Finbar is a graduate of the Bath Spa MA in writing for young people. His debut book Witch is based in 1646 Somerset.
‘Walking is writing…’ So said the wonderful and wise author, Julia Green, words that I’ve kept close to my heart ever since. Julia said this to my workshop class while I was a student enrolled in the MA for Creative Writing for Young People at Bath Spa University. The degree was Julia’s baby, as its course director, and it was a constant joy to be taught, encouraged and nurtured by her. It was also inspiring to learn how she researched her books, that always feature the land, and often the sea. Julia would tell us how she would spend a lot of time physically exploring her locations.
For her story, ‘To The Edge of the World’, set around the islands on the West Coast of Scotland, it meant that Julia would go off on trips – this time a small sabbatical – so that she could stay on one of the islands and soak it all up. She would walk a lot, and take notes, make drawings, recording details in everything: how the islands related to each other, the flora and fauna she found, all the colours and smells, sights and sounds.
It was this inspiration that led me to start thinking properly about my location for my debut book, ‘Witch’. The first chapter of this came from an exercise on the MA, where our brief was to write something with an historical setting. With the submission deadline looming, I took the dog out for a walk. And while chewing on what I was going to write, I remembered my mother telling me about the Pendle Witch Trials, and how she always thought this a good subject matter for me to write about. As I walked, I thought to myself, I’m certainly drawn to witches and their magick, but I also want to write about where I live in beautiful Wiltshire, a place that we had moved to some eighteen years ago, having fallen hard for these ancient green hills.
I knew instinctively that I wanted the land, the sky, the rivers, the birds and animals, all to be a big part of my story. Because walking across this incredible landscape is such a spell-binding, immersive experience; it is like nothing else, at once a meditation and a celebration, a soaring of the soul. So I started my own explorations, with the little clues left by my own subconscious. From that initial chapter of ‘Witch’, I knew that the main characters, the sisters Eveline and Dill, would be making a journey of their own, fleeing their homestead when it is attacked by witch hunters. And I knew that they ended this chapter looking down from a high place towards a far away town.
Another of my course tutors, the author Steve Voake, suggested I check out Deerleap, up on the Mendip Hills. With such an enticing name, how could I not? So, with my terrier Coco as companion, I set off for a day of walking and exploring. The Mendips were utterly thrilling, their incredible swooping aspect, how you can see for miles across a patchwork of far fields, how you can hear Skylarks twittering as they float on the wind, how the land and the sky, and the act of walking across it, takes your breath away. But also how it starts to shape your thoughts, your senses bombarded deliciously, as you think about your own characters, about what they might be saying to each other, or what they might be planning to do next, what dangers they might face.
I can’t recall exactly when a few more scenes dropped into my head, and I knew where those sisters might arrive next, but I have no doubt that the experience of walking the hills and watching the faraway town of Wells, was a formative influence on what became my first book for young people. Indeed, Wells became the location for the climatic witch trial where Eveline is determined to save her younger sister from the noose. And I knew, deep in my bones, that the land I had walked, would be entwined with the young witches’ lives, the way they spoke, the way they saw the natural world, the spells they cast. My research and reading into witchcraft confirmed this very thing, that a witch is intimately connected with nature, yet it was enacting Julia’s own spell, her magical words of ‘walking is writing’ that had brought this to me and made it real.
So, when it came to think about my second book, again I had a character, this time set in the modern day, whose imagination is bound up in the land. We find him early in the book, walking the hills, brooding on his grief, and something very strange happens to him. I can’t recall when I decided to set ‘Stone’ near the ancient white horse of Uffington, a place that has a very strong, magnetic pull on the being. But I’m heartily glad that I did, because it meant much walking around that area, often bringing friends with me, as we explored and marvelled at Waylands Smithy, at Dragon Hill, the ramparts of the old fort, and at that graceful, enigmatic chalk horse, endlessly galloping beneath the skies
I decided on my walks, that the main character, Sam, would have these rich memories of walking with his father, up to visit the horse, and looking out across the landscape, treading paths that many through time have trod. And as I looked up at the distant figures of people dotted across the hillside, I suddenly had this image of the god Odin standing on the ridge, his ravens alighting upon his shoulders, his wolves running before him. My research had told me that Odin used to do this, striding across the hills, calling fallen warriors to join his great hunt in the afterlife. But now, through walking to this sacred place, I could picture him there, the strangeness of his appearance, the way the wind lifted the tresses of his long hair.
My latest book, ‘Ghost’, is inspired by a local ghost story, much of its setting in a place called ‘Sally in the wood’. All these years I have lived nearby and I had never heard the stories, that people would see a girl running in the woods, or that drivers had narrowly avoided a figure on the road.
One sunny day, I set off with my wife, and Coco of course, and we walked the woods. We had been there before a couple of times, to visit Browne’s Folly, a tower that peeps above the trees, an excellent place to take my children as we all made up stories about the tower. And so we walked, following a stony path, and I took photos as I went. Then we realised that the dog wasn’t with us. We turned and looked back along the path. She was some way back behind us, lying prone, her ears alert and watching us, or watching something. She would not come when called, just kept watching, til eventually we had to walk back up the path to put her on the lead. We had never seen her do something like this before. She was clearly, no pun intended, spooked. And so in turn, were we, our imaginations fired by the ghost stories about the woods.
This scene then, that came about from our walking, went into the book, because how could it not? There’s something ritualistic about it, I think. That this has happened to you, so you must mark it, seal it into your tale and preserve it as a sign to others.
I close by heartily encouraging everyone reading this to make sure they walk out in our unique British countryside, to inhale the green, and smell the rainwater, the soil and plants. Walking is writing absolutely, but it is also one of the best things you can do for your body and spirit, your mental and physical health. For when you return from a walk everything is always that much better. Happy walking!
Visit Finbar’s website: finbarhawkins.com
This article was published February 2025.