THE COLLEGE VALLEY IN MAY Mounthooly and the Hen Hole: with its welcome visitors and absent friends. A round trip on my old Armstrong bike of twenty eight miles followed by a walk of three miles saw me completing my annual visit to the head of the College valley. May 3rd was a bright and […] Continue reading → 
RE -WILDING “Expounding a positive vision should be at the centre of attempts to protect the things we love. An ounce of hope is worth a ton of despair.” (Monbiot. G. Guardian. 7/6/14) For George Monbiot the natural world is in a dire state, beleaguered on all fronts. Anyone empathising with its plight cannot help […] Continue reading → 
WHEELS ON FIRE April 2016 Well it certainly felt that way on two recent runs on Specialized and Raleigh. The Dylan lyric and Julie Driscoll vocals pounded through my head as I held on tight during two fast downhill stretches. Let’s take them one at a time. On April 9th I set out on Specialized […] Continue reading → 
PLANTING Easter Sunday 2016 Back in October last year our garden ‘armageddon’ ( see earlier post) descended on Innisfree. Recovery began the following week with an eye on the coming year. Much planting of bulbs, corms, wallflowers and forget me nots took place. Has it come to fruition? Well so far so good. The crocuses […] Continue reading → 
BACK ON TRACK February & March 2016 With days slowly lengthening and stiff left hip easing at the prospect of spring, it was time to ‘get back on track’ with a first run of the year. So on February 23rd, on a recently serviced Armstrong , I followed the Bowmont upstream and into the hills. […] Continue reading → 
TRACKS Different bikes over different ‘tracks’; sixty miles covered accompanied by echoes of musical ‘tracks’, and with no mishaps, no ‘tears,. As you can see the classic track riff continued until the end. The Smokey Robinson song “Tracks of my tears” was my final flashback on that day of the brake block – Hardrock run. […] Continue reading → 
“Time is but the stream I go fishing in” (Henry David Thoreau) My two stepsons, Joe and Sam, were keen boyhood fishermen and so naturally Yetholm loch was a favourite haunt. Tackling up, hooking up herring dead bait, untangling snags, tying on spinners, cultivating maggots: we did it all in pursuit of the pike and […] Continue reading → 
Yetholm Loch in winter February 10th 2016 As the ‘Birds’ homepage notes, one of my local bird habitats is Yetholm loch. Tucked away beneath the surrounding hills, between the farms of Lochside and Lochtower, the loch is just over half a mile long and a quarter of a mile wide. It is a beautiful place, […] Continue reading → 
“Wild spirit which art moving everywhere”. These words by Shelley from his ‘Ode to the West Wind’ surely sum up the weather over the past few weeks. Here we have been lucky, spared the impact of this “Destroyer….dirge Of the dying year……..from whose solid atmosphere Black rain.” Apart from venturing out to replace wind mangled […] Continue reading → 
href=”https://www.birdsbikesbuttercups.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/FullSizeRender-8.jpg” rel=”attachment wp-att-193″> Long Tailed Tits in Willow.[/caption] This article shows some of my latest art projects. The first few pictures were inspired by the work of C.F Tunnicliffe – the background to this features in my article entitled Connections, found under Birds. Continue reading →