BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.

I grew up deep in rural West Tyrone and in a house that was perched, kind of like the grand old

Duke of York, halfway up a hill, neither up nor down.

And as a child, I often walked the not particularly special country road that looked around

our hill, and it came to know every inch of road

all the neighbors the animals the flora and the fauna and i'm long gone from that swarm of drumlins

that i grew up among but i still walk our road in my mind choosing the season i want to be in

early summer perhaps when the raspberries are ripe on the

quiet stretch of road between the high hedge rows, or mid-autumn when the dryly bitter slows

are ready to be picked on the prickly blackthorn bush near our top gate. I sometimes choose

the soft air of those weeks when calves freshly separated from their mothers are in the high field near the crossroads.

And they're so desperate for touch, they'll take my whole hand into their mouths for a suck.

I walked the road barefoot on high summer days, popping tar blisters with my toes, coming home black, sold and

shamefaced, still expecting to be scolded for my dirty feet. And I sometimes stop at the ditch where

our old bachelor neighbor, Joe McCannie, used to lie and waiting for a hot, fresh scorn from my

mother's kitchen. My favourite part of the walk

has always been the point at which I reached the very top of the hill where rain or shine,

I can see the town of Castlederg in the valley below. But on a clear winter's day, when the wind

would skin you, things are closer than they seem in summer. And that's when

the dramatic silhouette of a snow-topped Mount Erigal is visible, 50 miles off in the distance,

County Donegal. But you know, I don't just walk this road in my mind. I now know the deep joy of

walking it with my children when I visit my parents.

...