Julian Cope presents Head Heritage

Another little book people might like to read is The Fish Ladder by Katherine Norbury - it is actually her own personal story which she weaves around following various rivers in the UK back to their source - the most northerly one being Dunbeath which takes her to Loch Braighe na h'Aibbne. In another instance near the source of the Severn she steps into a puddle which turns out to be a bog and is covered completely with muddy water - fortunately her young daughter is with her to help her climb out.

Hi tjj. I had a lazy Sunday morning today and finished reading ‘The Fish Ladder’. Just wanted to thank you for recommending it. Well worth spending time with and I’ll let it settle in my head over the next few days. Not my usual sort of book and I’m not that used to reading about someone’s life in such bare detail. So sad at times. Love the places she wrote about. Many I’ve been lucky enough to have visited. Brought back nice times spent with my Dad, a keen birdwatcher, over the years. The Dunbeath Water is a magic place and the prehistory there is well worth a visit and not that hard to get to. Thanks again.

PS I love rivers and streams, who doesn't! Thought I'd post this link as reading the book reminded me of it. Can't remember where I saw it first. Sorry if it's been posted on here before.

Meander - Just a lovely word I think

http://roberthodgin.com/project/meander

Bit off topic I know.

Posting this link to a blog about Right to Roam in case anyone is interested. We all need access to them stones.

https://markavery.info/2020/08/17/guest-blog-right-to-roam-by-nick-hayes/

More info here

https://www.righttoroam.org.uk/

Hope you don't mind me revisiting this - I was indeed given Nick Hayes' book The Book of Trespass. I didn't open it straight away as received other books too. Now I am reading it and find myself fighting back anger. Not prehistory for sure, Nick Hayes refers back to William the Conqueror as the person who started the theft of common land from the people of our country.

'William embarked on a military campaign called the Harrying of the North, an assault on the commoners just shy of genocide. It was a sustained campaign that began in the north of England and set a precedent that was to be followed right up to the nineteenth century. It was a campaign that relied on brute force, the power of the sword and the horse cutting the ties between the people and the land.
In the words of the Conqueror himself:
In mad fury I descended the English of the north like a raging lion and ordered that their homes and crops with all their equipment and furnishings should be burnt at once and their great flocks and herds of sheep and cattle slaughtered everywhere. So I chastised a great multitude of men and women with lash of starvation and, alas! was the cruel murderer of many thousands, both young and old of this fair people.

I had no idea.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/17/roaming-british-countryside-rights-of-way?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other&fbclid=IwAR1utXO5Hf4aNdN_6_CAxZQGmOa8HZLOwJmXWVs9_UBr-WdJKIo0kJt7tJY

How ironic that - to take one example, Snowdonia National Park - 2020 saw a much broader cross-section of visitors (for obvious reasons) and far more litter, fires and environmental abuse. As one exasperated ranger pointed out 'Well, you got what you wished for'.

To exclude people (a cross-section is good) from walking in the countryside because they might drop litter seems perverse. The Kinder Trespass back in 1932 fought for the right to roam - the act of walking on someone else's property is not currently a criminal act. Leaving litter should be, causing damage definitely is.