Saturday, January 11, 2020

Lickey Hills Country Park


Visiting this local forest is inspiring and refreshing for the soul.


A short drive from where I live there is a wooded nature reserve of predominantly pine forest. I love to visit for many reasons. I love nature and find it soothing to be among trees. The fresh air provides a welcome reprieve from the often fume-heavy atmosphere of suburbia. The forest is out of time, a place where you could be in any era from the Stone Age to the Renaissance. Trees have stood for hundreds of years, bracken and ferns blanketing the floor year after year.


Often I have been there, with friends and family, absorbing the nourishing clean oxygen beneath the ageing boughs of oak, yew, hawthorn or pine. It never fails to inspire me, whether I have gone simply for fun or for a serious walk (with camera). I feel closer to the divine around us, embraced by mother nature and all she instils. Inevitably, I come away from these visits with ideas that I transcribe into notebooks once I reach home. Photographs I have taken there have become backdrops to scenes for my novels or thoughtful pieces I use in blog posts, or merely as wallpaper on my computer.


An hour’s ramble is worth so much more in prose, adding atmosphere and elements of all the senses. Sometimes, walking among the trees and climbing through groves and clearings, I see my characters milling about. I follow them, seeing where they go and what they do. Then  dash home to log it before I forget!


  • Do you have particular places that are repeatedly inspiring to you?
  • What types of landscape do you find the most inspiring?



E S MOXON has had a lifelong passion for history and writing. A childhood filled with family visits to ancient burial sites and stone circles fuelled her imagination. Inspired by classic medieval tales and Norse sagas, Elaine imagined herself inhabiting these Dark Ages and exploring the landscapes in her mind and continues to do so through her novels. The first in her ‘Wolf Spear Saga’ series is ‘WULFSUNA’ and books two and three will be out soon. When not lost in pages of the past, she lives in the Midlands with her family and their chocolate Labrador.

Blood, betrayal and brotherhood.
They come to honour a Warrior-Lord’s dream,
An ancient saga weaving their destiny,
But a treacherous rival threatens their fate.
The Wolf Sons are coming.
WULFSUNA

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