hedge bottom. The hawk tensed and stood up straight, and stared past the monastery into the distance. Billy looked in the same direction. The sky was clear. A pair of magpies flew up from the orchard and crossed the wood, their quick wing beats seeming to just keep them airborne. They took stance in a tree close by and started to chatter, each sequence of chatterings sounding like one turn of a football rattle. The hawk ignored them and continued to stare into the distance. The sky was still clear. Then a speck appeared on the horizon. It held like a star, then fell and faded. Died. To re-appear a moment later further long the sky-line. Fading and re-forming, sometimes no more than a point in the texture of the sky. Billy squeezed his eyes and rubbed them. On the telegraph pole the hawk was sleek and still. The dot magnified slowly into its mate, circling and scanning the fields round the farm."

A Kestrel for a Knave (1968) Barry Hines

"You might think its funny

You might think he gets whats coming to him

You might be wrong"

Read full review of Kes - Original Soundtrack - JOHN CAMERON on Boomkat.com ©

The last field in England

"Elected Silence, sing to me
And beat upon my whorled ear
Pipe me to pastures still and be
The music that I care to hear."
The Habit of Perfection, Gerard Manley Hopkins 

Today I walked across the last field in England. A field that I had first wondered about as I viewed it from the high walls of Chepstow Castle, over on the western bank of the river Wye. This quiet pasture, Edward Thomas' archetypal "acre of land between shore and the hills", occupies a sloping promontory around which the tidal section of the river curves as it cuts through oolitic limestone before feeding the water hungry Severn estuary. Two miles to the south-east a still extant section of bank and ditch marks the southerly starting point of the eighth century Offa's Dyke, commencing its monumental 150 mile peregrination of the Welsh Marches to the banks of the Dee estuary in the north. The dyke formed an intermittent constructed boundary, a physical marking of territorial desire, between Anglo-Saxon Mercia and the Welsh kingdoms to the west. It can be traced again, on the map and ground, just north of the field. In parts of the southern Marches the Wye forms a proxy boundary, a more powerful line of division than any human construct. Perhaps the meander traversing the field of interest here fulfilled this role; or maybe the meadow's landward boundary is a ghost memory of a stretch of the dyke long levelled, marooning the field itself as a mini no-mans-land, neither Saxon nor Welsh? Today the middle of the Wye (more properly Gwy in Welsh) is decorated with alternate black dashes and spots on the Ordnance Survey map, marking the coming together of Gloucestershire and Monmouthshire, of England and Wales.

There is something both inviting and slightly daunting in the thought of studying the micro-landscape of a single field. A small matter for a master such as Richard Jefferies who can devote a whole chapter to dwelling on the minutiae of the topography, flora and fauna of the 'homefield' in Wild Life in a Southern County, but more of a challenge to most of us, lacking the innate knowledge of the Victorian country-dwelling naturalist. Nevertheless, it is an approach that retains its appeal, witness Tim Dee's recent Four Fields, an expansive study of the geography, history, literature and ecology of varying, and admittedly atypical, areas of fields in the Fenland of Cambridgeshire, Zambia, Ukraine and Montana, USA; or The Plot by Madeleine Bunting, "a biography of an English acre", rooting a story of family history in a very particular place. A personal favourite is At The Water's Edge, John Lister-Kaye's journal of his observations on a daily circular walk to a modest Scottish hill loch; in the author's words, "turning its pages and dipping in, I realise it has taken me over thirty years to cover little more than a mile".

