Description
Book SynopsisFrom 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.
Trade Review"Westering is a beautifully compelling reminder that we never walk alone. Alongside us, always, are the complex cultural and natural histories, topographies, geologies and folk memories that have helped shape the path and those places we pass. Laurence Mitchell is a superb and illuminating guide to the rich seam of stories found underfoot." Julian Hoffman, author of Irreplaceable; Praise for Previous Work; "A rich level of local detail" Wanderlust Magazine
Table of ContentsPART 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
