"Look at it this way"

I'm currently reading Nicholas Crane's new book on the history of Britain's footpaths: how they came about originally following the drowning of Doggerland , and were then refined by successive waves of change: horses, the Roman invasion etc. It's a dense and scholarly work, with plenty of points of interest and relevance to geographers exploring the connections between people and the landscape. He's taking his book on the road in a series of talks, with three confirmed so far. Here's the description for his talk at Stanford's book shop at the end of the month . He's also speaking in Exeter and Stamford. Walking is a cornerstone of British identity and the most popular form of exercise in the UK. But how much do we know about the paths that we walk? What is their history? Why do they follow the routes that they do? Are they permanent? Can we designate more of them?​ The Path More Travelled is a coast-to-coast history of footpaths from the stone age paths...

  A cross-posting from my Geography in/on Film blog. Check it out! A new film called 'Our Land' explores land ownership in the UK and the role of trespass. Free tickets are funded through the BFI Escapes initiative. Our Land dares to tread where few have trespassed before, asking the timely question of who has the right to roam in the English countryside? The UK is a wild and beautiful place, but the vast majority of it is off limits to the general public, with 92% of land and 97% of all rivers in England not legally accessible. At the same time, it is a landscape shaped by centuries of inheritance and tradition, with land held and cared for by families across multiple generations. Our Land takes us to the heart of the ‘Right to Roam’ movement as it embarks on a provocative trail of mass trespass, campaigning and education, while also exploring landowners’ concerns around environmental protection and the danger such widespread access could pose to a landscape already  under th...

A lovely short film...

A new(ish) resource which can be accessed and used by members of the Geographical Association. I am considering adding a section of this to my teaching this year. Sycamore Gap is a significant landmark in Northumberland where three distinct features combined: a natural and dramatic dip in the physical landscape about halfway along the 80-mile run of Hadrian’s Wall, itself an ancient monument and reminder of the power of the Roman Empire, and until recently, a lone, 300-year-old Sycamore tree. The site has UNESCO designation and is a Scheduled Ancient Monument. Arguably, it will still be known as Sycamore Gap because of its story. The tree has stood for hundreds of years, perfectly framed by the landscape, thrilling locals and visitors alike until it was deliberately cut down, under cover of darkness, sometime between the evening of 27 September 2023 and the following morning.  The loss of the tree has caused an outcry and reaction of public grief. These materials are designed to ...

Flat places seem hardly to count as places. They’re just the gaps between landmarks. If people think about flatlands at all, it’s usually to call them boring. Nothing to look at, nothing to focus on, no hidden places to discover. To be flat is to be dull: a cut-and-dried equation. I've got a copy of 'A Flat Place' by Noreen Massud. Check out the GeoLibrary for some more. She contributed a piece to The Guardian's feature on holidays to explain why she likes to visit flat places. There's some excellent descriptions of the value of flatness and why other places leave her cold and anxious. Excellent for units exploring the distinctive landscape of this area, and the value of flatness in areas such as the Somerset Levels and elsewhere. Can I also recommend that you subscribe to Drew's Fenland on Film YouTube channel. Drew does fantastic work collating, sharing and restoring films about the Fens and places such as Ely. Here's one of his latest projects: a restor...

  In the 1980s, my geography teacher and one of my lecturers collaborated on coding a simple hillslope model which looked at runoff on a hillslope. It was made available as an early piece of software for purchase and reviewed in TG at the time. I wrote about it here. It was for sale at the time - for use on the BBC B computer. The TG description is shown here. A post from Dr. Chris Skinner led me to a modern take on this theme. A group of people led by Dai Yamazaki have been coding a model for the movement of water down and through a hillslope using Scratch and have made the code available. There's a close link with the model from the 1980s.... I had a copy. You can tinker with the code as well. If I had a little more time I'd give this a go. New paper is out. We develop a rainfall-runoff model using educational programming language Scratch, and make it playable as a game. We found through a workshop that learning through game helps to more deeply understand flood mechanism....

"Once you homogenise a landscape in the way that we see across large parts of central England, you not only lose the wildlife, you rob its inhabitants of the elements that make up their identity. The antiseptic uniformity of many English high streets is part analogue, part consequence of the surrounding countryside's wider sterilisation." From Mark Cocker's review of 'England in Particular' (Common Ground)

You could learn a lot (and still can) from Ladybird books... Other work by the Ladybird artists. ‘How Scenery Reveals the Nature of Soil’ (1949) Artist: SR Badmin pic.twitter.com/QOeAiowSbc — Helen Day (@LBFlyawayhome) June 19, 2023

A few pieces that would be of interest to those teaching about distinctive Fenland landscapes. This Roger Hill piece from June 2021 visits 'The Fens and their coast' which stretches the usual geographical area. And here's some music to go with the Fens from the classical composer Ralph Vaughan Williams.

From an appreciation of Barry Lopez's work by Robert MacFarlane came a mention of J. B. (Brinck) Jackson .  He was someone I could not remember hearing about before, although some of his books looked familiar when I looked further: "American vernacular landscape, J.B. Jackson, whose essays and lectures were so influential in dignifying and directing scholarly attention onto gas stations, lawns, woodlots, road-layouts, ballparks, and other everyday human structures as part of “the full imprint of human societies on the landscape,” in Jackson’s phrase. Jackson was a vocal critic of the exclusionary wilderness aesthetic as it existed in much mainstream North American conservation and (dread phrase) “nature writing.” He apparently focussed on writing and research about elements in the landscape that were defiantly prosaic in nature, and were those seen and perhaps overlooked through their ubiquity and ordinariness. He died in 1996, and his obituary was published in the New York...

