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Rain: Four Walks in English Weather
An evocative meditation on the English landscape in wet weather by the acclaimed novelist and nature writer, Melissa Harrison.
Whenever rain falls, our countryside changes. Fields, farms, hills and hedgerows appear altered, the wildlife behaves differently, and over time the terrain itself is transformed.
In Rain, Melissa Harrison explores our relationship with the weather as she follows the course of four rain showers, in four seasons, across Wicken Fen, Shropshire, the Darent Valley and Dartmoor.
Blending these expeditions with reading, research, memory and imagination, she reveals how rain is not just an essential element of the world around us, but a key part of our own identity too.
Whenever rain falls, our countryside changes. Fields, farms, hills and hedgerows appear altered, the wildlife behaves differently, and over time the terrain itself is transformed.
In Rain, Melissa Harrison explores our relationship with the weather as she follows the course of four rain showers, in four seasons, across Wicken Fen, Shropshire, the Darent Valley and Dartmoor.
Blending these expeditions with reading, research, memory and imagination, she reveals how rain is not just an essential element of the world around us, but a key part of our own identity too.
104 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2016
33 people are currently reading
1,803 people want to read
About the author
Melissa Harrison
14听books231听followersMelissa Harrison is the author of the novels Clay and At Hawthorn Time, which was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and longlisted for the Bailey's Women's Prize, and one work of non-fiction, Rain, which was longlisted for the Wainwright Prize. She is a nature writer, critic and columnist for The Times, the Financial Times and the Guardian, among others. Her new novel All Among the Barley is due for publication in August, 2018..
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 154 reviews
May 16, 2017
And who art thou? said I to the soft-falling shower,
Which, strange to tell, gave me an answer,
as here translated:
I am the poem of earth...
Walt Whitman, The Voice of the Rain.
Thus begins Melissa Harrison's slim book on rain and walking, and I think she does every bit as good a job as Whitman in describing both the rain, and the changing moods of our sodden island.
I was brought up in a hot dry country, and as far back as I can remember my mother used to talk nostalgically of England, and the joys of rain and cool green landscapes. As a result, I am a great lover of our wet weather. There is nothing more cosy than sitting at home reading a book, with rain drumming on the windows, and I love walking in the rain too, with my anorak hood up, and my wellies splashing through puddles.... from a fine damp drizzle to a roaring downpour - I love it all.
Harrison writes a nature column for The Times, and her writing is superb. Her lyricism is harnessed to practical observations - threads of information about rain and the countryside. I found her book incredibly moving. I think it's a glorious homage both to walking in wet weather and the English countryside.
I end with some examples of her writing...
----------------------------------------
Melissa Harrison's blog: it ends in 2016, when her writing took off professionally, but still gives a nice flavour of the writer and her concerns.
And as we move into summer, there may be others here who find hot weather a bane rather than a pleasure. Here is my favourite panacea......
Here's another lovely one, this time with visuals, & a gutter that needs fixing ;O)
Which, strange to tell, gave me an answer,
as here translated:
I am the poem of earth...
Walt Whitman, The Voice of the Rain.
Thus begins Melissa Harrison's slim book on rain and walking, and I think she does every bit as good a job as Whitman in describing both the rain, and the changing moods of our sodden island.
I was brought up in a hot dry country, and as far back as I can remember my mother used to talk nostalgically of England, and the joys of rain and cool green landscapes. As a result, I am a great lover of our wet weather. There is nothing more cosy than sitting at home reading a book, with rain drumming on the windows, and I love walking in the rain too, with my anorak hood up, and my wellies splashing through puddles.... from a fine damp drizzle to a roaring downpour - I love it all.
Harrison writes a nature column for The Times, and her writing is superb. Her lyricism is harnessed to practical observations - threads of information about rain and the countryside. I found her book incredibly moving. I think it's a glorious homage both to walking in wet weather and the English countryside.
I end with some examples of her writing...
----------------------------------------
Melissa Harrison's blog: it ends in 2016, when her writing took off professionally, but still gives a nice flavour of the writer and her concerns.