My intention here is less ambitious than the above tracts, but I do hope to give a voice to the overlooked places that are all around us: an on-going theme of this blog, but one that I feel has plenty more territory to explore. It is the limitless anonymous rural places that often seem absent from today's landscape discourse; lacking the profile of landmark and touristic countrysides, urban edgelands or even maligned agri-business prairie lands. John Clare knew and spoke for these unheralded places, for instance in his poem Stray Walks: "How pleasant are the fields to roam and think, whole sabbaths through unnoticed and alone". Such terrain forms the background montage for a thousand views, taken for granted; the landscape equivalent of the Jones-Bonham dependable rhythm section underpinning Page-Plant's front of stage howls and riffs. And therein lies the magic, far from the one-dimensional vision conjured by landscape platitudes: green and pleasant land, outstanding natural beauty, national treasures. Its the thrill of a spatial portal to new ways of seeing past, present and possible futures, in plain sight but obscured by ordinariness; an open invitation to new adventures in topography, accidentally esoteric: providing the opportunity to, in Phil Legard's words, take "a small step into the realms of psychegeographic reverie". Dozens of examples exist on any Ordnance Survey sheet or Google Earth view, waiting to be discovered, mapped but unknown: hedges, walls, fences, quarries, pits, fords, bridges, tracks, barns, streams, springs, wells, weirs, ditches, ponds, copses, brakes, lynchets, pylons, sewage plants, tumuli, windmills, dovecots, and on, and on.

Its through such a portal, a hedge, that the protagonists of Ben Wheatley's A Field In England enter the titular field in which the narrative of the whole film is set, seemingly entering a parallel universe a world away from the Civil War skirmish taking place on the other side of the bushes. There they seek arcane and possibly diabolical knowledge or treasure, we do not find out what. Magic mushrooms - psilocybin - abound in the host field, and help to fuel a psychedelic trip into madness and beyond; an original perspective on the upheavals of the English Civil War.

The historical setting here is Monmouthshire (which, administatively at least, had an ambiguous status at this time as to whether it was within England or Wales), on the western bank of the Wye. My field lies on the eastern side of the river in Gloucestershire, but mirrors something of the atmosphere of the film. It does not take much of a leap of the imagination to picture a rag-tag group of Civil War renegades passing through in search of an inn, a passage home or maybe some natural psychedelics to temporarily banish the horrors of the conflict.      

And so into the field, which frustratingly has to remain nameless until such time as I can pore over tithe or estate maps at the Gloucester Records Office (although my initial guess is that some variation on 'Chapelhouse' or 'Chapel field' may be a contender).

The field annotated in green on the modern Ordnance Survey map; extract from Digimap. 

Historically this promontory was within the bounds of Tidenham, a large royal manor occupying the land immediately south of the Forest of Dean between the Severn and the Wye. The manor was recorded in a tenth century charter, became part of the Marcher lordship of Striguil (Chepstow) and was turned into a hunting chase, separate from the Royal Forest of Dean, in the thirteenth century.

Ordnance Survey map extract, from Digimap.

The earliest Ordnance Survey 1880's map (above) shows the modern day single eight hectare field divided into five enclosures, with a brickyard where the residential road now runs and a small pond and heath occupying the site of today's larger pond in the south-western corner. From the gateway in the south-east corner a raised track follows the field boundary to a collection of brick buildings, concrete clad, corrugated iron roofed and now part overtaken by ivy and hawthorn; a fire-place and cattle stalls bearing witness to their original mid-twentieth century agricultural utility. The map evidence suggests that the topographical footprint achieved its current configuration during the 1960's. 

The line of the old boundary along the middle of the field mirrors the curve of the river and follows what, on the ground, is the visible edge of a natural river terrace. This morphological symmetry with the river is shared by a ditch along the western edge of the field, running into the pond and encased by a thick hawthorn hedge. Crossing the field I am naturally drawn to a single oak standard holding centre stage, its trunk surrounded by large limestone blocks and pieces of brickwork; what structure they have come from is not immediately obvious. Below the river terrace three ducks enjoy the last mud of winter flooding, the grass and clover of the water meadow providing rich grazing for the cattle occupying the field. The murky morning stillness is studded by the scat singing of great tits, and the echoing calls of seagulls and rooks. Perambulating the boggy perimeter and surveying the rising ground of the field I muse on the people who have toiled in these acres over centuries: what thoughts did they share on the Norman uber-hooligans who established the castle on the cliff opposite? Did they consider themselves to be Welsh, English or something in between? The Forest of Dean borderlands with Wales, in contrast to the Welsh Marches further north, are characterised by a marked absence of 'Welshness' in terms of surnames, place and field names, but this has always been a land apart from the more generally accepted norms of nationality.     

