Something a bit different. I go for cycles more than I do walks, and the back roads of East- and Midlothian are my usual haunts. I've explored some of the old coal mining region in a previous post. A ride on a road bike is necessarily restricted to roads, because you can't branch off onto … Continue reading Esk Valley & Moorfoots: a ride
"Collieries where a thousand men had laboured for a hundred years became silent fields around a concrete shaft-cap." Neal Ascherson, Stone Voices I've lived in Midlothian for 13 years. The visual signifiers of the county's industrial heritage are largely gone: demolished or overgrown. It wasn't just coal: shorelines on either bank of the Forth once … Continue reading King Coal’s Graveyard: a walk in Midlothian mining country
I tweeted a month or so back that I'd shoved all other writing projects aside (and that has included this blog, dear reader) because I'd started work on a Folk Horror story. This new work is now at around 9,000 words* and going well. I feel a twinge of guilt at abandoning (for now) the … Continue reading New fields, old land
Into the Gyre 