I never come home to Somerset without thinking of my first novel The Sweet Track. More than anything this is about being back in the landscape into which I was born; the inspiration for the novel.
Here is Lilli – who’s come home to look after her sick mother Vera – after making love with Paolo…
When he was asleep Lilli got out of bed and wrapped the faded bed cover around her. She would not sleep. The night would be too precious. She would watch him and listen for Vera. She sighed contentedly as she crossed to the window and looked out over the darkening fields to the sea. She pictured the mud flats out in the bay, the fisherman pushing the mud- horse homeward through the sucking silt unable to stand upright in his alluvial domain, leaning as it cradled him, prone, across the estuary, a place in which there was no foothold, no steady step. Where the balance was fragile and dubious, in a landscape of shifting sands and tides, rising and falling with the moon.
More about the mud-horse fishermen of Bridgewater bay
More about the Sweet Track – the oldest prehistoric track in Gt Britain.
Your novel, The Sweet Track, reaffirms your love of Somerset and is a moving and evocative read. I loved it!
Happy hols. GW
That passage is very beautiful.
Thank you Ray.