Landscapes for Life with Samuel T Coleridge and Ted the Border Collie

The defining feature of my life for the last 30 years has been the amount of caring involved: for disabled children who, although now adults, still need daily input, a daughter and ex-husband with Type I diabetes, and these days for very elderly parents too. 

Going on forays into the country for a few hours lifts me above the frustrations involved in having to set aside my own interests, and replenishes my not-always-very-deep reserves of patience.

When I go out on a jaunt, more often than not I find myself in either an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty or a National Park. We are spoilt for them here in the south-west. 

Which is as well, because as far as my mental health is concerned, these places are life-savers. 

So I am always thrilled and delighted when one of my poems pops up in connection with the bodies overseeing these special places on our behalf. 

My poem Coleridge Changes his Library Books, which is from my first collection, Communion, is currently gracing the AONB's Landscapes for Life blog. This is particularly apt as many of the places it mentions are under their guardianship. It can be read it here. 

Meanwhile, today's caring duties will take me to one such area, the Mendip Hills. I think I'll take the dog along and make an afternoon of it. 

In Border Country

'No ten mile walks over Dartmoor for you,' said the physiotherapist, 'Not yet, anyway. But you can absolutely do some short ones. Little and often.'

So since the estate agent was showing some people around the house on Saturday morning, I decided to vacate for the greater part of the day.  In readiness, I leaved disconsolately through my beloved Pathfinder Guides. It's a bit of a comedown to be ordered all the way back to the easiest, green-graded walks.  But although I'm limping less and my stride is longer, my poor arthritic knees have come out in sympathy with my recovering ankle and actually, yes, I know the physio is right. 

And I found one I'd wanted to do for ages, starting at Newland in the Forest of Dean.  So that's where we went for my first bout of walking rehab.  

Newland was founded around 1200AD, when land was cleared in the Forest for a new settlement.  Its church, All Saints, dates from that time and we headed there while waiting for the pub to open. 

There were lots of examples of the Ugly Cherub School of Headstone Carving in the churchyard, including this one grappling with what I think is an egg-timer ...

  When shall we three meet again?

... and even a modern specimen.  (Rest in Peace, Jake.)

Inside, lots of interesting stuff but a dearth of information about it and the church.  There were a couple of tombs with effigies from the 14th and 15th centuries, and a couple of altar tombs with no particulars about them at all, sadly.  I did learn, however, that the woman who had this beautiful window made on the cusp of the 20th and 21st centuries in memory of her husband died unexpectedly on the day it was to be dedicated, and so, several months later, the dedication was made to both of them. 

Best of all, though, I liked this brass of a helmet, crest and figure of a mediaeval miner with a hod and a pick-axe.  I've seen him variously described as holding a candle in his mouth and stuck to his cheek with clay.  What a desperately hard life that must have been. 

Next stop, the Ostrich Inn which has an illuminated collection of ostrich eggs I myopically mistook for skulls at first glance.  The staff were happy to accept well-behaved dog owners on leads, and served us an excellent lunch.

Then we were off on our walk through the churchyard and down a very steep hill called Savage Hill, which made me laugh as Hill is a family name.  

We then walked down through Astridge Wood and whilst, unlike in the Forest proper, it wasn't thick with bluebells, it was pretty enough. 

I spotted one or two Early Purple orchids as well.  

Once through the wood, the views down ... 

... and up the valley were beautiful.  Just over the hills on the far side of the Valley Brook lies the River Wye - indeed, the brook is one of its tributaries - so we were well and truly in border country. 

It was an easy and very pleasant walk around the head of the valley ... 

with watchful ewe and lambs ...

... geese and goslings, which, thankfully, we didn't have to pass  ... 

... and this stag leaping a fence. 

There was also a less pleasant pheasant farm and a sewage works, but hey, this is the countryside.  

Lovely as the walk was, I did get tired and I was relieved when the tower of All Saints Church came back into view.  

It was only then that we realised our route took up back up Savage Hill ... but we made it. Good training for Dartmoor later in the year.  

A Literary Riddle

Hay, Ross. I'm Wyes
to the difference between you:
Hay the Literary Festival,
Ross the Chained Library.
Or is that Here,
Ford?

A Poem for National Poetry Day 2010

As it's National Poetry Day, I'm posting a poem about a poet. I was fortunate enough to win the 2010 Wells Poetry Competition with it, and it will be published in my first collection, 'Communion', next year. I hope to report back on the festival next week.



Coleridge Changes His Library Books


All this altering year you’ve called me

from the hills above Nether Stowey,

in the shifting of fossils and siltstones
that clutter Kilve’s wilderness shore. In Porlock
I glimpsed you through watered windows
at the hearth of the mariners’ inn
with jugfuls of cider, potted laver,
a communion of friends.

I saw your whole world imaged at Wyndcliff,
a moss-softened step for each day
that I gazed upon a Xanadu made real,
from the mazy ramblings of the Wye
down to a sunless Severn Sea.
Even the swift, sleek-whiskered river,
baptising the churchtown of your birth,
floated a dream of you

in a nutshell with paper sails,
walking your poems down droves and causeways,
lugging your library books forty miles,
till Bristol lights its tide of stars
and I see you
brimming with words and stories
all along the Hotwells Road,
as high as the swifts that scream over our city.

14th October 2009




Deborah Harvey © 2009, 2010