The River: review
Kevin Redpath, published in The Glastonbury Oracle, December 2015.
Bruce Garrard's latest book, The River, helps deepen our sense of wonder of the ecology of the central Somerset landscape with its distinctive natural and engineered landscape. He gently peels away the layers of time to reveal a much more meandering River Brue that wound its way past the island chapels of saints - a landscape of special significance, their names listed with Glastonbury in King Edgar's charter as islands that had a privileged status which exempted them from the ordinary laws of the land - the Isles of Avalon, Beckery, Godney, Martinsey, Panborough and Andrewsey. The Brue once connected them all. But it has become a disconnected river as the engineering work done by the medieval monks effectively cut it in half.
It took a lot of hard work to retrace its original path. With a background in environmental activism and a healthy scepticism of the purely academic, Bruce would never have been content locking himself away in the Antiquarian Library or poring over the Drainage Board archives.
Throwing a rucksack over his shoulders he got out into the landscape with all its nettles, barbed wire, railway lines, rhynes, weather and landowners, and walked - over five days - from the Brue's source at Brewham to its original mouth at Uphill just south of Weston super Mare. But more than that, he made friends with it. He kayaked and swam in it, sat on its banks and listened to its changing sounds as it tumbled down towards Bruton. Walking alongside it, he quietly observed the deforestation in its upper reaches above Bruton and the accumulation of algae pollution towards its mouth at Highbridge.
Inspured by a Glastonbury screening of the film Aluna last year, and the urgent message relayed by the Kogi Mamas of Columbia that "You don't have to abandon your lives, but you must protect the rivers", Bruce made a commitment to explore the Brue. He recounts his pilgrimage along its banks in the first quarter of the book, and then steps back to reflect on its history, from Prehistory, through the Iron Age, Roman Occupation, Celtic christianity, King Alfred, St Dunstan, the medieval abbey at Glastonbury, right through to the current debate about the future of our wetland ecology in a world dominated by the priorities of economic growth.
A perspective highlighted by the Environment Secretary of the time, when visiting Somerset during the 2014 floods and asked, "What is the purpose of a river?" was to reply "To get rid of water" - as if our rivers are giant gutters to be straightened and dredged. A remarkable graph in the book shows the relationship between the percentage of woodland in a drainage basin and river discharge. The greater the tree cover in the catchment areas the greater the absorption of heavy rain. The Government's research came up with the remarkable result that 'water sinks into the soil under trees at 67 times the rate at which it sinks into the soil under grass'.
I believe that Bruce, as a writer, is contributing to an emerging body of immersive, experiential nature writing that encourages us to re-connect with the land around us. Writers like Robert MacFarlane, Philip Marsden, our own Patrick Whitefield, and Roger Deakin who wrote the groundbreaking Waterlog, can help deepen our appreciation of the spirit of place. The River offers us an opportunity to re-member the Brue, to appreciate its history and its displacement. Bruce deserves our deepest thanks for giving witness to its remarkable story.
Kevin Redpath, published in The Glastonbury Oracle, December 2015.
Bruce Garrard's latest book, The River, helps deepen our sense of wonder of the ecology of the central Somerset landscape with its distinctive natural and engineered landscape. He gently peels away the layers of time to reveal a much more meandering River Brue that wound its way past the island chapels of saints - a landscape of special significance, their names listed with Glastonbury in King Edgar's charter as islands that had a privileged status which exempted them from the ordinary laws of the land - the Isles of Avalon, Beckery, Godney, Martinsey, Panborough and Andrewsey. The Brue once connected them all. But it has become a disconnected river as the engineering work done by the medieval monks effectively cut it in half.
It took a lot of hard work to retrace its original path. With a background in environmental activism and a healthy scepticism of the purely academic, Bruce would never have been content locking himself away in the Antiquarian Library or poring over the Drainage Board archives.
Throwing a rucksack over his shoulders he got out into the landscape with all its nettles, barbed wire, railway lines, rhynes, weather and landowners, and walked - over five days - from the Brue's source at Brewham to its original mouth at Uphill just south of Weston super Mare. But more than that, he made friends with it. He kayaked and swam in it, sat on its banks and listened to its changing sounds as it tumbled down towards Bruton. Walking alongside it, he quietly observed the deforestation in its upper reaches above Bruton and the accumulation of algae pollution towards its mouth at Highbridge.
Inspured by a Glastonbury screening of the film Aluna last year, and the urgent message relayed by the Kogi Mamas of Columbia that "You don't have to abandon your lives, but you must protect the rivers", Bruce made a commitment to explore the Brue. He recounts his pilgrimage along its banks in the first quarter of the book, and then steps back to reflect on its history, from Prehistory, through the Iron Age, Roman Occupation, Celtic christianity, King Alfred, St Dunstan, the medieval abbey at Glastonbury, right through to the current debate about the future of our wetland ecology in a world dominated by the priorities of economic growth.
A perspective highlighted by the Environment Secretary of the time, when visiting Somerset during the 2014 floods and asked, "What is the purpose of a river?" was to reply "To get rid of water" - as if our rivers are giant gutters to be straightened and dredged. A remarkable graph in the book shows the relationship between the percentage of woodland in a drainage basin and river discharge. The greater the tree cover in the catchment areas the greater the absorption of heavy rain. The Government's research came up with the remarkable result that 'water sinks into the soil under trees at 67 times the rate at which it sinks into the soil under grass'.
I believe that Bruce, as a writer, is contributing to an emerging body of immersive, experiential nature writing that encourages us to re-connect with the land around us. Writers like Robert MacFarlane, Philip Marsden, our own Patrick Whitefield, and Roger Deakin who wrote the groundbreaking Waterlog, can help deepen our appreciation of the spirit of place. The River offers us an opportunity to re-member the Brue, to appreciate its history and its displacement. Bruce deserves our deepest thanks for giving witness to its remarkable story.
