Full Description
From Great Yarmouth to Aberystwyth, Westering is a coast-to-coast journey crossing the Fens, Leicester, the Black Country and central Wales. It connects landscape, place and memory to evoke a narrative unravelling the deep topography, and following a westerly route that runs against the grain of the land, its geology, culture and historical bedrock. With the industrial Midlands sandwiched between bucolic landscapes in East Anglia and Wales, here we explore places too often overlooked. Along the way we encounter deserted medieval villages, battlefield sites, the ghosts of Roman soldiers, valleys drowned for reservoirs, ancient forests, John Clare's beloved fields, and the urban edgelands. Notions of home and belonging, landscapes of loss and absence, birds and the resilience of nature, the psychology of walking, and the psychogeography of liminal places all frame the story.
Contents
PART ONE; Red Herrings; Along the Eager River; Crow Country; A Fine City; Concrete Ghosts, Winding Wensum; God's Holy River; Postcode Country;; Islands in the Fens; PART TWO; Crowland to Clare Country; Lost from the Map; The Unhorsing of Kings; Ghosts and Stone Memory; PART THREE
Pulped Fiction/The Ghosts of a Forest; Slouching Towards Birmingham (Another Venice); City of Metal; Black over Bill's Mother's; All Round the Wrekin; Quiet under the Sun; PART FOUR; Over the Ofer; The Green, Green Grass of Home Land of the West
