Sycamore Gap, Hadrian's Wall, and Robin Hood

I visited the scene of a crime today. I wasn't the only person on the scene. The police were there watching over the cordoned off area. Media were flocking to the scene as fast as they could scramble over rocky pathways, slippery mud and squelching ground. The ups and downs of Hadrian's Wall path took a few of them by surprise but they struggled on gamely in unsuitable footwear for a blustery September day in rural Northumberland. A drone was filming overhead while the people gathered, locals and visitors alike to witness the death of a Sycamore tree. 

Sycamore Gap on Hadrian's Wall 28/09/2023.

 

Sycamore Gap, where the tree waits for Spring, 2023.

 

This is a special tree. For a couple of hundred years it has grown and thrived next to Hadrian's Wall. It is famous since it featured in Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, starring Kevin Costner and Morgan Freeman, and Northumbrians have embraced this tree as almost symbolic of their ability to live and thrive in a wild and beautiful county in the far north of England. This area is a UNESCO World Heritage Site that encompasses the Wall of Roman Emperor Hadrian and its associated structures, forts, ditches, milecastles, turrets, temporary camps, quarries, the towns (also known as vicae outside the forts) and any number of other features in this stunning landscape. 

The tree means a lot to locals and visitors alike. It is probably the most photographed tree in the United Kingdom. Proposals of marriage take place beneath its leafy branches on a regular basis and it hosts picnics on a daily basis. Thousands of tourists walk past it every year.  It is loved and treasured and now, it is no more.

As I write this post, a 16 year old has been arrested and is helping Northumbrian Police with their inquiries. The Police are keeping an open mind and appealing for more information. But some person, or perhaps there was more than one, marked up the trunk, then took a chainsaw to it, a large one because this is a large tree, and hacked it through the trunk. It fell to the north and landed on the remains of the Roman Wall behind it. 

And me? I have loved this tree since the first time I saw it. It has been part of my life for so long. Terrible things happen in the world and are arguably worse than the felling of a tree. However, I mourn this tree because it meant a lot to me. And the person(s) who cut this tree down lack some essential human quality, I think. 

Around the fallen giant, people were talking, some whispering, others talking loud, raising their voices above the damp-infested wind blowing in from the south west. Everyone wants to know why but nobody has any answers. I have no answers, only one question. What sort of mind does this?

And I have one wish. I wish that something beautiful could be created from the wood of this Sycamore tree, something to remember its wild majesty and its life which mattered to so many of us before it was destroyed.

Writing, Archaeology, History, and Me

 Archaeologists and museums professionals like stuff and I’m one of them, although I’m not currently working in the sector. Several years ago, a few things happened in my personal life to make it difficult for me to leave the house much. Covid-19 arrived just as I was thinking of returning to the workplace and it put paid to that with successive lock downs while the brilliant scientists worked hard to make the vaccines we now rely on. We all adjusted and re-evaluated and survived as best we could and many of us have changed how we work or what we do for living since 2020. I'm one of those who began something I always wanted to do. I began to take my creative writing seriously.

For a long time, I've been drawn to the gaps in historical and archaeological evidence. There’s so much we don’t know – or can only guess at – about the past and the people who lived so very long ago. What would it be like to use fiction as a medium to fill in some of the blanks? Could I use my experience to research and build the world that my characters inhabit so that I can tell stories that mean something to me? So, with lots and lots of time and trial and error, I now write the stories that I would like to read. That’s important to me. It isn't vanity. I simply couldn’t sustain the writing if I wasn’t fascinated by my characters or the experiences they have and the obstacles that they must overcome.