Eventually I reach the northern end of the field, with the muddy Wye beyond and the steeply wooded opposite bank just starting to come into leaf, vivid greens permeating the dull greys and browns of retreating winter austerity. Here is great potential for some landscape archaeology prospecting. For somewhere in this corner of the field lie the buried remains of the chapel of St David's, a few metres north of its boundary is the postulated river crossing of the Roman military road from Caerleon to Gloucester and a short way into the adjacent Chapelhouse Wood the bank and ditch fragment of Offa's Dyke. When, last summer, I originally noticed this large field from the castle and lodged a vague mental note to have a closer look sometime I had no knowledge of this archaeological treasury; another example of the extraordinary wealth of historical interest and local stories connecting with wider narratives seemingly to be found within any randomly selected part of the British landscape.

Map courtesy of Natural England, based on Ordnance Survey ST59SW map Crown Copyright

Prior to the visit I was aware that the line of the Roman road was in this vicinity, but had not appreciated that the accepted site for the crossing of the Wye (via a wooden bridge, the footings of which have been found at low tide and were observed by the nineteenth century antiquarian George Ormerod: "paralled lines of black remains of stakes are clearly seen at low tides crossing the bed of the river") was so close to the field (see photo above). The road ascended Alcove Wood (following the line of the Chepstow/ St. Arvans parish boundary) on the opposite side of the river and then ran uphill to Tutshill to join the present A48, which still follows the line of its Roman ancestor. The section from the river to the modern road is not visible on the ground, but appears as a track as recently as the 1920's Ordnance Survey map. This map also indicates Striguil Bridge (remains of) at the above location and site of St David's Chapel in the adjacent corner of the set of fields on the promontory.

The fantastically named Archaeologicia or Miscellaneous Tracts Relating to Antiquity (Vol 29) published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1842 notes a thirteenth century reference to the chantry chapel of St David's "juxta potem de Strugell", which later became a possession of Striguil (Chepstow) Priory, and also that the remains of the ruined chapel were visible in 1814. The same book also seems to suggest that the antique wooden bridge was still extant, though ruinous, as mentioned in Leland's Itinerary of 1535-43 and quotes a later sixteenth century source for the bridge being "clean carried away"; although these references may be to an earlier bridge on the site of the current iron road bridge just downstream. A cursory examination of this section of the field yielded no visible 'humps and bumps' earthworks indicating the location of the chapel, and the whereabouts of Chapelhouse Farm, mentioned in some sources is not verified by any of the historical OS maps. 

However, the nearby Roman bridge site and surviving dyke were all the excuse I needed to duck through the barbed wire fence bounding the field and enter the briar and bramble of the liminal terrain beyond. Scrambling along the shoreline a rocky promontory looked a likely abutment for a bridge, the thick mud below perhaps hiding further evidence of Roman engineering below. The steep wooded river bank here was at once archetypal of the British Isles - carpeted by bluebell and anemone, ivy clad yews - but simultaneously, looking across the wide, brown river, a vision of riverine Amazonia; a place to inspire Fitzcarraldo dreaming. An informal path snaking through this rain forest facsimile is a reminder that such places are beyond the allegedly definitive truth of the Ordnance Survey map and the supposedly all seeing eye of Google Earth.

Having found the remnant bank of the Dyke, darkly entombed by towering and toppled larch, an excursion upriver was now in motion, following an old fisherman's path through a nature reserve at the foot of gigantic limestone cliffs. The scene here further evocative of South American sublime grandeur, particularly when crossing a rock fall, the black boulders stretching upwards into Andean infinity. The limestone from these now silent cliffs has in the past been heavily exploited for use as building material, the Wye providing a convenient route for transporting the heavy loads by boat to the Severn Estuary and beyond. A vernacular design of craft particular to the river was the flat-bottomed trow, many of which plied their trade between the Wye and Bristol; a historical memory kept alive through the name of a well-known Bristolian pub dating from 1664, the Llandoger Trow.   

