Author
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Laurence Mitchell
Writer and photographer based in Norwich, UK-
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Category Archives: wildlife
Black Sea, Blue Sky – Balkan Rain
This rain that has been falling almost incessantly here for the past 48 72 hours seems to have followed me back home from the Balkans. Travelling coast to coast, from Adriatic to Black Sea, over a three week period I … Continue reading
(Thirty-)Six Views of Bass Rock
‘It is just the one crag of rock, as everybody knows, but great enough to carve a city from.’ Robert Louis Stevenson Catriona Japan’s Mount Fuji is a dormant volcano that looks just like a volcano should. An almost perfectly … Continue reading
Posted in Islands, Scotland, wildlife
Tagged Bass Rock, Edinburgh, Firth of Forth, gannets, Hokusai, Japan, Mount Fuji, seabirds, volcanoes
4 Comments
On Stiffkey marshes
On August Bank Holiday Sunday we drove east along the coast road from Cley-next-the-Sea. The coastline was bathed in hazy sunshine; the sky, milky white and unthreatening. Rain and wind had been forecast for later – typical bank holiday weather … Continue reading
Posted in Norfolk, Walking, wildlife
Tagged birds, marshes, North Norfolk, North Norfolk Coast, North Sea, samphire, Stiffkey
12 Comments
Beside Song-Köl Lake
There are places that stay in the mind long after visiting. Places that haunt the mind’s memory cache to prevail even years after having set foot there. Such places might be mountains, or rivers, or stretches of coastline; or even … Continue reading
Posted in Central Asia, Travel, wildlife
Tagged horses, Kyrgyzstan, lakes, landscape, Song-Köl, yurts
16 Comments
Beneath a Concrete Sky – to Gravelly Hill Interchange by canal
Where’s Birmingham river? Sunk. Which river was it? Two. More or Less. Birmingham River Roy Fisher The idea was to follow the Birmingham canal system north to Spaghetti Junction. I had already traversed the city by means of the Grand … Continue reading
Posted in Cities, Human Geography, Midlands, Walking, wildlife
Tagged art, Birmingham, canals, Digbeth, graffiti, Gravelly Hill Interchange, psychogeography, Roy Fisher, Spaghetti Junction, transport, West Midlands
6 Comments
The Shores of Loch Bee
An island. A loch. An island — South Uist — that forms a link in an archipelago that lies off a much larger island, which in turn lies to the northwest of the world’s largest continental landmass. If the world … Continue reading
Posted in Islands, Scotland, wildlife
Tagged Loch Bee, lochs, Outer Hebrides, South Uist, Western Isles
6 Comments
The Tyranny of the Horizon by Laurence Mitchell
Originally posted on BURNING HOUSE PRESS:
“A frontier region… the resort of brigands and bandits” – Sir Clifford Darby, from The Medieval Fenland Two summers ago I walked coast to coast across England and Wales, from Great Yarmouth in Norfolk…
Posted in Human Geography, Norfolk, Walking, wildlife
Tagged Burning House Press, Cambridgeshire, Fens, landscape, Lincolnshire, psychogeography, Situationists, Wisbech
1 Comment
Landfall – absence and dislocation on the Forth shore
It began with a dislocation. A couple of weeks’ residence north of the border in the house of friends who had chosen to trade the Scottish late winter for the Antipodean summer. It was an opportunity for some writing time … Continue reading
Posted in Scotland, wildlife
Tagged absence, beast from the east, birds, Edinburgh, Firth of Forth, landfall, snow
12 Comments
The Shape on the Map — South Lochs, Isle of Lewis
Eleven miles east of the main road, six from the nearest shop (closed on the Sabbath), two miles from the open sea as the raven flies. Glen Gravir – a slender thread of houses stretching up a glen, just four … Continue reading
Posted in Islands, Scotland, Travel, wildlife
Tagged Callanish, eagles, gneiss, Harris, Lewis, lochs, Outer Hebrides, religion, Western Isles
13 Comments
Blyth Spirit
Back in April I took part in a writing workshop in Suffolk led by Ivor Murrell of Suffolk Poetry Society and Melinda Appleby of Waveney & Blyth Arts. The workshop encouraged the participants to immerse themselves in the sights, sounds … Continue reading