And as we move into summer, there may be others here who find hot weather a bane rather than a pleasure. Here is my favourite panacea......
Here's another lovely one, this time with visuals, & a gutter that needs fixing ;O)
May 3, 2016
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley to read and write an honest review.
Over the summer you, may catch in a home a conversation that goes along the lines of:
鈥楧o you fancy a walk somewhere tomorrow?鈥�
鈥榃hy not; what is the weather doing?'
鈥楻aining! Shall we go to the pub instead?鈥�
But not in Melissa Harrison鈥檚 house, where in the course of research for this slim volume, she actively sought out the rain and drizzle on her four walks around Wicken Fen in the Winter, near a village in Shropshire in the Spring then the Darent Valley during the summer and a damp Dartmoor in Autumn.
Most people abhor rain, mainly because it seems to arrive at the most inopportune moment, such as when the barbeque is lit, or the picnic blanket laid out. But this green and pleasant land needs regular doses of that life giving water. As Harrison walks, her keen eyes detect the blue blur of kingfishers, the way that the views are blurred and softened by the drizzle, and she brings the sound of rain on leaves in a wood and the way that the texture of the ground changes as the rain soaks in. There are other changes too as the rain descends; bird song fades away, replaced by the drum of water on your hood, insects hide under leaves and deer take shelter in the deepest part of the woods. Everything changes after rain too, the sun sparkles through water droplets, hedgerows and cattle steam and even a muddy puddle will shimmer. Everything feels refreshed and renewed.
It is also about the peculiar relationship that the British have with the weather, from the exhilaration of being in a thunderstorm to the smell of summer rain. There are lovely details too; we learn about the British Rainfall Organisation, an eccentric lot who collected rainfall levels from the mid nineteenth century until 1991 and an man called George Merryweather who鈥檚 invention using leeches to ring a bell when a storm was due, never really caught on. Picking up on something that Robert MacFarlane started last year in his book Landmarks, there is a glossary of local words describing precipitation in all its forms. There is the delightful 鈥榙ringey鈥�, a light rain that still soaks you through from Norfolk, and the honest 鈥榮iling down鈥�, no prizes for guessing that one from Yorkshire. It never fails to amaze me just how much our language is drawn from our locale and environment.
Harrison is a fine writer but up until now has only written fiction. Rain, her first foray into non-fiction, is keeping the standard high. She is able to convey the finest detail of her surroundings without a single wasted word of prose. I like the way she pulls snippets and facts into the narrative whilst still keeping it personal and familiar. It is evocative writing as well, and is worthy to stand amongst other British nature writers. But mostly it is a call to get back outside, regardless of the weather, to experience the natural world and the seasons as we were always meant to.
Over the summer you, may catch in a home a conversation that goes along the lines of:
鈥楧o you fancy a walk somewhere tomorrow?鈥�
鈥榃hy not; what is the weather doing?'
鈥楻aining! Shall we go to the pub instead?鈥�
But not in Melissa Harrison鈥檚 house, where in the course of research for this slim volume, she actively sought out the rain and drizzle on her four walks around Wicken Fen in the Winter, near a village in Shropshire in the Spring then the Darent Valley during the summer and a damp Dartmoor in Autumn.
Most people abhor rain, mainly because it seems to arrive at the most inopportune moment, such as when the barbeque is lit, or the picnic blanket laid out. But this green and pleasant land needs regular doses of that life giving water. As Harrison walks, her keen eyes detect the blue blur of kingfishers, the way that the views are blurred and softened by the drizzle, and she brings the sound of rain on leaves in a wood and the way that the texture of the ground changes as the rain soaks in. There are other changes too as the rain descends; bird song fades away, replaced by the drum of water on your hood, insects hide under leaves and deer take shelter in the deepest part of the woods. Everything changes after rain too, the sun sparkles through water droplets, hedgerows and cattle steam and even a muddy puddle will shimmer. Everything feels refreshed and renewed.
