On Holiday, All The Time

Artist Roger Nowell on Sheffield's cloud light, and what to do with our river valleys.

Coppice Lane, Rivelin - by Roger Nowell

Sheffielders are notorious for taking their city for granted. Yes, you can see the hills from everywhere, and there’s an ancient woodland a few minutes from everyone. That’s just normal, surely?

Just ask people from other parts of the world, once they’ve started exploring, and get bedazzled by Roe Woods, or amazed they can follow Dippers and Grey Herons along a river valley to work.

“Everything’s up or down here,” they might note, incredulously. And: “You can be out on the wild moors in half an hour!” they say, like it’s Christmas.

For artist Roger Nowell, after growing up near the flatlands of Hull, it’s those wet green post-industrial river valleys, and the light in our post-Pennine cloudscapes.

Brooding skies over Stannington - by Roger Nowell

Roger is a water professional in his day job, helping us shape our sustainable urban drainage.

(See our archive post with Roger’s SUDS story, which also includes the origins of the Outdoor City title - all our 260+ fairly interesting features from the past few years are available at any time, just for our wonderful full subscribers).

We introduced Roger’s recent work in this week’s Sunday at Bill’s Mother’s, but wanted to give him the chance to tell us more, with more of his work, in this longer post just for full subscribers.

If you’d like to join our unique publishing social enterprise, it’ll cost you less than a pint of bitter a month, and you’ll be helping to keep the new local journalism alive and growing in these strange times, when we need it most.

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Thicket above Rivelin - by Roger Nowell