Day 1: The NC500 route officially starts in Inverness, but we’d been there before and it felt right to begin the journey beside water filled with stories, so we began our camping road trip at Loch Ness. The forecast promised rain, but it never arrived. Instead, something else hung in the air. Something heavy and … Continue reading Where the Road Thins: Loch Ness…
Spring merges into summer and days stretch further till evenings almost refuse to close out. In some ways it’s a welcome relief to feel warmth returning and to have more daylight hours. And yet there’s something about the light, isn’t there? It’s different. Stronger and more direct. Dare I say, less forgiving? It reaches into … Continue reading The Shadows of Summer…
I found it beside the main road, resting openly beneath a bush and gleaming white against the dark soil as though it had been deliberately placed there to be noticed. It was almost ceremonial in its positioning. It was also small enough to fit in my palm. So I brought it home with me. And … Continue reading Cranium Cuniculi…
There are places that feel different. Not immediately, and not in a way you can always articulate. It’s gradual, as though something in the air has shifted. You notice before you understand. Horden dene is like that. I’ve walked it many times. The same paths, the same turns, the same descent into green, where the noise … Continue reading Land Spirits…
There’s a tendency to give nature a face. To call it Mother, as though that makes it knowable. But nature doesn’t ask permission, it moves with an insistence that isn’t kindness so much as inevitability. The land remembers what it’s supposed to do. Season after season. Loss after loss. Growth returns not because it’s hopeful, but … Continue reading Mother Nature…
There are moments in stories where a woman is named a witch, not because she’s stirring something in a cauldron and speaking to the moon, but because she knows something she hasn’t explained. Or she lives alone. Or she simply doesn’t behave as she’s expected to. It doesn’t take much. She’s always noticed, observed too … Continue reading The Witch & Hare…
May’s Flower Moon takes its name from what can no longer be contained. After months of restraint, petals bloom and the land remembers how to speak in colour again. This is the point in the season when buried secrets root themselves. What was once hidden begins to shape the present, influencing where we step and … Continue reading The Flower Moon…
They’re not delivered as stories or lessons per se. They’re just statements we store in our memory bank and acknowledge, but don’t quite know why. I’m sure you’re familiar with many. Don’t walk under a ladder. If you break a mirror, expect seven years bad luck. Don’t open an umbrella indoors. When cows lie down, … Continue reading Old Wives’ Tales…
We might tend to think of magic as on-stage high drama. Light. Noise. Drum roll. But in folklore the oldest magic is rarely dramatic. It blends into the ordinary, passing for weather, for coincidence, for something you almost didn’t notice until it was too late. Subtle magic is patient and doesn’t demand belief. It waits … Continue reading Wanna See Some Magic, Mister…?
Hag stones are easy to miss. Half-buried along riverbanks or tucked between pebbles on the shore, they can appear ordinary at first glance. But once you notice a hole worn clean through its centre, smoothed by water and time, you know you’ve found something special. This month we’re neck-deep in folklore, and in folklore nothing … Continue reading Hag Stones…
R. H. DIXON 