Category: travel
-
Falling water and Coleridge
‘The mad water rushes thro’ its sinuous Bed, or rather prison of Rock with such rapid Curves, as if it turned the Corners not from mechanic force, but with foreknowledge, like a fierce & skilful Driver; great Masses of Water, one after the other, that in twilight one might have feelingly compared them with a…
-
Wales Coast Path, day 20: Burry Port to Kidwelly
A cold, still morning in Burry Port. The sun, they say, will shine all day. The four of us are the only people in the car park without dogs to share our walk. Feeling inadequate, we hurry on to the path, joining it at the point where the huge Carmarthen Bay Power Station once stood.…
-
Wales Coast Path, day 19: Loughor to Burry Port
Loughor is a frontier town. Now just an extension of ‘greater Gorseinon’, it was once a place of more importance. The Romans planted an auxiliary fort on its headland, commanding the mouth of the river. The Normans built a small castle on the same spot, with the same intention – securing the invaders and depressing…
-
Starlings and Coleridge
“Starlings in vast flights drove along like smoke, mist, or any thing misty without volition – now a circular area inclined in an Arc – now a Globe – now from complete Orb into an Elipse & Oblong – now a balloon with the car suspended, now a concaved Semicircle – & still it expands…
-
Nightwalking
The literature of walking is large. It’s grown quickly in recent years, in part as an offshoot of the ‘new nature writing’. Most of it, though, is concerned with walking in the light of day. Nightwalking has received much less treatment. Frédéric Gros, in his recent A philosophy of walking (2014) fails to mention it.…
-
Delft in four colours
Orange Orange is the Dutch colour. But to see it in Delft you need to lift your eyes above the roads and canals to the tops of the buildings. Big bright orange pantiles run in vertical rows down the small hipped roofs of many houses, each of which is different in size and height from…
-
Wales Coast Path, day 51: Aberaeron to Llanrhystud
Another Aberaeron start, but this time we’re walking to the north. 10 September, and it’s another perfect day. Neither of us can remember such a summer’s end: warm, still and sunlit. Aberaeron, so careful of its landward appearance, turns its back on the sea. Admittedly the shore is shingle, but the monotonous concrete wall and…
-
Wales Coast Path, day 52: Llanrhystud to Aberaeron
In the early morning sun the T1 bus bowls down from Aberystwyth to Llanrhystud. We thank the National Assembly twice over: for our free bus passes, and for the campaign by Elin Jones AM to replace the bus routes suddenly abandoned by the wicked Arriva. The coast road has ruined the centre of Llanrhystud, but…
-
Wales Coast Path, day 50: New Quay from Aberaeron
Mid-September and the last of the summer is holding its breath. It brings blue skies, a fine breeze, a languid sea, and a kindly sun that warms the skin without burning it. I’m back with C. for three more days of gentle coastwalking in mid-Ceredigion. For no good reason we start walking from north to…
-
Unreal City
The City of London, the ‘square mile’, must count as one of the strangest places on earth. During the week thousands of workers stream into it every morning over London Bridge – ‘… so many, I had not thought death had undone so many’, says the Dantean voice of The Waste Land – to apply…