It is also about the peculiar relationship that the British have with the weather, from the exhilaration of being in a thunderstorm to the smell of summer rain. There are lovely details too; we learn about the British Rainfall Organisation, an eccentric lot who collected rainfall levels from the mid nineteenth century until 1991 and an man called George Merryweather who鈥檚 invention using leeches to ring a bell when a storm was due, never really caught on. Picking up on something that Robert MacFarlane started last year in his book Landmarks, there is a glossary of local words describing precipitation in all its forms. There is the delightful 鈥榙ringey鈥�, a light rain that still soaks you through from Norfolk, and the honest 鈥榮iling down鈥�, no prizes for guessing that one from Yorkshire. It never fails to amaze me just how much our language is drawn from our locale and environment.
Harrison is a fine writer but up until now has only written fiction. Rain, her first foray into non-fiction, is keeping the standard high. She is able to convey the finest detail of her surroundings without a single wasted word of prose. I like the way she pulls snippets and facts into the narrative whilst still keeping it personal and familiar. It is evocative writing as well, and is worthy to stand amongst other British nature writers. But mostly it is a call to get back outside, regardless of the weather, to experience the natural world and the seasons as we were always meant to.
August 23, 2023
I鈥檓 someone who has walked wild places, often in rain, for many years so this book looked a good match to me. I wasn鈥檛 disappointed. This book, Rain, Four Walks in English Weather by Melissa Harrison, is not long but manages to get an awful lot in between the covers. There are only four walks; Wicken Fen (in Winter), Shropshire (Spring), The Darent Valley (Summer) and Dartmoor in Autumn. This means that, in addition to some very varied areas and scenery, seasons are neatly worked in too. In addition there is a section with 鈥�100 words concerning rain鈥� which I found very interesting and enjoyed. A little more mundanely (but no less appropriate) there is a glossary of meteorological terms for rain and a worthwhile bibliography.
The individual chapters for the walks are very rich in their content. Obviously the walk is described however much more manages to get in. Given the walks I鈥檝e done I do know how the past, future, previous walks, things seen and not seen come into the mind while wandering and the author reassures me I鈥檓 not alone in that! This really is far more than simply about walking in the rain. She brings in facets of history, flora and fauna of the areas explored too and in a knowledgeable way. In each case the type of rain affecting the area is explained. Poetry and folklore put in a welcome appearance. Equally while these are about individual walks they are also about the place and times past both in the author鈥檚 experience as well as others.
For those of us with that very British obsession about the weather generally and rain in particular this book is a joy. For armchair walkers and those who know some of the places it would be a great gift and a book to dip into (maybe on really wet days). Given I do know Dartmoor quite well I cannot help but reflect on that chapter in particular. I found it so interesting and despite walking the moors for years I learnt quite a lot. It also conveyed a lot emotionally which worked for me and reflected some of my feelings about the area. At the end I simply want to go back and read it again. So rich. It may be about rain but it is a lovely book to immerse yourself in!
Note 鈥� I received an advance digital copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair review
The individual chapters for the walks are very rich in their content. Obviously the walk is described however much more manages to get in. Given the walks I鈥檝e done I do know how the past, future, previous walks, things seen and not seen come into the mind while wandering and the author reassures me I鈥檓 not alone in that! This really is far more than simply about walking in the rain. She brings in facets of history, flora and fauna of the areas explored too and in a knowledgeable way. In each case the type of rain affecting the area is explained. Poetry and folklore put in a welcome appearance. Equally while these are about individual walks they are also about the place and times past both in the author鈥檚 experience as well as others.
For those of us with that very British obsession about the weather generally and rain in particular this book is a joy. For armchair walkers and those who know some of the places it would be a great gift and a book to dip into (maybe on really wet days). Given I do know Dartmoor quite well I cannot help but reflect on that chapter in particular. I found it so interesting and despite walking the moors for years I learnt quite a lot. It also conveyed a lot emotionally which worked for me and reflected some of my feelings about the area. At the end I simply want to go back and read it again. So rich. It may be about rain but it is a lovely book to immerse yourself in!
Note 鈥� I received an advance digital copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair review
November 25, 2019
I won鈥檛 set out for a walk in the rain unless it鈥檚 unavoidable but I don鈥檛 mind if the rain comes on while I鈥檓 walking. In the countryside, other walkers disappear quickly when the rain comes on and so it鈥檚 easier to find a solitary spot.