Just around the next bend in the river lies the peninsula of Lancaut (from the Welsh, Llan Cewydd), a pulse of land cut-off by Offa's Dyke as it heads north with no time for diversion. The small parish of Lancaut within the manor of Tidenham was a settlement of some size by the fourteenth century, but progressively shrunk to its current single farmstead in the subsequent centuries to become one of countless examples of the deserted medieval village. Here was established an early British monastic settlement, named for St Cewydd (first reference c625). A ruined church named St James', its fabric dated to late 12th century, now stands on the site and may have served time as a leper colony for Chepstow Castle. In fact, this remote church seems to have had something of an itinerant and varied history of ownership, use and status and was ruinous by 1885.     

The church and its location are almost impossibly picturesque and atmospheric, though on a damp and misty April day a sense of Gothic melancholy is at large. In fact the roofless relic brings to mind the scenes set in ruined churches in The Wicker Man and the lesser known 'folk horror' offering Blood On Satan's Claw. Although a solitary visitor today, I am accompanied by the celluloid ghosts of Sergeant Howie and Angel Blake. If the recently revived Hammer Films are on the look out for suitable locations then here they have one that would admirably meet their needs. 

Still from The Wicker Man (from www.diaboliquemagazine.com)

Still from Blood On Satan's Claw (from www.hickeysonic.wordpress.com)

   

"The clifftop situation, the stern fortification of the earliest parts and the sumptuous enrichment of later ones, combined with the exceptional completeness of so much, make Chepstow Castle one of the most exhilarating and instructive castles in the whole of Britain" (The Buildings of Wales: Gwent/ Monmouthshire, Newman).

Back to the field: although it is the river that in many ways defines its topography, history and character, the dramatic backdrop of Chepstow Castle, a rock-bound menhir looming across the water, dominates the view from within its bounds. Chepstow and Monmouthshire, like Berwick on the English-Scottish border, have had a forced history of national schizophrenia, mostly Welsh in character and population but administratively a more unclear status. The castle has remained a constant, dominating the town since its foundation by the Norman lord William FitzOsbern in 1067 at the southern end of the chain of fortifications bestriding the Welsh Marches. 

The "steep and lofty cliffs" of the Wye that "connect the landscape with the quiet of the sky" made a lasting impression on Wordsworth during his visit in 1793, as recorded in Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey from Lyrical Ballads. At the same time the Wye was gaining popularity as part of the nascent touristic itinerary, with artists also drawn to its natural and historic wonders. The picturesque ruins of Chepstow castle high up on their limestone cliff particularly attracted the painterly gaze.

The field's position on the opposite bank of the river, with a clear view of the length of the castle's fortifications strung out along the cliff top, is an obvious vantage point for an artist to take up position. Below are a number of paintings of the castle that may have been painted from the field, or include it as part of the scene.

Chepstow Castle, 1905, Philip Wilson Steer (from http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/steer-chepstow-castle-n02473)

River Wye ('Chepstow Castle'), c1806-07, Joseph Mallord William Turner (from http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/steer-chepstow-castle-n02473)

View of Chepstow, c1750, artist unknown (from http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/paintings/view-of-chepstow-159348)

Chepstow Castle belonging to his Grace the Duke of Beauford. (Monmuthshire), Joannes Kipp (from http://publicpleasuregarden.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/american-reaction-to-18th-century-grand.html)

Reflecting on the experiences of the day, my mind is taken back to the field of my childhood. We knew this place as the ‘Echo Meadows’, whether this was our made up name, local lore or a genuine field name I do not remember. Here the meadow abutted the massive sandstone outer walls of a Norman-medieval castle, and was bounded by the curve of a stream. Hours, days and weeks were spent roaming and lolling around this field, mapping on foot and on paper its everyday features, imbuing them with significance: ‘bully bridge’, the ruined sheep dip, the overgrown holloway – a hidden space for watching, like an apprentice rogue male. This is a place much like 'The Field', an area of old parkland adjacent to the 1950's Metroland suburban home that Richard Mabey describes in his extended essay, A Good Portion of English Soil; a wild playground for the local children in which "'Nature' was something we all took for granted, like an extra layer of skin".

But it is not just children who can enjoy playgrounds. We should all remember that the landscape is waiting for us to learn from it, to adventure into it. Go and find your field.   

References

Hammond, J (Ed.), 1965. Red Guide: The Wye Valley. Ward Lock.

