Books to Learn More On England’s Rivers
Still Waters and Wild Waves is a beautiful book to capture the waves that move us. It features over 50 original illustrations of dramatic seascapes and reflective rivers, alongside photography of stunning places that inspired the author’s artwork.
A blue-green sketchbook sits at the edge of my studio desk. It is covered in decorative paper, and is now frayed and tattered. These marks are evidence of its travels – as far north as Shetland and as far south as Isles of Scilly.
It has sat beside me on beaches and cliff tops, on small island planes and huge ferries, on trains and bicycles.
Some of the pages are stained with Scottish rain and spilt coffees. This sketchbook holds scribbles and memories that tell the tales of still waters and wild waves.
Angela Harding lives in England’s smallest county of Rutland, working from a studio at the bottom of her garden in a small village.
The Flow is a a writer’s journey along the rivers of England, taken after her beloved friend Kate set out with others to kayak the River Rawthey (Cumbria). But she never returned, and her death left her family and friends unmoored.
From West Country torrents to Levels and Fens, from rocky Welsh canyons to the salmon highways of Scotland – through to the chalk rivers of the Yorkshire Wolds, Amy-Jane follows springs, streams and rivers to explore tributary themes of wildness and wonder, loss and healing, mythology and history.
A Beautiful Ode to a Yorkshire River
Walking the Wharfe is by local boy Johno Ellison, who returns from living abroad to walk the entire length of the waterway where he grew up.
Retracing the steps of Victorian writer Edmund Bogg, he begins in the Vale of York, walking upstream to find Victorian spa towns and rare red kites that have returned, thanks to conservation initiatives.
He is seduced into wild swimming a chilly river (not the section notorious for reportedly drowning everyone who has ever tumbled into it). And seeks refuge in a candlelit pub, during a power blackout.
