Toadsmoor Valley Haiku
The following haiku are based around our 12th Night walk and the traditions of turning the world upside down on that day. Commoners became aristocrats, lords and ladies, for one short, if lengthening, day. We maintained that continuity by locating bedraggled,...
A Stroud Valleys Christmas
There is a poem below called A Stroud Valleys Christmas, but first I would like to draw your early attention to our first collective walk, when we map, record and re-imagine the landscape. This will be on Twelfth Night, Sunday January 6th. By then, our website at...
Common Sense under Threat
I think it was Leon Trotsky who once opined that “Common sense is the wisdom of the ruling class” but that old chestnut was cast rudely to the pavement recently by our country’s planning minister. In a classic case of nominative indeterminism, Nick Boles said he wants...
Rodborough Fields Under Threat
Rodborough Fields in Space and Time I like the way the hidden springs gather force, A wild winter rush down the meadow side, The wind singing in the saplings’ rigging On the water’s voyage to the treasured Frome, Thence on to the Severn and the ocean. One glance is...
Walking the Landscape and Mapping Springs
Well, we all need Wikipedia, sometimes, I suppose, when we move out of our comfort zones, as I do today when I begin to muse upon our spring-quest and its depiction by map. The font of all knowledge says that “A map is a visual representation of an area—a symbolic...
The Genius Loci of Stroud: Springs
If you are looking for the genius loci of Stroud, it has to involve water, and as water moves and flows in a constant reinvention of itself, it is a fitting initial symbol of Stroud and the Valleys. To understand the effect of water around us, locally, we have to have...