Hart, C, 2000. Between Severn (Saefern) and Wye (Waege) in the Year 1000. Sutton.

Hill, D & Worthington, M, 2003. Offa's Dyke: History and Guide. Tempus.

Hopkins, G, 1966. Gerard Manley Hopkins. Vista.

Legard, P, 2011. Psychogeographia Ruralis: Observations concerning landscape and the imagination. The Larkfall Press.

Lister-Kaye, J, 2011. At the Water's Edge: A Walk in the Wild. Canongate.

Mabey, R, 2013. A Good Parcel of English Soil. Penguin.

Newman, J, 2000. The Buildings of Wales: Gwent/ Monmouthshire. Yale University Press.

Walters, B, 1992. The Archaeology and History of Ancient Dean and the Wye Valley. Thornhill.

Wordsworth, W and Coleridge, S, 1924. Lyrical Ballads, 1798. Oxford University Press.

Archaeologicia or Miscellaneous Tracts Relating to Antiquity (Vol 29)

Gatehouse Gazetteer

Victoria County History: A History of the County of Gloucester

Landscape in particular 4: Worth Valley

View of Oldfield in the Worth Valley

This is the latest in a regular-occasional series of posts on specific landscapes that mean a lot to me, or are new discoveries; after all, interest in the topographical is nothing without a feeling for sense of place: genius loci.

 

Previous 'Landscape in particular' posts:
Cold Ashton

Kenilworth Castle
Bolton Abbey

The Worth is much like any of the other green valleys that snake through the Millstone Grit uplands of the South Pennines, a transition zone between the more venerated and celebrated landscapes of the Peak District to the south and the Yorkshire Dales to the north: here is a heady mix of 'dark satanic mills', non-conformity, rugged beauty and often harsh weather; the topography seeming to embody the very essence of the cussed independent spirit that Yorkshire folk (because that is how we must refer to them) are so stubbornly proud of. Its a landscape in which dispersed farmsteads, miles of dry stone walling and pack-horse tracks across the high heather moors share space and time with woollen mill towns and villages battered by the elements and economic decline, and narrow valley floors often crowded with two centuries of communications networks: canal, railway and road. In his classic study of the region, Millstone Grit, Glynn Hughes captures the essence of the place thus: 

"Those towns whose lights at night dance in little cups and hollows between peninsulas of the moors, from which they look like safe little harbours." 

The Worth valley is, though, different because embedded on its slopes is the small town of Haworth, once home to the Brontë sisters, Anne, Charlotte and Emily, and its fields, farmsteads and moors were the inspiration for their brief but astonishingly creative burst of Gothic Victorian writing. It is by no means the only locality in the area that has significant literal or artistic associations: Ted Hughes hailed from nearby Mytholmroyd and much of his poetry was rooted in the hills and towns he grew up in ("The valleys went out, the moorland broke loose" Heptonstall Old Church); Simon Armitage's contemporary poetry is similarly influenced by his Marsden base, a little to the south; David Hockney and JB Priestley are sons of nearby Bradford; and the town of Hebden Bridge is awash with galleries, artists and generic northern bohemia. However, the Brontë's are on a different plane of international recognition and canonisation, up there with Jane Austin and Charles Dickens.

Landscape in particular 3: Cold Ashton

Looking N towards Cold Ashton; 27th April 2012

This is the third in a regular-occasional series of posts on specific landscapes that mean a lot to me, or are new discoveries; after all, interest in the topographical is nothing without a feeling for sense of place: genius loci.

Cold Ashton is a hamlet of church and manor house, south facing and sheltered (the 'Cold' an elusive prefix); and sharing its locale with many small valley's busily incising the long finger of the Cotswold scarp slope and narrow plateau that extends down to Bath, 3 miles to the south.

Less than half a mile but hidden away from the prosaic noise of the A48, leaching the masses from the London-West whale-road into Bath, its the best sort of place: an easily accessible backwater that most people have no idea is there. From the single quiet lane, a footpath descends steeply as you enter the bowl-like head of a small valley; a 'combe' in this part of the world, vernacular descriptor hitting the spot nicely: 'The Combe was ever dark, ancient and dark' (Edward Thomas, 'The Combe'). Halfway down the slope spring's bubble from the limestone and spill out gentle, cress-bound streamlets that flash in the sunshine and chatter their course downward. This is Cotswolds scenery at its simplest and purest, before the gentle but incipient gentrification by Range Rover, impeccably imagined cottage restoration and horse pasture further down the valley.

