This is a delightful book, a very personal, yet also very universal walk through the beautiful lands of the Scottish Borders, Northumberland and the North Pennines, the beautiful places we share with our friends to the north. The book is split up into short chapters covering not only the terrain Andrew Bibby walked through, but a wider issue connected to each part of the walk.
Book Review
Starting at Edinburgh Castle and then winding his way south, Andrew makes his way to Catterick in North Yorkshire, otherwise known as Catraeth, the site of a battle between the Brythonic people of Hen Ogledd or the ‘Old North’ under the leadership of Gododdin and the Angles of Bernicia and Deira, who were to come together to form the kingdom of Northumbria.
Consequently, we learn about community woodlands at Eshiel Wood near Peebles while Andrew talks about walking through the remote but magnificent Cheviot Hills, and the importance of peat as a carbon sink at Swinhope Head among many other fascinating aspects of our rural heritage.
In this way, Andrew brings the landscape alive and helps us to realise that, while there may not be a huge amount of people living in the areas he walked though, there is still a lot going on and human interaction with our landscape is as interesting and dare I say it, contentious in rural areas as anywhere else.
The author carefully considers land use as he walks south and the issue of land ownership has become a hot political topic north of the border in recent years, with various pieces of legislation extending the rights of walkers and ramblers in Scotland. But it is still very much a hidden topic south of the border. This is despite the fact that much of the assets – and land – in this country is now owned by other countries.
Andrew is a long-distance walker and fell runner and is particularly interested in land ownership and gaining an understanding of the landscape he traverses through and how it has evolved into what it is today. Near the end of the book, Andrew says this:
“So let’s return one final time to the economics behind all this. I argued earlier in this book that if we want to arrive at an understanding of the landscape we need to explore the economics of the way land is used. I suppose if I wanted to propose a single ‘take away’ message from this book, this would be it”.
The book is an interesting addition to the industrial heritage books about the Northeast, which abound. By examining our rural heritage, Andrew Bibby has been able to produce a very useful complement to the stories of the industrial revolution and the struggles on the Northumberland and Durham coalfield.
Peter Sagar in conversation with Andrew Bibby
What is your background?
My background is in journalism, specifically freelance journalism going back to the 1980s. Over the years I’ve freelanced for several of the national broadsheets and for all kinds of magazines. And for several years I also worked as what I suppose you’d call an editorial consultant for the international trade union movement, the International Labour Organization and the global co-operative movement. But over the years I’ve also written a number of books about the outdoors. I wrote five walking guides to newly opened access land which were published just after the 2000 Countryside & Rights of Way Act was passed, and I edited another three in the same ‘Freedom to Roam’ series. I was for a time a trustee of the Ramblers’ Association.
How did the Borders book come about?
I’m interested in how humans interact with the land and create the landscapes we know and love. Quite some time ago I walked the length of the Pennine watershed and wrote about what I discovered then in my book Backbone of England. More recently I cycled from Dorset to the Humber estuary along the line of the Jurassic oolite limestone – the very distinctive stone band that makes the Cotswolds so attractive – and my book Back Roads Through Middle England looks at those lands and landscapes.
So, my new book on the Borders in many ways follows on from these two earlier books, albeit looking at the landscapes in a different part of our island, the Scottish borders and Northumberland and Durham. As I did for the Pennine book, I once again undertook initial research by walking on foot, south from Edinburgh to the Cheviots and then onwards until I reached the river Swale. The walk provides the narrative framework for the book, although it’s not a walking book per se. In some ways the walk is simply an excuse to focus on issues that interest me, such as how the land is owned and farmed, and how climate change is already having an effect on the way that the landscapes look.
In what ways do we share heritage/identity across the Border?
Well, I am careful in the book not to deny the political and cultural realities of the very long-established border. But I suggest in my book that we have a common shared interest in protecting our landscapes from the effects of climate change and the loss of biodiversity.
All political borders have their economic implications, driving economic life away towards areas where political power has become centralised. Northumberland and the North-East has long suffered economically from being a long way from London, and a long way from the Palace of Westminster – although perhaps this does enable the region to be able to maintain its very distinctive culture. (I speak as someone who for time used to play the Northumbrian small pipes!).
On the Scottish side of the border you’ll find a great deal of empty countryside, partly the result of the Clearances in the eighteenth century when cottagers were turfed out of their homes to make way for sheep farming. But with the coming of the Scottish Parliament, I think I can detect a little more opportunity for grassroots endeavour to try to strengthen social and economic opportunities in Scotland than has been possible recently on our side of the border. I explore in the book how community ownership of land is becoming a little more possible in Scotland, for example.
How do we go forward as a region and in relation to Scotland
There is of course the old joke that those of who live in the North of England ought to be campaigning for the Scottish border to be redrawn south of Yorkshire rather than north of Northumberland – that way we might get a government that was slightly less remote and slightly more open to citizen initiatives. But seriously, England badly needs to be a less centralised country. It’s not healthy that so much power has seeped away from the North towards London and the south, or that the City of London and the financial services industry play such a dominant role in our economy.
How important is the landscape to our identity?
I’d say it was very important. The landscapes where we live form a key part of our identity, as individuals and as societies – or at least this is what I try to argue in my book.
And I have a hunch that the landscape is particularly important in a region like the North-East.
Should we be more interested in land ownership south of the border? How high should it be on the political agenda of the Northeast/North?
I argue in the book that, if you want to understand how landscapes are formed, if you want to understand the countryside better when you are out walking in it, then you need to understand the way that the land is currently being used and that means among other things looking at land ownership. The fact that, on both sides of the border, there are very large aristocratic land-holdings has a very direct effect on the nature of the countryside.
Land ownership and land reform has been very high on the Scottish political agenda in the years since the Scottish Parliament was re-established. There have been already two Land Reform Acts passed in Scotland and a third one is currently under debate. Many people say that this reform hasn’t gone anything like far enough, but at least the issues are being debated north of the border. In England land reform and land ownership hasn’t really been a current political issue for a century, despite the best efforts of people like Guy Shrubsole whose books on land ownership in England are well worth checking out.
The Borders: The Lands we Share by Andrew Bibby, published by Gritstone Publishing is available to buy on Waterstones here.
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