Walking to fall in love with a landscape

Exploring what it takes to make a new place feel like home

The land is calling at the entrance to Hole of Horcum

Hello walkers and writers 👋🏻

I thought about this edition for a long time before writing it. Then after I wrote the first second third fourth draft, I debated whether to share it with you. It’s a bit more personal than my usual editions because it reflects my often conflicted feelings about what ‘home’ means to me.

Then I read this post, from Olivia Sprinkel’s wonderful Substack To Hear the Trees Speak. where she reflects on place and offers this prompt:

What does being in place mean to you?

How are you part of the place where you live?

What does the place give you – and what can you give to it? (Perhaps questions to ponder on a walk or sitting outside.)

I’ve revisited those questions a lot over the summer and they’ve helped me make a big decision…

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Walking

I’m leaving London and returning to East Yorkshire.

It’s an odd sort of return. I’ve lived more years away from the region where I grew up than I did when I lived there. I’ve also felt conflicted about returning. When I left Hull in my early twenties it was, in part, an escape from things that were making me deeply unhappy. But I also left because I was being pulled towards adventure. I was curious about the world and wanted to take a big old bite out of it.

This sense of adventure was encouraged. My mum always said that the world began at the edges of Hull and that I should make my way past the city lines to see what was out there. It was advice that I took to heart and which has made all the difference in my life – and all the wiggly paths that have led me to new places, new friendships and new ideas.

The idea of returning to East Yorkshire felt like I might be betraying my mum’s encouragement to leave. It also goes against the common wisdom that we should look forward and never back. So in the last few years, wherever my feet took me around the UK – and beyond – I’ve asked myself ‘Could this be the next stop?’ But none of the places I went to felt right. At the same time I was returning to Yorkshire more and more and discovering new things. And many of my friends had returned and were encouraging me to do the same.

But I felt conflicted. 25 years away from East Yorkshire meant that it no longer felt like home and I wasn’t sure it could ever feel like home again. So I thought about Olivia’s prompts on place, particularly, “How are you part of the place where you live?” and I realised I was feeling less and less a part of London. I felt simultaneously rooted and landless. So I thought about all the places where I’ve lived and reflected on how long it took me to feel at home in them – and the things I’d done to help me feel at home both consciously and unconsciously. And I asked myself:

• Is home a connection with people or place?

• How long does it take to feel at home in a new place?

• Is it possible to walk yourself into love with a place?

So I started walking…

Walking alone and with friends in East Yorkshire

Sometimes I walked alone. Sometimes in a group. Sometimes with a dog. And sometimes I walked with someone who was new to Yorkshire and couldn’t see its charms until we discovered them together through our walks and talks.

Sometimes I went on walks that I found in online guides to East Yorkshire, or ones that friends recommended. And sometimes I simply followed my heart and let my feet do the same.

I went in search of the blue, with coastal explorations that spanned sandy beaches, rocky coves and busy harbours that helped me reconnect with childhood trips to the seaside.

Barefoot walks and lobster pots in Scarborough and stacks of rocks at Flamborough

I went to the village of Rudston in search of the tallest monolith in the UK and discovered the grave of local author Winifred Holtby in the churchyard behind it.

The Rudston Monolith, church and Winifred Holtby’s grave

I joined a beach clean-up at Spurn National Nature Reserve, which helped me feel a greater sense of connection to the land and a desire to do to my part in protecting it.

Clearing lobster pots from the beach

I went on a word walk and found the poetry benches along the Yorkshire Wolds Way.

Words in the Wolds: the poetry benches on the Hudson Way and near Huggate

The benches along the Yorkshire Wolds Way were created by Angus Ross and are carved with verses of John Wedgwood Clarke’s poem, Wander, using typography designed by Adrian Riley. The first lines of the verse carved on the Huggate bench resonated with me in particular:

We have rippled the earth with our desire to be

here not there. We have driven the dale’s wedge of hush home

between us. But you move, as we moved, in the ghost of water:

a hare rips away from the dead, thuds

down the dyke and out into everywhere the grasses foam.

Huggate, from Wander by John Wedgwood Clarke

I found follies in the forest and a lovers’ leap in Hackfall Wood. I found a forgotten corner of Hull where nature had found her way, with an unexpected delight of wildflowers that showed me that the city I had once viewed as grey was also filled with pops of colour.

Follies, flowers and a leap of faith

I found tumbledown buildings with stories to tell.

The ruins of Holy Trinity Church in Cottam, a sail-less windmill in Lelley and the abandoned mediaeval village of Wharram Percy

And I went for a walk in Millington Wood where a chance encounter with an East Riding Council Countryside Officer and someone from the Ramblers made me see how much I need to get away from the city. And where I sat on the bench that overlooks the wood and realised I wanted to move to this part of Yorkshire. And where I felt inspired to create Words in the Wolds, a map of the walk I’d done, paired with a writing prompt, which I’ve shared on the Go Jauntly app. (Delighted to share that they featured it as their walk of the week, too.)

Woodland magic

Finally, I wandered around Beverley town, the Westwood and along the Beck because soon they’ll be my local walks and I’ll get to explore them more and more once I live there.

Absolute scenes in Beverley, East Yorkshire

And with every step on these walks I found myself awestruck. And with every step I felt more at home. And with every step I walked my way into love with the landscape I once ran away from.

Moving to a new place might bring an understandable sense of trepidation. But it can also spark curiosity. Street signs become puzzles to unpack, paths become mysteries to explore and snippets of conversations overheard in passing contain stories yet to be unfolded.

Perhaps, with the help of these musings, if you ever find yourself needing to connect with a new landscape, or reconnect with one you left behind, you might get there a little faster than it’s taken me. So this time, I invite you to walk in a new place and find a way to love it. Rather than walking in fear, contempt or ambivalence, open your heart to its possibilities. What stories might it hold? What opportunities might it offer? What love might it share?

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Writing

Your writing prompt this time is a sentence starter (also called a sentence stem) to help you reflect on home. For anyone new to this way into writing, it’s based on using a word, phrase or a sentence that you follow like a thread to see where it takes you. Here’s one to try:

Home, to me, is…

Thanks for reading this edition. I love to hear your reflections on walking and writing, so please leave a comment.

Happy walking, writing and falling in love with a landscape until next time.

Sarah

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Coming up on The Writer’s Walk

I recently chatted with a London tour guide who told me they used to really dislike London and history, so applying to become a tour guide seemed an obvious next step. The more they learned about London, the more they enjoyed living there. So I guess I’m not the only person whose wanderings have helped them to fall in love with a place. I’ll be sharing our chat with you soon.

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More from The Writer’s Walk

If you enjoyed this edition, check out Walking to create a sense of place, which looks at how to bring places to life in your fiction writing by following in Charles Dickens’ footsteps.

Walking to create a sense of place