In the middle of autumn I was invited to spend a week at Yellison, on the edge of Broughton Sanctuary estate, backed by the moors and looking out over Aire Valley. I was there to begin work on the second draft of my new book. It is the story of a Slovenian-born wolf, which formed the first pack in the Italian Alps for more than a century, and in following his thousand-mile journey it looks at the wolf's remarkable return to Europe. And it also explores the impacts that the wolf is having on the lives of people who find, after an absence of centuries, that they are having to live alongside it once again.
Each morning, after an invigorating leap into the pond just outside my cottage, I'd go for a walk through Broughton's meadows. It was autumn. The trees were on the turn, and up here I could look out across the land and see all the weather that was coming. I've always found that a walk is a good way to start a day of writing, to get my thoughts in the right place, but I rarely have the time for it, or the discipline, at home. To have it all right there when I stepped outside my front door made it irresistible.
For a long time there has been talk about bringing the wolf back to the UK, too, but being an island nation gives us a special prerogative about what we choose to let in. I have long assumed it would never happen, but Broughton made me wonder. I'd follow the paths through pastures where the saplings are coming back, making for a hill where I knew that I would find hundreds of redwings, picking through the berries in the hedges. I hadn't seen a redwing for years. And then, late one evening on a stroll, I saw a barn owl skimming the path right in front of me. There are huge and rapid changes happening at Broughton, and it can't help but make you wonder what else might be possible.
I'd go back home and make a coffee and sit at the window to write. It was a beautiful house, quiet and reflective, and I could be at the desk for hours. I might go for a run on the moors at the end of the day, or cycle down to the Avalon Wellbeing Centre for a sauna and a dip in the pool. Every evening I would light the burner and read, or sometimes take a walk down to the local gastro-pub, The Bull, if I needed to see some other people (which wasn't often). A week felt like an eternity, in the best possible way.
It was wonderfully luxurious, but as I kept promising my partner each time we spoke, I really was getting a huge amount done. Not having to concern myself with the day to day routine freed up a space to write that I have rarely felt. Having such freedom all the time probably wouldn't amount to getting much work done, but to be able to step outside my life for just a week, to be able to really concentrate on my work, was immensely useful and fulfilling.
It's been a three months since my stay. I have scarcely left my laptop since then but the new draft is nearly done. I'm still not finding much time to walk. But I've drawn on that week at Broughton every time that I feel like I've had enough. For years now I have explored in my writing how the human and natural worlds are intimately bound up, how it is impossible to alter one without altering the other. That can seem awfully abstract when I'm working in the library, but walking through it here, and seeing not just how decisions made by people are bringing nature back but how that nature is deepening the lives of those who visit, proved to be exactly the inspiration that I need.
Adam Weymouth's book about the wolf will be published by Penguin in early 2025.