David J. Gatward's Blog

Now that Gordy has moved to Somerset, I’m popping out rather a lot on research trips to top up my knowledge of the area and get some inspiration. So, yesterday afternoon, I hopped aboard my trusty steed and pedalled off for exciting adventures in the sunshine. As usually happens, after a few minutes of sunshine, it started pouring down, and within a few minutes I was soaked to the skin. But, determined, I pedalled on, and lo and behold! The rain cleared and the sun came out again. Hurrah! Somerset looks amazing like this! Thick hedgerows soaked with rain, yellow sunshine and lush green fields. It’s not the Dales but, in a very different way, it’s as beautiful! I passed through Mells on a road called Murder Combe, which is possibly the coolest name for a road for a crime writer to cycle along! But there are others too, like Hatchet Hill and Dead Woman’s Corner. I managed to avoid the double temptation of the Mells café and the Talbot Inn (but only just), and passing Mells Park - where t

Friday Starting out on the long trip north, I was unsurprised to find that the roads were horrendous. To help motorists share their pain, it seemed that the National Highways agency deemed it necessary to divert everyone heading up the west side of the country up the east side instead. Still, the Dales beckoned me on, and when I eventually left the main roads and saw the fells ahead, I couldn’t help but smile. Arriving in Leyburn, I booked into The Grove House and headed straight out for food at The Sandpiper Inn for a delicious dinner! Saturday The Shawl, Leyburn I started the day with a quick walk up the Leyburn Shawl. According to who you believe, the name of this limescale escarpment is an old word that means a shady hill and woodland. Or, and this is the version I prefer, its name relates to the time when Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned at Bolton Castle and lost her shawl. I then went for a stroll around Leyburn , stopping to purchase sausages from Hall’s Family Butchers and

One of the unexpected side effects of being a writer is that friends and family often approach me to write poems for special occasions. Now, I think people generally assume that writing is just writing. Whether it’s a novel, a short story, or a poem. Allow me to take this opportunity to disagree. I love writing stories. It’s something I’ve pretty much always done, even as a child. I’m also lucky in that I can usually sit down most days and bash out some chapters (or a few thousand words) a day without too many problems. It’s not always easy, but I luckily don’t conform to the tortured author trying desperately to get the words in their head onto the page. Poetry, however. Well that’s a different kettle of fish. It’s bloody hard. Takes an awful long time and, if I’m being brutally honest, it’s not really something that comes naturally to me. So I always experience slight feeling of dread when someone asks if I could ‘just write a few words’ for a special occasion. But I always comply.

I know it’s nearly the end of the month, but I only discovered this week that February is National Library Lovers Month in the US. And with my books now available to order in libraries (almost) the world over, I thought it the perfect opportunity to write about these wonderful institutions. According to the website statista , there are over 4.1 thousand public libraries in the UK and 950 academic libraries, including the British Library, which is one of the largest in the world holding more than 150 million items! The oldest public library is Chetham Library , which was founded in 1653 and is housed in a marvellous building that is even older, dating back to 1421. It looks like a marvellous place, and it’s just gone on my list of must-see places! It should come as no surprise, I suppose, that a very special library memory for me is from my childhood in Hawes. Instead of a library in the town, we had a mobile one which would visit regularly. It would park outside the Market Hall and