This book contains four walks in different parts of the south of England. I found the first walk in Wicken Fen disappointing. It鈥檚 the sort of nature writing that just reels off what鈥檚 being observed. Without the necessary background knowledge, it鈥檚 frankly boring. I had to steel myself to continue reading but the other three walks are better, mainly because they branch off into other topics - social history, poetry, etc. - and so I found them more interesting.
There is a glossary at the back of the book of 100 terms used to describe rain in different parts of the UK. I hadn鈥檛 heard of many of them and enjoyed reading them. One - dreich, pronounced dreech and meaning bleak, miserable or grey - was recently chosen as the favourite Scots word of 2019. No wonder. It鈥檚 hardly an unusual phenomenon here. In fact, it鈥檚 been dreich a鈥� day the day!
This book contains four walks in different parts of the south of England. I found the first walk in Wicken Fen disappointing. It鈥檚 the sort of nature writing that just reels off what鈥檚 being observed. Without the necessary background knowledge, it鈥檚 frankly boring. I had to steel myself to continue reading but the other three walks are better, mainly because they branch off into other topics - social history, poetry, etc. - and so I found them more interesting.
There is a glossary at the back of the book of 100 terms used to describe rain in different parts of the UK. I hadn鈥檛 heard of many of them and enjoyed reading them. One - dreich, pronounced dreech and meaning bleak, miserable or grey - was recently chosen as the favourite Scots word of 2019. No wonder. It鈥檚 hardly an unusual phenomenon here. In fact, it鈥檚 been dreich a鈥� day the day!
December 4, 2018
In the course of a year Harrison took four rainy walks, in different seasons and different parts of England. She intersperses her observations with facts and legends about the rain (the term 鈥渙ld saw鈥� appears three times!), including quotes from historical weather guides and poems. I have very little to say about this; it has the occasional nice line, but is a very understated nature/travel book overall. The most noteworthy moment is when (at the very end) she remembers scattering her mother鈥檚 ashes on a Dartmoor tor. I most liked the argument that it鈥檚 important to not just go out in good weather, but to adapt to nature in all its moods:
鈥渢here鈥檚 something salutary about the way our best endeavours can still be scotched by something so simple and primordial as the weather: it keeps us in our place somehow, reminds us that we are still part of the natural world, and not above it.鈥�
鈥渋f you only go out on sunny days you only see half the picture, and remain somehow untested and callow; whereas discovering that you can withstand all the necessary and ordinary kinds of weather creates a satisfying feeling of equanimity in the face of life鈥檚 vicissitudes that may or may not be rational, but is real nonetheless.鈥�
鈥淚 can choose now to overcome the impulse for comfort and convenience that insulates us not only from the bad in life but from much of the good. I think we need the weather, in all its forms, to feel fully human 鈥� which is to say, an animal.鈥�
鈥渢here鈥檚 something salutary about the way our best endeavours can still be scotched by something so simple and primordial as the weather: it keeps us in our place somehow, reminds us that we are still part of the natural world, and not above it.鈥�
鈥渋f you only go out on sunny days you only see half the picture, and remain somehow untested and callow; whereas discovering that you can withstand all the necessary and ordinary kinds of weather creates a satisfying feeling of equanimity in the face of life鈥檚 vicissitudes that may or may not be rational, but is real nonetheless.鈥�
鈥淚 can choose now to overcome the impulse for comfort and convenience that insulates us not only from the bad in life but from much of the good. I think we need the weather, in all its forms, to feel fully human 鈥� which is to say, an animal.鈥�
March 4, 2016
Rain: Four Walks in English Weather is a joy to read. The very British obsession with the weather is combined with nature and wildlife in the delightful company of Melissa Harrison, who observes and informs us along the way. We enjoy four walks in the book which are beautifully described and taken in different seasons:
Wicken Fen (Jan) - in Winter / Shropshire (Apr) 鈥� in the Spring
The Darent Valley (Aug) 鈥� In Summer / Dartmoor (Oct) - in the Autumn
In each of the walks the rain falls and the author describes the sights, sounds and feelings of being there. I found it all charming from the quotes about rain from the past, the folklore on thunder and lightning, and then I learned some facts I never knew about ants and birds among other creatures. Melissa Harrison makes it a fascinating journey and explores historic forms of predicting the weather, some quite bazaar by today鈥檚 standards.