Happy New Year! The Peak District is one of my favourite places in the world, and one in which I've spent perhaps more time than most other places. Free Geowalk around the Peak District developed by Martin Whitely. A great offering for the New Year. @geoggeol @AGSB_Geology @seis_matters @ESTA_UK @GeolSoc @WGCG_UK @timeforgeog https://t.co/yD4odNGjpu pic.twitter.com/7SNe4WyGoh — peteloader (@peteloader1) January 1, 2023 There are 14 sections to the walk which can be downloaded as PDFs or GPX files.

 Sci A nice visualisation shared in Science. To chart the movements of this ancient ice sheet, geologists assembled scattered clues from the shape of the landscape—features of which were carved by massive glaciers—as well as debris dumped by the ice sheet. For example, researchers pinpointed and dated the edge of the ice sheet by recognizing the hilly terrain made of mud, gravel, and rocks left behind by the retreating ice. Radiocarbon dating of animal remains such as seashells found in these hills revealed when the ice sheet departed from various locations. Over the past few years, a group of about 40 scientists amassed these data to refine the history of what’s known as the British-Irish Ice Sheet. It shows the melting and retreating ice which at one point covered the British Isles. Worth reading the full article and watching the visualisation unfold.

Thanks to Paul Berry for the tipoff to this website.  It contains a wealth of aerial imagery. The last few months of very dry weather - East Anglia is parched - have also helped archaeologists as parch marks in field reveal often previously unknown structures. The Aerial Archaeology Mapping Explorer contains details of structures which have been identified in the landscape.  Not all of the country is covered - sadly my current village is not featured, but the map screenshot below shows the area around Snettisham, where I lived for 12 years, on the North-West Norfolk shores of the Wash. There was a significant archaeological find in a field just outside the village, which is known as the Torc field for obvious reasons. Just to the NW of the part of the village where I lived is Ken Hill. Wild Ken Hill has been the home of Springwatch and related programmes for several years now. According to the site: New areas will be added to the map as soon as they are completed. New feat...

This 2018 album from the Scottish folk band RURA is excellent .  The theme for the whole album is home and what it means to people, but it also invokes the Scottish landscape - the wider sense of home for all Scots. The title track and a later track includes some nice sampled reflections on home - the only lyrics on the album. The words are explored here in a nice reflection on their meaning. It's an addictive listen. In Praise of Home by RURA

Thanks to the AAG for the tipoff to this interesting-sounding game. A new indie video game, The Geography, "bridges the interactive with the meditative" https://t.co/iUBxqctwu4 h/t @brockwilbur for @TheFastPitch — American Association of Geographers (@theAAG) December 22, 2021 The Geography is a new indie video game from a creative duo that bridges the interactive with the meditative. A collaboration between Michael Berto and Titouan Millet , the program uses geographic data from Svalbard, Norway rendered into low-poly landscapes—brought to life with soft shaders. An endless and nonlinear musical score weaves soundscapes, to keep the ambiance evolving. It costs £6.99 for iPhone.

Just listening to this earlier while doing all the work to follow up from 2 days of ERASMUS meetings (of which more to come in a blog post in the next day or so.) This is a wonderful piece of music, composed by William Jackson, one of the members of Ossian: one of my favourite ever bands. The music conveys the atmosphere of different elements of the Scottish landscape , and ends with a suite of pieces named after islands including Iona, Islay and Jura. It can be found on many of the usual music streaming services.

 A new film, which has had an input from Robert MacFarlane. River––a film I wrote w/ the awesome director @jenpeedom , narrated by Willem Dafoe––premiered this week at Telluride Film Festival. Trailer here: https://t.co/COn4S644Ct Happy that the first reviews really seem to get what we hoped to achieve in the film. https://t.co/FF7B31KHY3 — Robert Macfarlane (@RobGMacfarlane) September 4, 2021 See the trailer here  

"Veer off the track Take the path That leads beyond the map I'm a travelling man Each day I walk the byways of this life..." A track by the band 'Big Big Train'. And there they are playing their instruments for real in an excellent live performance. I miss that feeling when the bass pedals can be felt in your stomach at a gig...

Well worth a listen... settle down children (and adults) ALISTAIR HAMILL · Worth doing and worth going to do

Earlier in the year, I joined the team of people who has been creating Slow Ways routes: walking routes to connect up the UK's towns and cities and other large population centres. These follow public footpaths and bridle ways and avoid busy roads. The idea is another initiative from Daniel Raven Ellison. The project now needs a logo. The Slow Ways will be a network of 7,000 walking routes that connect Great Britain’s towns and cities as well as thousands of villages. People will be able to use the Slow Ways to walk between neighbouring settlements or daisy-chain them for longer journeys. The first draft of the Slow Ways routes have been imagined and created in lockdown by hundreds of volunteers from across the country. We now need a strong visual identity for the Slow Ways. In the future this might be used on signage, waymarkers and maps. For now, it will be used on the website we are creating as well as t-shirts, posters and in other places. That’s why we’re organising t...