From a hillside you’ll gaze towards a sweep of the Tyne: that river connects. From people who knew these parts, saw that horizon, comes a quiet whisper of how they were influenced by the place and by people, by tides, how they travelled encouraged others to see something that may well have been missed. This is more than a spot amongst trees, cairned by inscribed stones, at times flighted by birds crossing spaces. The ground flowered by blooms has some fading amongst others that are man-made to last. The planted ones that nod quietly sit under sky fingering twigs of branches or the canopy which dapples green then gold through the year, then mostly become then bare.

Come sun, even rain, there is here light, shade, never darkness.

This musing spot oft gives reflections, persons who changed the day to make it count now nudge thoughts, a place, face, perhaps then another, sometimes more. We all know a someone who connects from times uncountable, from deeds, words, engaged happenings. The lot of our time, theirs too in that love for life along corridors of opportunity, with gifted batons carried towards a winning line. Memories made at sharing sessions in places various, under tiles of a roof or the arboreal avenue branching a headland or hayfield. Lanes and rises gorsed by yellow on broom, sometimes air-lapped from salty waves, where fed by streams grew rivers, seas. As is us, journeying timelessly from then to now and the morrow. Musings.

Shores are places special for tides and the beating heart. This view is along the broad Tyne valley where I stand is beneath skies that stretch wider than just Northumberland. Connecting is the estuary where a man once stood at the remains of a Roman fortress readying to build a Chapel on the Wall. From north in what was not then England his was a mission given, St Peter’s Chapel sits by Blackwater estuary, close to where a grey hulk marks Britain’s start to the nuclear generation of electricity. A silent hulk now, once a community that chattered with life’s sound of people marking their time here just as does Cedd.

Friends close worked at this farmland Bradwell engineering patch set amongst farmland in nd in Essex, some in overalls for the technical hands-on, others in their shorthand life deciphering to the typewriter varied messages to tell things that mattered of reactor newness. There was for them a learning curve, a knowledge spread too, spent time being the unknowing prelude to communicating Trade mannerisms and pealing many changes across decades and beyond borders, their lifestyle. It is a one I closely can attune.

This Tyne though, seen against the sun today connects nuclear endeavour from plants nearby to back south and to concrete strips laid on heavy clay. Here the whiles of Fido helped RAF wings soar, or return after delivering messages to others much noisier in way than keyboard clatter. So many changes and close by in more than the here now, and near now a muse. Suns rising, sun sets, time their own from a dayness which bookends a doing – or not! Of the beingThere it is mindset and matters of thought during days. The driver, deliverer, your head sees perhaps not that shelved bend of a valley with the river, just that brightness which shone today’s golden thoughts.  

Of Essex, in 1946 and from a heaving WWII torment came those who began a Community at Othona, the connection of Cedd and kin from beyond the Tyne in many ways, them raising a peaceful welcome then, sustained to where you still will be peaced in tranquility. That then is something of the thought train wafting my resting bench seat at Garden House, the call of a magpie alerting and softer that tune from a duo of cooing pigeons, a faintest of music passing ears where voices also speak from beyond a horizon, way along the valley in directions spreading amongst stars we don’t see, but are there even at our daylight.

In life there are dates which register, some special and keenly felt, as a beingThere now just ahead of October 26 for when I pen this. It is a link to ground other than where presently I stand. If not quite the birthday feel this is Essex Day: time for recall and memories, people, places in time, where I was born. It is given as St Cedd’s Day, a celebration of the Saint’s contributions to that region well south from here, past other rivers that tide the North Sea to the major that’s Thames, near the Crouch with Blackwater and many other muddy creeks.

Between there and my here today place there is Yorkshire, a rugged coastline of a land quite unlike Dengie marshlands and the run to the Thames where St Cedd was Bishop of the East Saxons. Leaving from there later with Essex monks he’d build a new Abbey, become known as Cedd of Lastingham. He died during the plague there, today at the Church of St Mary in the crypt flickers a candle. That church is a place you find has much that tells of times since before Celts then Cedd, and the effects of Dane Law, of incoming Normans who were next, probably, the building and how it sounds with instrumentation, voices too.

This place in Ryedale is another of those horizons that sit on the path of many beingThere destinations. In one direction is York, another leads to Whitby, of more time ago the Romans were here – well, actually weren’t they everywhere. As there at Bradwell in Essex, and there at that other Wall that reaches out over Northumberland both east and west on ways to coasts. Perhaps St Cedd knew them all well for he was the accomplished traveller. I wonder, did he ever pass here at this Durham edge which waters into the Tyne. Possibly, probably.

Here, though – certainly. Not so many paces from a Cockle Spit Beach.