鈥業nto each life some rain must fall鈥� 鈥� as the author says it is so true. She discusses how essential rain is for life and how it shapes our landscape through erosion and cleansing. Then there is the emotional aspect which many of us may link to sadness or melancholy, maybe watching raindrops run down the window on a bad day.
This is a wonderful little book and I absolutely adored reading it. It made me want to be there walking in the rain too. Melissa Harrison is informative and her writing a pleasure to read. There is nothing in the book I didn鈥檛 enjoy but I鈥檓 giving four stars because it鈥檚 just too short and I loved it and wanted more. A book I will have to satisfy myself with reading again. (ARC received)
January 4, 2021
Melissa Harrison鈥檚 great gift as a nature writer is seeing the miraculous in the everyday. She鈥檚 not an explorer, conquering distant hazardous terrains; she writes about the close to home, and especially seasons and weather, which theme this slim volume. Specifically, how rain, that most typically English weather, shapes the landscape and its flora and fauna.
She narrates four long wet walks: in the Cambridgeshire fenland in winter, the hinterland of Shropshire in spring, along the River Darent in Kent in summer, and over Dartmoor in autumn. Diverse landscapes, with all sorts of rain. There鈥檚 no drama or narrative, just observations of all that she sees, from micro to macro, and the great marvellous interconnnection of it all: soil, lichen, insects, birds, animals, plants, trees, crops, waterways, land forms, geology, clouds, and light. How this microclimate and this rock and these minerals create this soil, so we get these plants and trees, which means these insects, which means these birds and so on, and behold the web of life in all its glory.
For the reader, it鈥檚 like going for a ramble with a keen-eyed knowledgeable friend who can point out interesting stuff along the way and tell you all sorts of things you didn鈥檛 know. Owls aren鈥檛 waterproof, I learned, and neither are rabbits. And she doesn鈥檛 overdo the personal material; there are enough snippets of her memories and reflections to feel a connection with the narrator, but she doesn鈥檛 make herself the centre of attention.
The style is a bit awkward at times, but it鈥檚 not easy to weave such diverse material together seamlessly, especially in such short form. I loved her last two novels, 鈥楢ll among the barley鈥� and 鈥楢t hawthorn time鈥�, both gritty, complex, satisfying reads, so I could overlook the slight gaucheness of this little miscellany. Melissa Harrison also did a wonderful weekly lockdown podcast last year, in which she, um, went for country walks and narrated what she saw, unscripted. I found this podcast a joy and solace throughout a tough time, so reading this now I could hear her voice and her endearing enthusiasm, so perhaps a slight halo effect for this book. One for Melissa Harrison completists and fangirls, rather than one to start with - but it has made me see rain a bit differently too.
Podcast link:
She narrates four long wet walks: in the Cambridgeshire fenland in winter, the hinterland of Shropshire in spring, along the River Darent in Kent in summer, and over Dartmoor in autumn. Diverse landscapes, with all sorts of rain. There鈥檚 no drama or narrative, just observations of all that she sees, from micro to macro, and the great marvellous interconnnection of it all: soil, lichen, insects, birds, animals, plants, trees, crops, waterways, land forms, geology, clouds, and light. How this microclimate and this rock and these minerals create this soil, so we get these plants and trees, which means these insects, which means these birds and so on, and behold the web of life in all its glory.
For the reader, it鈥檚 like going for a ramble with a keen-eyed knowledgeable friend who can point out interesting stuff along the way and tell you all sorts of things you didn鈥檛 know. Owls aren鈥檛 waterproof, I learned, and neither are rabbits. And she doesn鈥檛 overdo the personal material; there are enough snippets of her memories and reflections to feel a connection with the narrator, but she doesn鈥檛 make herself the centre of attention.
