The first lanterns were already lit when I stepped into the clearing. For over twenty-five years, I had walked this same winding path through the ancient Norfolk woodland—past the hawthorn that always bloomed early, over the roots that rose like old bones from the earth. The grove had grown with me, or perhaps I'd grown into it. That evening, in 2022 though, it felt especially alive. Beltane. The air carried that unmistakable promise—warm soil, blossoms opening, something anc

Dawn arrived here jn North Cornwall without announcement, just a soft thinning of the dark. I woke to the quiet weight of it—the kind of stillness that belongs only to the first of May. Beltane. Even the air seemed to be holding its breath. From the open window of our tiny off-grid home, the morning slipped in cool and clean, carrying the faint scent of damp earth and wood- smoke from last night’s fire. The small copse beside us stood half in shadow, half gilded by the low su

Morning came softly, as if the land itself has decided not to rush. In North Cornwall, May has awakened overnight. Yesterday’s torrential rain—wild, insistent, drumming against roof and window—has washed the world clean, and now everything seems to breathe again. The thunder replaced by morning birdsong. The air through the open window is cool and bright, edged with the scent of damp earth and salt carried faintly from the distant sea. Swallows trace swift arcs across the pal

The path to Stannon Stone Circle is quiet in that particular way Bodmin Moor knows so well—where even your own footsteps feel like an interruption. The grass tufts bend low, whispering across the earth, and the air holds that charged stillness that comes before rain. Out beyond the circle, Roughtor stands dark against the horizon. I watch as the sky above it thickens with grey clouds rolling slowly forward like something ancient waking up. It doesn’t feel ominous—just inevita

In the back of the old clay lump farm cottage in Norfolk, the barn door still stuck in damp weather, just as it always had. I leaned my shoulder into it until it gave with a sigh of swollen wood and rusted hinges. Inside hung the tools of three generations: ash-handled spades blackened with age, a Dutch hoe with its blade worn thin as paper, and my Great-grandfather’s fork, one tine bent slightly inward after striking buried stone sometime before the first war. I lifted the f

In a rural hamlet, in a little barn kitchen surrounded by birdsong, the scent of springtime blossom and the sound of rustling meadow grasses here on the North Cornwall coastal, I formulate and produce a wide variety of salves, balms, tinctures, glycerites, infusions, decoctions and tea. Over the past few weeks I've prepared a variety of items which will replenish my herbal medicine clinic. Photograph: St John's Wort, Meadowsweet, Turmeric and Black Pepper Pain Relief Balm - s