My archaeological experience is broadly confined to Roman archaeological sites in Britain, especially in the north. I’ve put my fingers into the marks impressed on an amphora by the potter who steadied the wet clay as he built the vessel, and I’ve catalogued makers’ marks on Roman pottery imported from Gaul to Britannia, as well as those on local wares and on the well-travelled amphorae that contained olive oil, wine, and fish sauce. The painstaking task of making records of archaeological objects allows the researcher plenty of time to think and my first historical fiction story ideas were birthed as I made lists of names stamped on ancient Roman pottery. And out of these fledgling ideas, I’ve striven to create whole novel outlines and drafts, and now I’m proud to be rewriting and editing the novel I’d most like to publish first.

A notebook full of research and ideas on my desk in my garden office.

 

This novel is set in the wake of another pandemic, the historic Antonine Pandemic that swept from Parthia to the Roman Empire with the Roman troops returning home after the defeat of Vologaeses IV, the unlucky ruler of Parthia in the mid-AD 160s. And the story sprung from a simple tombstone that was discovered in the Roman auxiliary fort of Arbeia at South Shields in the northeast of England. That’s a story for another time. But, here, I want to note that I’m excited by the way that an artefact that's more than 1800 years old can inspire a research journey that is still ongoing and a novel that is currently well over a hundred thousand words.

I’m not writing alone. This statement isn’t meant to give the impression that I write with others all the time. The opposite is true. I’ve a garden room where I hide out among my books with a laptop and my notebooks. In that sense, I’m alone as I write. But what I have done is sought support to help me finish my writing and begin to put it out in the world. This year, I joined the Ultimate Novel Writing Course run by Jericho Writers in April, 2023.

Writing can be difficult for me to sustain. When doubt strikes, it can stop me in my tracks. So, support is essential for me to succeed. And success is writing every day and moving my writing journey forwards in a variety of ways. My lovely mentor, the brilliant author and human being, Anna Vaught, advocates not shifting the goalposts as one goal is met. Celebrate each success and keep going. By this, I take it to mean that each success, no matter how small, remains an achievement in its own right. And, I think it is up to us writers to decide what success is for us and work towards that. 

And I think, I'll leave this blog post here. It isn't polished, or finished, like my writing journey isn't done, and like my novel is only emerging as I learn how to craft it out of my raw material.

Becoming A Writer

‘I am a writer and I have something to say.’

This sentence appears over and over again in one of my journals. I was advised in a course, Dealing With Doubt, that I took as a member of The Literary Consultancy in 2021, to write this down once every day until I began to believe it. At the time, I was so sceptical. I wanted to write, but my draft was awful, stalled, and I had no confidence in my abilities to write anything. I wasn’t sure that I had anything to say and the ‘something’ bothered me. What was it that I had to say? I had no idea.

Still, I had paid for my membership and I decided to give it a chance and work through the course. Well, over time, it worked. Somehow, I began to believe that I might be a writer and that it is okay to say it. Out loud. I’m a writer. And I took part in Write Club Plus in 2022, a The Literary Consultancy add on, which also fuelled my confidence. I even read some of my work aloud towards the end of the year to my peers. I finished my novel draft, explored editing with little success – again it was a zero-confidence thing. My inner critic, my imposter syndrome bit hard, but this time, I knew that with some help and advice, the right sort of support, I could learn this part of the writing journey too (more on that in a future post).

Meanwhile, I part drafted other novel ideas, developed outlines, wrote some poems, a few short stories, and dithered about the industry and what comes next. How do I make the leap from writer to author? And I discovered that it isn’t so much of a leap as a series of steps. Let’s call them baby steps because small steps aren’t as scary as leaps into the unknown, are they?

And big reveal, drum roll please: I haven’t crossed any great divide. I have no agent. No publisher. No one asking for my manuscript desperate for it to see the light of day. And what’s significant about this is that I’m actually okay with this. For now. All in good time. I’m not there yet. But I am writing and I'm editing my first novel. That is success to me.

Remember those baby steps?

Since Dealing With Doubt, I have published two short works to date. The first is a poem, Dawn by Lindisfarne, which features in the Dylan Day anthology, Love The Words 2022. The second is a short story, The Night Watch, published in All Along The Edge in 2023. Baby steps, each one of these.