The style is a bit awkward at times, but it鈥檚 not easy to weave such diverse material together seamlessly, especially in such short form. I loved her last two novels, 鈥楢ll among the barley鈥� and 鈥楢t hawthorn time鈥�, both gritty, complex, satisfying reads, so I could overlook the slight gaucheness of this little miscellany. Melissa Harrison also did a wonderful weekly lockdown podcast last year, in which she, um, went for country walks and narrated what she saw, unscripted. I found this podcast a joy and solace throughout a tough time, so reading this now I could hear her voice and her endearing enthusiasm, so perhaps a slight halo effect for this book. One for Melissa Harrison completists and fangirls, rather than one to start with - but it has made me see rain a bit differently too.
Podcast link:
February 24, 2016
A Glorious ramble through the English countryside in great English weather!
This short book contains four descriptions of various walks in inclement weather brought to vivid life by the great descriptive skills of Melissa Harrison.
I really enjoyed this lovely armchair volume which reminds you of the breadth of flora and fauna in England whilst being humorous and entertaining at the same time.
Recommended for the outdoorsy person in your life.
I received this book for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
This short book contains four descriptions of various walks in inclement weather brought to vivid life by the great descriptive skills of Melissa Harrison.
I really enjoyed this lovely armchair volume which reminds you of the breadth of flora and fauna in England whilst being humorous and entertaining at the same time.
Recommended for the outdoorsy person in your life.
I received this book for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
July 14, 2018
Delightful book of essays about rain in England. The author takes walks in Wicken Fen in January, Shropshire in April, the Darent Valley in August, and Dartmoor in October. She uses historic works and observations about rain as well of some of her own over the years in crafting the essays. She includes two glossaries--one of common terms used by residents and one of a more official meteorological nature. I stumbled across this when someone read it for a challenge in June, and it lived up to the expectation I had.
June 1, 2017
I am a big fan of walking in the rain, there are a number of reasons; My dog hates the rain, it is very rare to see another person, the place seems to come alive, colours are more vivid and it is exhilarating to have walked in a storm. A couple of walks I remember well was an 8mile charity walk when my daughter was a cub, it poured it down the whole time, my waterproofs became saturated and clothes underneath soaked through, the second we got back to the car the rain suddenly stopped and the sun came out, typical! The second walk was on the Brecon beacons, coming down a mountain visibility became zero and we experienced some of the biggest drops of rain ever, my daughter hated it, but got through it by laughing at me as I was carrying the rucksack and kept falling over.
In this book Melissa Harrison has decided to spend a year getting wet by hiking in the rain and to see why people avoid it. She sees a whole new world, especially when the rain stops for a bit and the birds appear from nowhere to make the most of the break. This line sums it up perfectly:
"it seems to me that if you only ever go out on sunny days you only see half the picture, and remain somehow untested and callow"
There is a nice selection of topics covered here, different types of rain, misty being the worse I reckon, nature, science of weather and history of some pretty impressive storms. Also included are some quotes from poets/writers that have been inspired by the rain. This is a lovely little book and I highly recommend you read it and then go for a walk in the rain.
I spotted this in the glossary which made me laugh:
"Scotch mist: the kind of fine rain a Scotsman will barely notice but which will wet an Englishman to the skin"
In this book Melissa Harrison has decided to spend a year getting wet by hiking in the rain and to see why people avoid it. She sees a whole new world, especially when the rain stops for a bit and the birds appear from nowhere to make the most of the break. This line sums it up perfectly:
"it seems to me that if you only ever go out on sunny days you only see half the picture, and remain somehow untested and callow"
There is a nice selection of topics covered here, different types of rain, misty being the worse I reckon, nature, science of weather and history of some pretty impressive storms. Also included are some quotes from poets/writers that have been inspired by the rain. This is a lovely little book and I highly recommend you read it and then go for a walk in the rain.
I spotted this in the glossary which made me laugh:
"Scotch mist: the kind of fine rain a Scotsman will barely notice but which will wet an Englishman to the skin"
July 27, 2020
I'm loving anything by Melissa Harrison at the moment so it was a nice surprise to find this on my shelves during a lockdown rearrange!