Your playground awaits

And down here can be found an everyday paradise for larking around, exploring or just lying in the sun; a wild play landscape. Which is a bit of a recurrent theme of mine as my two daughters are on the threshold of those glorious childhood years when your local area and visits to the countryside alike provide a playscape with bottomless potential to thrill, test all the senses to the limit, use up boundless energy and allow still keen imaginations to run riot. And to any parent who says their kids would get bored, its too dangerous, they need supervision or any other lazy excuse for sleep-walking into that hackneyed parental wrong-turn - not letting them do what you did - get yourself down to a place like this near you now and let them loose!

Leave me alone Dad!

Contrary to the National Trust's predictably paternalistic but misguided advice in its  '50 things to do before you are 12', '...so long as you always have an adult with you', this quietly mysterious valley is exactly the sort of place where children need no more than an adult steer in the right direction; an opportunity for a glorious compromise where parents have a leisurely picnic, beer and sleep in the sun whilst the kids range through the woods, streams and fields. Enlightened self-interest is a wonderful thing.   

Monster of wood

During our most recent visit pictured here, my youngest and I dodged the rain showers, happily muddied ourselves up (although carrying a little one on your shoulders with cow-shit encrusted wellies dangling is an acquired taste) and bonded over whatever stimulation was around the next corner. Its not to say that I/ they don't have a good time at the more stage-managed activities - birthday parties, soft play centres, playgrounds etc - but I don't think these things lodge in the memory bank for long; its safe play that lacks the sense of innocent edginess and tired serenity that child or adult alike get from the simple pleasure of playing out in a special place that feels like its your own creation.

Previous 'Landscape in particular' posts:
Kenilworth Castle
Bolton Abbey

Landscape in particular 1: Kenilworth castle

This is the first in a regular series of short-entries on places and landscapes that have long-standing resonance or meaning to me, or are new discoveries.

Kenilworth Castle (Photographer unknown)

Kenilworth castle in Warwickshire is a large, multi-period fortification with an important strategic role between the Norman and Elizabethan periods. Like many such castles it then suffered a long decline, was badly damaged in the Civil War and thus became a picturesque ruin before its modern incarnation as an English Heritage managed tourist attraction.

To me, my brother and our friends though, the castle, and the fields around it, became the playground we were lucky enough to have at the end of our road. The fact that it was an enormous ruin gave us even more scope for adventure: we had about a dozen ways to gain entry illegally, despite having free local resident entry passes, and summer evenings were the time that we would have it to ourselves to play football in, clamber over and generally 'own'; we found and explored a tunnel (actually a medieval sewer into the moat) that allowed a long crawl in the dark on hands and knees; and the lush meadows surrounding the castles that once formed the extensive moat ('the Mere') gave us even more scope for play.

At the time this all seemed very normal and it is only in retrospect that I have looked at aerial photographs and plans and seen how the places that we roamed across were all connected features in the wider historic landscape of the castle and its hinterland: that the raised ground at the far end of the Mere called 'the Pleasance' was created to house the temporary viewing platforms for the elaborate pageant put on for Queen Elizabeth I's visit; that the nearby field called 'Parliament Piece' was the site of a Parliament held by King Henry III in 1266.   

In landscape: some thoughts on the best ways to get out there

There are many better ways to experience the landscape than sitting in front of a computer, and here, in no particular order, are some of my personal favourites; no doubt others will have some even better suggestions.

 In the company of children

A walk or adventure in the countryside with young ones helps to bring out the inner child in all of us - camping, poo sticks, building dens, searching for the Gruffulo. My first experience of landscape was through family walks as a kid and roaming around the local area; memories that are still vivid. I hope my children have the same.

