Rowley Gallery Blog
I don’t know what took me so long. I should’ve found these boys long ago.
Ye Vagabonds are brothers Brían and Diarmuid Mac Gloinn.
This is us putting ourselves through a lock near Digby Bridge, Co.Kildare along with the tune Buried my Wife & Danced on Top of Her. Continue reading “Lock-keeping In Jig-time”
Earlier this year (it was April, a week after we’d walked from Aspenden), and a walk that went unrecorded, in waybegone daze, that seems more like eight years ago now than just eight months. How can one year feel like so many more? We’d returned to Ayot St Lawrence again, but this time we’d been spun off in a different direction to last time. Continue reading “From Ayot St Lawrence (Again)”
We’ve a windowful of Wisemans for the month of June; paintings by David and pots by Betty. Twisted and tangled, thrown, dripped, brushed. Rivers and trees, woodland water and clay turned on a rainbow. Continue reading “Wiseman & Wiseman”
The River Lea at Mill Bridge in Wheathampstead one day last September. Another walk from the between lockdown daze. It seemed we were always walking back then, but nowadaze it’s let your fingers do the walking, typing keyboard dreams of freedom, stuck indoors again. Continue reading “Wheathampstead & Back Again”
Another Covid walk, this time back in early September last year. We’d been wondering about returning to Hatfield Forest for months, but each time we checked the National Trust website we were discouraged from visiting. The car park had to be booked in advance, and whenever we tried it appeared to be full. You will be turned away if you arrive without booking. So, in the end, we decided to drive to the nearby village of Hatfield Broad Oak and walk to the forest from there. Continue reading “Hatfield Forest”
We crossed the footbridge at Newport railway station, over the West Anglia Main Line between Elsenham and Audley End, forty miles north along the route from London Liverpool Street to Cambridge. The track was quiet, the train had just disappeared and taken all the noise and commotion with it. We were left with a few bubbles of birdsong in its wake. Continue reading “Newport, Widdington & Debden”
This was another walk we’d done before, so once again we were going over old ground, but not necessarily knowing the way. We may have already been here but that doesn’t mean we’d left our mark. We were backtracking but we were not remembered and we all look different every time. Continue reading “Paglesham”
A small film about a small river.
I’d seen this delightful little film on Caught By The River, and when I asked Jonathan Gibbs if we might share it on Frames of Reference his reply was Yes, absolutely, great! Isabella spent all of lockdown with us, during which time she filled her bedroom with twigs, branches and other bits and pieces that you will see in the film. She made the herons out of wire and wood, and carved many small fish which swim through the film from start to finish. And then he showed me a website I’d not seen before, called Psyche. The words below are taken from their anonymous post. Continue reading “Keith Water”
The plan was to take a circular walk from Kelvedon to Coggeshall and back again via Feering through gentle Essex farming countryside. That was the promise of the guidebook, Walks In The Country Near London, but it had slept on our bookshelf since 2003 and it needed waking up. Or perhaps it’s fairer to say we needed waking up, because it seemed like we stumbled and fell at the first hurdle. Continue reading “Comfrey & Coggeshall Grange Barn”
Two days on the island was playing tricks with my head. Maybe it was the heat. But for our first outing we escaped the endless tourist stroll around the streets of Ortigia and headed for Fonte Ciane, and the promise of a gentle walk upstream along the banks of the river to its source. No more aimless wandering, now we had a goal, what could be more simple? The directions were straightforward, it was listed in all the guidebooks, we crossed over to the mainland and followed the signs. Continue reading “Fonte Ciane”