Happy Yuletide

Good wishes for the festive season to all my kind readers and followers, with thanks for all the great support and lovely messages during 2015, even though I've had no new book out in the last year. I'm still getting letters about Moon Garden (from 2004)! There will be two new books in 2016, Walks in Finistère and 'the landscape one'. Happy holidays, one and all.

New book for spring 2016

Here's the cover:

Connection

One response to stomping globalization and recent atrocities of all kinds could be a return to close acquaintance with local environment, a pulling back into the beautiful diversity of small-scale observation and appreciation. Less talking and watching, more seeing and noticing. Getting to know the world in our immediate vicinity does more than enhance real as opposed to superficial knowledge and understanding: it offers a sense of purposeful belonging. It gives a multi-layered quality to everyday life that can satisfy restless yearning for 'meaning' or the transient excitement of novelty. And it's an infinite exercise, an exploration that will occupy even a long lifetime. Connection with our own land is connection with our own lost selves.

End of a very long walk

Fort de Berthaume

Finishing up the walking book routes, only just behind schedule. Now it will be a relief to sit down at my desk and finish all the texts. I ended up covering more ground than intended and more routes than will probably fit in the designated number of pages, but better too many than not enough at this stage. Very pleased to rewalk this last section, a linear route from Le Conquet to Plougonvelin. It's one of my favourites and a piece of coast I'll never tire of, even though high gusting winds on the cliffs this time made me cautious. Ended up at this magnificent fort in bright weather. Glad that my back-up was waiting with a car, but for those less fortunate and not on expenses, there's a bus back to the starting point if retracing all those kilometres is just too much to contemplate.