Sleeping rough

In recent years I've been on an annual bothy trip with a group of friends, which is a great way to stay out in a remote landscape for a whole weekend, albeit with, at best, a basic level of comfort. Wild camping gives you even more license to find your own spot: in Scotland and Dartmoor you can camp on any uncultivated land and in the rest of the country, as long as you are away from habitations and livestock, just stay overnight and leave nothing behind you will generally be ok. There is plenty of good advice out there on bothies and wild camping.

A bit of danger is good for the soul

Some of the most memorable times I have experienced in the landscape have involved periods of uncertainty and a degree of anxiety: abandoning a mountain bike in a snowstorm and continuing my route on foot, lost and ploughing through thick snow in a whiteout in the Black Mountains; scrambling alone on rocks high up a mountain-side in Tierra Del Fuego to reach a glacier; and clambering along a slippery Striding Edge on Helvellyn unable to stand up due to high winds. Uncomfortable when you are in the middle of it but strangely satisfying when its over and definitely memorable. 

Localism

Getting to know your local landscape is certainly the easiest, and often one of the most satisfying, ways to engage with the environment. The majority of us live in urban areas, which are brim full of green space, woodland, historic buildings, rivers and lakes. No need to dream of that rural idyll, just step out of your front door. In my case, this is the Frome Valley and Oldbury Court in North East Bristol.

Time to study

If you can find a small area of landscape to study intimately - whether focusing on natural history, medieval field systems and settlement patterns or an abandoned industrial site - you can not only contribute in some small way to the body of knowledge and evidence of how the natural and human world work, find surprising things in the most unlikely places but also educate yourself on the world around you.

Conservation volunteering

I've worked as a conservation volunteer a number of times (as well as volunteering on archaeological digs) and I am always conscious that I should do more. Such work enables you to spend a sustained amount of time in the landscape and contribute to something tangible, personally rewarding and of benefit to wider society. BTCV, Wildlife Trusts and the Natural Trust, amongst others, all welcome volunteers.

The sunlit uplands

Any landscape has intrinsic interest but nothing stirs the soul more than getting into the hills and mountains and experiencing the ever changing weather and atmosphere that characterises upland areas; there is something elemental about this - the blood pumps harder, the senses are keener, the rain seems wetter! And there is no finer feeling than sinking a pint in a pub at the end of a long day of fell-walking, whilst your socks slowly dry out.

Using your hands

Without wishing to sound too much like a tree-hugger, a walking stick cut directly from a coppiced hazel tree is one of my favourite possessions. I'm no master-craftsman, as my rustically created bench, wood store, garden path and other efforts testify, but making something by hand using wood, stone or other natural materials links us both to our more highly-skilled and resourceful forebears and our environment in a way that many aspects of modern life shy away from or discourage. 

Festival in the sun

This is a bit of a boom time for music festivals 'out in the country' of all shapes and sizes. Whilst there is often a focus on mud and the temperamental British summer weather, drinking with friends round the camp fire and sitting in the sun listening to great music are the more common experiences - what could be better? My own personal favourites are the Green Man Festival and the End of the Road Festival, and everyone should try good old Glastonbury at least once. Or why not organise your own mini festival.

Taking it to the extreme

An adrenalin-junkie approach to the great outdoors can be tiresome and even indicate a lack of empathy with the natural rhythms of the landscape. However, reinvigorating yourself with a spot of coasteering, gorge-walking, white water rafting or mountain-biking from time to time is good for the soul. Ideally, keeping it simple without the need for expensive gear, gadgets or over-the-top lists of safety rules.

Night walking

For reasons I wont bore you with I once set off on a 15 mile circular walk around the North London/ Hertfordshire fringes late at night. It was cold and a bit eerie in parts but I was fortified by beer, had a few sleeps on the way and enjoyed the different perspective on familiar places. If its good enough for Charles Dickens, its good enough for me.

Step into the garden  

Gardens can easily be overlooked in favour of flashier landscapes. Building a pond, planting trees and generally encouraging wildlife in my modest city garden has given me as much pleasure as any of the other activities listed here. What can beat seeing frog-spawn magically appear in a pond in early Spring, a blossoming cherry tree or hearing chicks in a bird box?

Or why not just sit under a tree reading or dozing, relax, let all your senses take in the landscape around you and forget about the time...