INTERVIEW
Why author Matt Gaw set out to go walking in the worst of weathers – and the surprising things he learned along the way.
SOME MIGHT CALL Matt Gaw a glutton for punishment. For his latest book, nature writer Matt embarked on a quest to front up bad weather. But not to make himself miserable; instead to enjoy the experience to the hilt. The book is called In All Weathers, and it tells the story of his walks in rain, wind, fog, ice ‘and everything in between’ in captivating prose.
He discovers the enthralling wonders of fog in the Suffolk village of Great Livermere, where the author MR James (famous for his ghost stories) once lived. He encounters the softness and subtleties of wind at Neist Point on Skye, at Wrabness in Essex and on Haworth Moor in Yorkshire. He immerses himself in the transformative powers of snow and the enchantment of ice as he meets ice skaters on the fens of East Anglia and experiences a Christmas swim on the coast of Skye.
But to give you a flavour of the story, here’s one of his encounters with rain, as he sets out on a walk in the Lake District on the wettest day he could find…
SEATHWAITE, OCTOBER 22
The peak of Seathwaite Fell has been reduced to a pale ghost. The clouds that have tracked up its seaward side are now beginning their descent, as though they are re-enacting the scouring slide of long-ago glaciers that once formed the Borrowdale valley. In an hour, maybe less, this valley, walled in by its sharp crags, veined with milk-white gills and gullies, is in for a proper soaking.
The hamlet of Seathwaite is no stranger to getting wet. Seathwaite’s average yearly rainfall is 3,552 millimetres, making it the most rain-soaked habitation in the UK – well in excess of the UK average of 1,163 millimetres.
That is why I had to come here. It’s one thing to enjoy the rain when it comes after the heat and sweat of a long summer but I wanted to immerse myself in real rain, to be in the wettest place I could find; a place rain calls home.
The volume of water is due largely to the hamlet’s location. Weather is specific to place; it is tethered to it. When moisture-laden air comes in from the Atlantic, it is forced up and over a volcanic ridge that includes England’s highest peak, Scafell Pike. The air cools as it rises and condenses into rain. And what rain. When it comes down on the lee side, it does so with biblical fury. It fills rain gauges. It fills rivers. It fills roads and fields. It, as they say round these parts, hosses it down.
