Author: GritstoneCoop

Our member Colin Speakman’s latest book under the Gritstone imprint has been in the news recently, and is getting some great reviews from book critics.

Here’s a few of the ones we’ve noticed from Professor Colin Waters (Yorkshire Geological Society), Peter Hogarth (Yorkshire Philosphical Society), Roly Smith (Outdoor Writers and Photographers Guild), the North Yorkshire Moors Association and the Darlington and Stockton Times.

Lovely to hear the review of “In the Cold of the Night” by Gritstone member, Andrew Bibby, on BBC Sounds. It was reviewed by Morag Watkins – a self-confessed bookaholic – and regular guest book reviewer on Nick Coffer’s slot on BBC Three Counties Radio:

This is a detective story that a friend gave me to read and as it is about a group of people doing the Three Peaks Challenge and as I have done that I found it interesting because I know many of the places that are mentioned.

It concerns a group of staff from a residential caravan park who are doing the Challenge largely because the boss, Richard Meade says they must. They manage Ben Nevis with the help of their guide Rug, (yes that is his nickname) and he drives them to Wasdale Head to ascend Scafell Pike.

By this time Richard Meade has been on the phone for a lot of the journey and is still on the phone and he tells the party to go on, he will catch them up in a few minutes but he never does. His disappearance results in the mountain rescue team being called out and a massive search operation being mounted.

His body is found a long way away from where he should have been. Enter the detective, the reporter, the family and the staff of the caravan park to confuse, give false leads and generally take the reader on a merry dance which is not resolved until the last few pages.

Morag Watkins, guest reviewer on BBC Three Counties Radio, August 2019

Chris Goddard, creator of the Anne Lister walk map, chats about how he was asked to produce the map and what it shows on the walk around “the larger Lister estate”.

“The Anne Lister Walk ties nicely in with the BBC’s recent TV series Gentleman Jack and was launched amid full-blown Listermania. However, it was produced before anyone in Calderdale had seen the TV series, so it focuses more on the real Anne Lister sites than those featured on the small screen (in fact it turns out that a lot of the sites used for filming are too far away to walk to anyway). The council officers at Shibden Hall approached me earlier in the year to produce a map with a simple walking route around the sites of the larger Lister estate, so I devised this 5.5-mile walk to show off the best Shibden Dale had to offer.

Though it starts in Shibden Park, it quickly climbs out of the valley to Beacon Hill and follows the edge of the hills west of Halifax, with great views over the town throughout. It then drops back down into the valley past the sites of several of Anne Lister’s coal mines – sadly there is little or nothing to see of these, like the nearby grand mansion of High Sunderland Hall, felled in the 1950s due to subsidence caused by those same coal mines. However, Scout Hall’s pleasing symmetry, Walker Pit’s fine folly (named after Ann Walk of course) and Shibden Mill Inn more than make up for this.

After a pint or a bite to eat, it is an easy walk back down the valley bottom to Shibden Hall, where you can explore the interior of this 15th century mansion that was greatly reshaped by Anne Lister. The whole park around it is of her making and I’m glad that this map is part of a much-overdue process of rediscovering this inspiring 19th century woman.”

Outdoor Book of the Year award announced

Andrew Bibby’s captivating insight into southern English landscapes, Back Roads through Middle England (Gritstone Publishing, £13.95), has won the Outdoor Book of the Year award.

The award was announced on Saturday October 13, at the Outdoor Writers and Photographers Guild awards ceremony.

Andrew Bibby, who is an experienced professional writer who has contributed over many years to the British national press, has written several highly commended books on the countryside and the outdoors. His latest book delves deep into the landscapes of ‘middle England’, the book using the device of a journey he made by bicycle along the belt of Jurassic limestone (sometimes described as cotswold stone) from west Dorset to north Lincolnshire.

In the process of his journey Bibby turns to a wide range of disciplines, including social history, economics, and literature, to help him try to understand why the countryside looks the way it does.

Among other things, his book discusses how the countryside today is shaped by land ownership and estate management, and by changing nature of agricultural subsidies. Bibby looks at the efforts taken by residents in villages along his route to maintain community life in rural areas, and at conflicting responses that are emerging to the call for more housing in greenbelt areas. He suggests that the southern English countryside is at the same time both an old landscape and one which has seen radical change in relatively recent times.

Andrew Bibby says: “I am naturally delighted that Back Roads through Middle England has been awarded this year’s prize as Outdoor Book of the Year. This is a particular honour for me, because the award is made by my peers, fellow outdoor writers and photographers who understand the countryside and who care deeply about it.

“At a time when Englishness and English identity is increasingly an uncertain affair, my book looks for the clues that I believe are to be found in both the past and the present state of the English countryside to help us understand where we are today.”

Back Roads through Middle England is distributed to the trade through Cordee (www.cordee.co.uk) Review copies are available to journalists from info@gritstone.coop. Andrew Bibby can be reached on 01422 844026.

Gritstone member Colin Speakmans’s highly regarded auto-biography of the Yorkshire Geologist and Dalesman, Adam Sedgwick, has just been re-released in a joint publication between Gritstone Co-operative and the Yorkshire Geological Society.

At the book launch, held at the Dales Countryside Museum, Hawes, and co-hosted by both the Yorkshire Geological Society (Andy Howard, President) and the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority (Ian McPherson Deputy Chair.

In the welcome speech Ian McPherson said:  “This book is a jewel.  It’s a something rare for a book about geology – a great read,  a real page turner.”

There was also a talk by Dr Nigel Woodcock of Cambridge University about how Sedgwick was inspired by the geology and landscape on his walk to school, and how his observations and interpretations of the local geology have stood the test of time, followed by a Geological Trail walk lead by Dr John Knight  of the Yorkshire Geological Society.