Exclusively on this weeks newsletter, 45 minutes of the Seahawks DJ set from Port Eliot. The newsletter goes out to everyone on our mailing list each and every Friday.

More Seahawks action HERE.

by Luke Turner

For most of the year, the flat grey cliffs, steep-sided inlets, rocky drowned valleys, and rolling slopes (richly carpeted with moss and wild flowers) of the Traena archipelago are home to just 400 people. Some work in the tourist industry, looking after guests in chalets painted red in the Scandinavian fashion. The lettering on the notices in the fish processing plant suggests others are seasonal Polish workers, who’ve made it to this point just south of the Arctic Circle to toil on the vicious looking fish-gutting machines emblazoned with gruesome diagrams of severed fingers, filling giant white plastic boxes with the produce of the cold waters. (more…)

A Guide to Coastal Birds. Episode 3. BBC Radio 4, today at 14.45. Listen now on the iplayer.

from the BBC website:

3/5. Brett Westwood is joined by keen bird watcher Stephen Moss on the Devonshire coast. With the help of wildlife sound recordist Chris Watson they offer a practical and entertaining guide to birds that you’re most likely to see and hear on rocky shores around Britain’s coastline; birds like Rock Pipit, Turnstone, Herring Gull and Lesser Black-backed Gull.

Produced by Sarah Blunt.

In the first part of the 1990′s I spent a lot of time having a lot of fun with a band called The Rockingbirds. Their debut record – which we released on Heavenly in ’92 and re-released in 2008 – has more than stood the test of time and I don’t need a drink inside of me to tell anyone who will listen that it’s a stone cold classic (though beware if I have, I’ll tell you twice). We were all very close back then and my memories of that time are treasured.
Just recently, word reached me that the band had reformed and that singer/ songwriter Alan Tyler was even writing new material for some forthcoming shows. Not only that but he was also about to embark on a solo walk along the Norfolk coastline. This has to be documented, I thought, so I gave Alan a ring.
Thankfully I knew that Alan was a reader of Caught by the River and I didn’t have to go through a “Hi Alan, I’m doing this website with Robin and Andrew, it’s kinda like a magazine, well maybe a fanzine… fishing, books, walking, trees, birds, records, you know..”. I suggested he might like to write us a piece about his walk. “Love to” he replied.
Two weeks later, walk completed and notebooks transcribed, Alan sent me the piece. “I hope it’s what you had in mind, it might be a bit long…”. Alan had become a travel writer and much as I enjoyed reading it, it would have taken us at least six months to run the story of the nine-day trek. So, Alan has published it on his own blog and today we are posting ‘Day One’. If you wish to continue with Alan on his journey, you can find your way by clicking HERE.
And as for The Rockingbirds, they are next in action at The Luminaire in Kilburn, London NW6 on Saturday September the 4th. Hope to see you there. (JB)

Walking the North Norfolk Coastal Path – July 2010 by Alan Tyler.

Day 1: Cromer to West Runton
I made it to Stratford. My overstuffed 65 litre second-hand rucksack has stayed intact – no pinging straps, no disheartening dull rips in the material, all the way along the 15 minute walk from my E15 flat in Windmill Lane across the Angel Lane Bridge to Stratford Railway Station.

My plan today is to get to Norwich and then Cromer on the train, eat, then make the mile or so walk going west along the start of the 47 mile North Norfolk Coastal Path to my first campsite in East Runton. This walk will give me some indication of how robust and manageable my load is going to be for the rest of the 47 miles, to be completed in admittedly fairly moderate stages over nine days. At this point I don’t know whether I, nor the pack, are up to it. The weather is overcast and comfortably warm which suits me. No sign of the predicted rain – that will come… (more…)

Four Hedges: A Gardener’s Chronicle. Written and engraved by Clare Leighton Little Toller Books, Stanbridge, Wimborne Minster, 2010. Introduced by Carol Klein

Review by Martin Davies.

Surrounded by the clamour of iPod and Kindle, it is good to come across a book that quietly lets us know that the printed page is still doing perfectly well – thank you. Such is the case with Four Hedges, the latest offering from Little Toller Books of Dorset, an outfit committed to reissuing classics of nature writing from the British Isles. This much-lauded ‘chronicle’ first came off the presses of Victor Gollancz in 1935 when its author-illustrator, Clare Leighton, was at the height of her artistic powers. Two years previously her The Farmer’s Year: A Calendar of English Husbandry had produced quite a stir, with twelve plates measuring a staggering eleven by eight inches. The giant tome also represented a radical departure for its creator, known up until then as an illustrator of other people’s books. Leighton’s parents were both writers, and her partner, Noel Brailsford, was one of the leading contributors to the Manchester Guardian. Scribbling clearly came as second nature. The Farmer’s Year saw three impressions in as many months plus an American edition that gave its fledgling author the confidence to embark on a longer sequel reflecting her passion for the miniature worlds of flora and fauna she’d been exploring since childhood. (more…)