Travel vignettes, site visits and location observations where landscape, history and atmosphere inform the work and linger after departure.
Day 4: Wind and rain. Rain and wind. After a mostly sleepless night on the cliffs above Durness, everything was damp, everything rattled and our spirits had taken a firm battering. But storms lose their power once you’re on the move again, and by the time we were packed up and back on the road, … Continue reading Where the Road Thins: Ullapool…
Day 3: The morning began beneath an impossibly blue sky. Our first stop was Dunnet Head, the most northerly point on mainland Great Britain. Seabirds crowded the cliffs, some of them nesting and others carried effortlessly by the wind. Puffins perched on rocky ledges in the distance, meaning binoculars were a requirement to properly appreciate … Continue reading Where the Road Thins: Durness…
Day 2: Our first stop was the Glenmorangie distillery. Which was closed. The first lesson of the trip: never presume. We laughed it off and continued north. The Whaligoe Steps were next. Rather than fight for a space in the tiny car park above them, we left the car in a layby along a quiet … Continue reading Where the Road Thins: Scarfskerry…
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…
There’s something winter does to old buildings. It doesn’t animate them so much as reveal them. The cold sharpens edges. Silence behaves differently. History feels closer to the surface, like bone beneath thinning skin. Last weekend, during an off-roading adventure in the Lake District, I stayed in two pubs that have been standing for centuries, … Continue reading The Queen’s Head & The Mortal Man…
Yes, that’s right. My husband and I just got back from camping in Northumberland. This fact alone raised eyebrows. Who chooses to camp in the dead hinge of winter, when the year is barely holding itself together and the ground feels inhospitable by design? As it turns out, plenty of people do. And why not? What … Continue reading Christmas Camping…
Yesterday, on the penultimate day before Kielder Forest Drive closes for the winter season, I did what any self-respecting lover of eerie landscapes and seasonal hauntings would do and went straight into the heart of it. It was the kind of trip that felt half like an adventure and half like an omen. The sky … Continue reading The Witch Holes of Kielder…
The cundy has always been there. A concrete water conduit running beneath the coast road, hidden in the dene. Surrounded by trees, wildlife and shadows. As a child, I used to play inside it, daring myself further into the dark, scaring myself silly. Its interior is absolute. Sound dies quickly. Light doesn’t travel far at … Continue reading The Cundy…
I went back to Horden while planning Emergence. It’s John Gimmerick’s hometown. It’s also mine. I wanted the places in the book to feel seen rather than remembered. My parents still live there, but there were corners I hadn’t visited in years. The beach. The dene. The cundy. I knew that returning to them physically … Continue reading Returning to Horden…
R. H. DIXON 