I’m delighted to welcome a guest contributor to this blog. Norman Hadley is a man of many parts – among other things he’s a mountain biker and one of the main men behind pedalnorth. And he is another lover of Arthur Ransome’s work. And he just happens to be a near neighbour of mine. What are the odds of two mountain biking Ransomephiles living within a few dozen pedal-strokes of each other in a small Lancashire town?

He’s also a very fine poet. Here’s an example, reproduced by very kind permission.

Naming It

A man called Ransome

showed me how it’s not enough

to teeter out to the furthest rock

in the rush of river, that you had

to name it, had

to own it,

so when you crouched

where the wagtails pirouetted

and the river splashed your sandals

you would, making sure that

noone else could hear you, whisper,

‘Finisterre,

Finisterre.’