As I slowed in approach to the lights at the first junction, where I knew I had to turn right, a heron lowered her landing gear and glided to a rest in the tops of a swaying tree. Welcome to Maryport.
I made my turn, and found I didn't need the signage, the route to the Senhouse Roman Museum having become familiar. For 18 of the last 19 years the museum has hosted a small but very enthusiastic gathering. Over the last three years the event has become a fixture on my own calendar. We gather to discuss writings and reading, books and authors, poets and readers. Maryport LitFest 2026 had a theme of Light over Water: A Voyage of Discovery.
A first for me this year was a commitment to two full days, an overnight stop. It was a strategy that hugely enhanced my fleeting visits of the previous two years. As the weekend evolved my thoughts turned to the years ahead, realising that a return trip of close on 650 miles and over 12 hours of driving time, may not be something looked forward too with the same glee as this year's event had enticed me.
And yet this event draws me deeper into its warm embrace. I meet friends from other gatherings, from zoom calls; a rare chance to be together in person, to have those informal chats, the catch-ups, that just cannot be matched in email exchanges. Angela Locke is pivotal to it all, writer, tutor, magnetic. She draws us to her gatherings on Iona, at Rydal Hall, and in on-screen sessions. As the Writer-in-Residence at Senhouse she organises (together with the museum's Jane Laskey) and co-hosts the annual gathering. She has this ability to cajole and persuade; connections just happen. One of this year's speakers came from a walk on beach; another just happened to have lived next door, back when she was breeding her Herdwicks.
This is a local event, West Cumbria, a corner that seems to have an endless supply of creativity, of words set down in the right order. Wordsworth hailed from just along the road, in Cockermouth, and thence to Rydal.
I had been aware of Maryport from countless childhood visits; a farm on the edge of Allonby. There is a black & white snapshot of a very young me astride a pony - the first and last time. Of those captured I am the only one left alive, pup and pony being the first to go, before Linda far too young, and then my father. Allonby draws memories, with recent gatherings having been final farewells, and those chats afterwards, with long lost friends and new generations, lingering.
And so I walked Allonby's green before our second day got underway. It all looks a bit tired now, in need of a lick of paint. But beneath it all the surf rolled over the shingle; the green was dotted with worm casts and rabbit diggings; and those old narrow wooden bridges still spanned the beck. That humped back bridge at the bend in the road; cobbled pends and farms. The donkeys were absent, winter quartered presumably.
Sunday morning walk
Little egret on the beck
Twentyman's ice cream
I drove along the road, to that familiar farmhouse. Conversions and extensions, mobile homes and weekend pods in the paddock. It must be over 50 years since last we stayed there. And yet...
Yan tyan house
The bridges over the beck
as Old Kiln beckons
David Ashworth plucked tunes from a 12 string guitar, as images from paintings and photographs rolled across the screen behind him. One of his favourites was a snap of himself as a young man. Allonby Beach, 5 July 1965. I could have been there, that day. And realising that my baby sister would celebrate her 60th birthday on the final day of this month, reinforced that feeling of deja vu. Perhaps...
One of the highlights of the weekend presentations, and there were many, was a talk by John Porter, he who had gardened whilst Angela bred her sheep. No, me neither. But what a man, what a life. Flashing across the screen behind him a girl stood on a high wire, quite a way to return to Hoy having climbed the Old Man. Her old man's genes must run strong.
For in addition to being a writer, poet, film director and whatever his day job may have been through a transatlantic life, he had climbed. Big and high. He told tales of being smuggled in trains across Uzbekistan to reach unheard of peaks in the High Pamirs. In discussion later he mentioned being stuck, completely alone, for five days, storm bound, unable to go up or down, at 27,000 feet. On Everest. That was 1981, long before Base Camp tourism.
I will enjoy his volume of essays and poems from a life well lived. A Path of Shadows.
We were treated to a floor show, Richard Valentine, a performance so very special. Whoever thought Odysseus might have been dry and dusty old stuff? Looking forward to the latest screen adaptation in a few months, filmed on the Moray Coast. Richard's wife, Rosie de Mello, closed the event, her enthusiasm for the coastline, the preservation of this special place and teaching of youngsters bubbling over to those of us who remained. Life in that household must be lived at quite some pace. Dull moments are for others.
I had decided to take in that last session, mainly as there might have been something to impart to any budding environmental scientists soon to graduate. We heard from Joe, a marine biologist with Cumbria Wildlife Trust, funded by lottery grant. He lives in Allonby, his charge being a unique Honeycomb Worm Reef, which gives a stretch of the bay HPMA status. It is one of only three HPMAs in England, and the only coastal one. Honeycomb Worm Reefs, must tell the children.
Alicia had passed on that session, determined to make her journey home in daylight. A good plan, such is the scourge of the LED headlight. Through two hours of filthy weather on the M74, rear mirror dipped, yellow glasses on, I applauded her. The children had better appreciate those worms. Night time driving is now far too stressful. I wonder if those who have LED headlights are exempt from being blinded by the lights of others. They must know, surely?
Mark the calendar for next year, even if we are much further away. Much to happen between now and then.
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