Month: March 2020

10 of UK’s best spring walks

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Pubs and restaurants may be closed and dark, but all over the UK wildlife is bursting into the light of longer days and it’s never been more important to get some fresh air. Nature writers select their favourite seasonal destinations

Land of poems and stories: the Cotswolds

“If ever I heard blessing it is there. Where birds in trees that shoals and shadows are.” In April and May the Cotswold landscape still speaks in the soft, calm tones of Laurie Lee. For a first-time visitor it can take a while to tune into the hard, spare, wall-bound fields of the Cotswold plateau. Yet in the valleys and on the scarp edges, there are bluebells and wood anemones, clear spring-fed streams and a soundtrack of willow warblers and blackcaps, fresh back from their winter travels.

The deep valleys around Stroud hold hanging woods, filled in April with the scent of wild garlic. At the National Trust-maintained Woodchester Park, where the half-completed Victorian manor stands mysterious in the valley bottom, it feels as though the clock has stopped and no one has yet arrived to restart it.

Further north, in my home patch, the same timeless feel pervades Hailes Abbey, with, above it, a monument marking Thomas Cromwell’s seat, from which it is said he watched the Abbey burn almost 500 years ago. From here you can walk a couple of miles along the Cotswold Way to Winchcombe.

Spring is a wonderful time to explore smaller towns and villages, many of which are the subject of poems and stories. For me, each name conjures a memory: a village cricket match in April snow at Guiting Power; my childhood love of Bibury,

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Fortunately … With Fi and Jane #138

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Fi and Jane

Fi and Jane are both at home, but that doesn’t stop them or their guest. This week it’s the author and journalist Jonathan Freedland.

The ladies manage to link up via videoconferencing and despite a few technical glitches they came together on Wednesday 25th March 2020. They compare their approaches to adjusting to life in a pandemic, there are missives from overseas and a dip into Jane’s diary from this week in 1979.

It’s not long before a notification lights up and Jonathan Freedland joins the chat. The author and journalist gives his insight on the times, including the philosophy of home schooling (or the lack of) and takes Fi and Jane into the world of his new thriller… written by Jonathan’s combat-pant wearing alter ego Sam Bourne.

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The HOBBLEDEHOY love Fi and Jane

Lankum win RTÉ award

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The group Lankum received the €10,000 award for their third album The Livelong Day, and were announced as the winners at a ceremony in Dublin’s Vicar Street last night.

They beat off competition from Fontaines DC, Girl Band, SOAK, Junior Brother, Daithí, Mick Flannery, Sorcha Richardson, Jafaris and Maija Sofia.

The award was accepted by the group’s manager Cian Lawless, who said the group had produced the album despite “financial hardship” and “personal hardship”.