A peal of thunder and a sudden deluge announces the abrupt end of the long heatwave and intense humidity, with an 11-degree dive in the temperature between 2.00pm and sunset. The days that follow have much more normal highs in the upper teens, with showers and fitful sunshine and a bluster of westerlies. But before … Continue reading Drift →

A change is afoot. The cooling wind that has blown through weeks of cloudless days swings from the east round to the south, then stills altogether. The air becomes sultry, the newly-humidified heat more intense, the sky overcast and ominous. The meadows, dun brown now after a month of drought, are expectant. Today, all that … Continue reading Solstice →

Summer, without ceremony, barges spring aside. Temperatures climb to the high twenties, tarmac bubbles, strawberries suddenly ripen, and, punctuated with brief pauses to crowd around notable insects like a large yellow underwing moth and a two-banded longhorn beetle, the children on the village green lark the day long with water pistols, paddling pools and ice … Continue reading Aglow →

In the cool of early morning, the stall holders at Mytholmroyd’s small Saturday market are setting up in the shadow of St Michael’s Church. A hand drawn map displayed on the wall nearby details the shops that used to serve this village half a century ago, well over 60 of them, grocers and garages, tailors … Continue reading Essence →

The year is poised within the moment of its perfection. Under flawless skies, all the valley’s hawthorns are hoar-frosted with blossom. On the hillsides below Winters, lining the lane to Lower Rawtonstall, climbing out of Nutclough, spilling down Luddenden, they beam white in the brilliant sunshine and beacon at dusk.  Across the landscape, the uniform … Continue reading Luminous →

Spring rushes on apace, making up for a start delayed by the cold. The churr of great spotted woodpecker chicks spills from a dark hole in a leaning oak. A parent approaches cautiously so as not to give away the chicks' location, before ducking inside to their evident delight, exiting again within seconds, stuck on … Continue reading Chorus →

Amid the muted dusty green of birch and the fresh lime of beech, the oaks now mottle the woodlands with their bladderwrack brown, beginning the growing season with the autumnal tint with which they will end it. Every year, it seems improbable that the sickly hue of their new leaves, limp like the wings of … Continue reading Gleam →

It’s May Day, and an impromptu maypole dance manifests on the village green. Twelve colourful ribbons are tied to a goalpost, and the children, who are already out playing in the late-afternoon spring sunshine, gather and intuitively grab an end each. Someone strikes up a jaunty folk tune on their phone and around the dancers … Continue reading Summoning →

Lapwings plunge and soar, their pitches and rolls so sudden it is as if they are caught in violent eddies of the air, freak vortexes that suck them in and swirl and spin them above the boggy, rush-filled pastures at the head of Hippins Clough. But they are in absolute control, their aerobatics ending every … Continue reading Surge →