Out & About Autumn 2021

Out&About interview

N ature has played an important role in Nicola’s life from a young age. As a child, she moved around a lot with her parents, but always within the areas of North Hampshire and West Berkshire. As soon as the family arrived in a new place, her mum would take them down the footpaths with the dogs to explore their new home and these early experiences with nature continue to influence her. Nicola said: “I think my love for nature stems from childhood. Wherever we have lived we have found nature, we have found woods and we have explored them and most of all loved being in them.” She has now lived in Inkpen for 17 years, and has a son, 19, and two daughters who are 17 and 13. For the children, nature has played a key role in their upbringing. “We have never been on a holiday abroad, instead we would go walking through nature, through the fields, up the hill and explore the footpaths. It may sound a bit cliché, but when I think about my children, it is the hill that raised them.”

Bypass protest, and through other environmental battles along the way, loosely charting Nicola’s children growing up. “The whole point of my writing is to engage people with nature, to move them and to make them want to protect it. With On Gallows Down I just felt I had this story to tell which connected everything. “I am a great believer in connection and linking things together, and the ultimate way of doing that was through this book. It is a memoire of place and a need to find a home, and to show ownership for a place that you don’t own. At the heart of the book is nature, family and home.” On Gallows Down is full of powerful imagery including a memorable meeting with a herd of deer. husband had been called up to Iraq. I spent all my time walking outdoors and one day when walking through a wood a huge herd of fallow deer came galloping up towards us on a narrow ride. “They were enormous “I was living alone with an 18-month-old baby in a remote cottage as my

Nicola regularly goes out walking and exploring. Her favourite footpath goes up Gallows Down, starting in Inkpen and heading towards Combe Gibbet. “Every day it is different. You can go up there and see nobody or see lots of people. The view can stretch for miles or you can be in this misty world where everything is below you and I love that.”

upset. I had all these words crowding my head and I was ready to speak to a Radio 4 interviewer, but the moment he stuck his microphone under my nose I froze and the words wouldn’t come out. I remember thinking I have so much to say, I want to change people’s opinions and get them to feel how I feel, but I couldn’t. I just completely dried up.” Nicola went home and wrote her thoughts down furiously. She has not stopped since. On Gallows Down initially set out to be a piece of nature writing, but evolved into a personal piece, bundled around the natural landscape in Nicola’s life, an enduring love of nature and the fierce desire to protect it, as well as the history of the rural working class and family life in an estate cottage. The book is filled with gentle protest and hope, which is neatly nestled within familiar landmarks such as Watership Down and the Highclere estate. It begins with the rewilding of Greenham Common and reflection on the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, and then moves to the Newbury

Indeed, the cover of On Gallows Down is a photograph taken by Nicola of her three children and dog by Combe Gibbet. Throughout her life, Nicola has always written stories and describes herself as a ‘proper book worm’, but a pivotal moment came when she was protesting against the construction of the Newbury Bypass in 1996. “I was full of anger and

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O&A AUTUMN 2021