outdoors
The Place That Knows Me
A Memoir – by Richard Hines
Richard Hines seemed destined for a life without academic achievement until he read TH White’s The Goshawk. And having then borrowed another falconry book from the library, he began to train Kes, the kestrel he found nesting in 16th-century ruins.
Thus, as a teenager, began an obsession with hawks and a love of nature that – along with meeting his art student wife Jackie – took him in new directions… deputy head teacher, documentary maker, independent producer for the BBC and Channel 4, and university lecturer and writer among them.
Richard’s schoolboy experiences and love of hawks inspired older brother Barry to write A Kestrel for a Knave, a novel that was soon turned into the much-loved and truly iconic 1969 film Kes, directed by Ken Loach.
In 2016, the brothers’ upbringing in Hoyland Common, South Yorkshire, were turned by Richard into a factual book of his own: No Way but Gentlenesse: A Memoir of How Kes, My Kestrel, Changed My Life.
But time moves on. Richard and Jackie are these days grandparents – and about to pull up their Yorkshire roots to live near their now grown-up son, daughter and granddaughter in Hove on the Sussex coast.
Will their heritage let them go?
“Richard communicates his passion for the landscape of his home town with great warmth…” – Ken Loach
A Three Peaks Up and Under
A Guide to Yorkshire’s Limestone Wonderland
By Stephen C. Oldfield
The Yorkshire Dales are dominated by majestic mountain Ingleborough and its neighbours Penyghent and Whernside. Familiar to charity fund-raisers as the ‘Three Peaks’ of marathon walks, their inner secrets remain largely unknown.
In A Three Peaks Up and Under Stephen C. Oldfield explores every corner of this enigmatic landscape in riveting detail. No stone is left unturned – revealing the awe-inspiring shafts of great potholes, the legendary caves and waterfalls, as well as archaeological treasures that inspired explorers of years gone by.
After outlining the origins of these karst masterpieces, life-long walker and caver Oldfield examines Britain’s finest limestone area with fresh eyes. He uncovers hundreds of highlights from the Boggart of Hurtle Pot to the bone crunching giant of Yordas Cave, from the vastness of Gaping Gill to the rib-bending confines of the Cheese Press.
Laced with humour and personal touches that are bound to have even serious cave explorers chuckling into their beers, its chapters take the reader up onto the peaks and plateaus, and then down into the easiest ‘wild’ caves of the area – resulting in a new level of intimacy with this great landscape. A Three Peaks Up and Under will sow the seeds for many years of adventure in this magical area.