September 6, 2024
A short yet very sweet book about all things rain!
As a dedicated pluviophile and geography buff, I loved this book immensely. There was talk of rainy walks, orographic relief, ground surface runoff, droplet size! I was like a pig in shat!!
If you're a lover of listening to rain drumming on a tin roof in a feisty thunderstorm, or watching the streaks down a window on a whimsical Tuesday afternoon, then this is the book for you.
Re-read September 2024 : now the "rainy season" has arrived, I purchased a copy of this book that I loved as a library loan. It's still a fantastic read and has made me nostalgic in many many ways.
As a dedicated pluviophile and geography buff, I loved this book immensely. There was talk of rainy walks, orographic relief, ground surface runoff, droplet size! I was like a pig in shat!!
If you're a lover of listening to rain drumming on a tin roof in a feisty thunderstorm, or watching the streaks down a window on a whimsical Tuesday afternoon, then this is the book for you.
Re-read September 2024 : now the "rainy season" has arrived, I purchased a copy of this book that I loved as a library loan. It's still a fantastic read and has made me nostalgic in many many ways.
December 2, 2019
This little book reads so familiar, I'm so glad I've picked it up after skimming through the review of one of my 欧宝娱乐 friends (Hi Amalia!) it almost feels as if Ms. Harrison came along on my trips around the country. Was she with me in Dartmoor National Park? Had she chaperoned me around Lewtrenchant's gardens? Had she been a walking companion to Hound Tor? I cannot deny it with certainty, as I recognise so many little things in this book; smells of trees, colours of perfect English countryside villages and sounds of nature. The voices in the dripping rain.
I include a handful of words from Ms. Harrison's riveting Rain glossary:
Dreich: dreary, bleak (Scotland)
Dringey: the kind of light rain that still manages to get you soaking wet (Norfolk, Suffolk)
Drisk: misty drizzle (Cornwall)
Fox's wedding: sudden drops of rain from a clear sky (Gloucestershire, Devon, Dorset)
Fremd: strange or odd, applied to weather (from Old English)
Gosling blast/storm: sudden wind and sleet (England)
Haar: misty rain that drifts in from the sea (Scotland, Cornwall)
Moor-gallop: wind and rain moving across high ground (Cumbria)
Raining forks tiyuns down'ards: extremely forceful rain (Lincolnshire)
I include a handful of words from Ms. Harrison's riveting Rain glossary:
Dreich: dreary, bleak (Scotland)
Dringey: the kind of light rain that still manages to get you soaking wet (Norfolk, Suffolk)
Drisk: misty drizzle (Cornwall)
Fox's wedding: sudden drops of rain from a clear sky (Gloucestershire, Devon, Dorset)
Fremd: strange or odd, applied to weather (from Old English)
Gosling blast/storm: sudden wind and sleet (England)
Haar: misty rain that drifts in from the sea (Scotland, Cornwall)
Moor-gallop: wind and rain moving across high ground (Cumbria)
Raining forks tiyuns down'ards: extremely forceful rain (Lincolnshire)
February 3, 2018
It is probably a good sign that your interests are a little too varied when you start reading books about rain, and walks in rain. But here we are!
Rain is pretty much what it says it is on the tin and I am thankful to have spotted it at my local bookstore. Melissa Harrison embarks on four walks across the year, first in Wicken Fen, then in Shropshire, The Darent Valley and Dartmoor. All of her walks preach 鈥榯oss鈥� to fine weather and are footed in the rain. The reading feels just a little bit sacred and mythical; part of me believed in the possibility that she would come across a whole other universe鈥� I mean, who has ever seen the countryside in the rain?
Melissa Harrison is beautifully intuiting and quietly compelling. The enormity of her knowledge is very modestly cast into being and she forms an entirely acute picture of her surroundings. Her insights on nature, biology and the perennial make even the silence of the country after a storm feel like a profundity. She has a very English voice and sentiment, she even brings up that idiosyncrasy which I believe is held by all British people: to describe where a place is by telling you what motor way you went down to get to it. The M25 just sounds like a Messier object!
Rain is a wonderful coffee table book and it will certainly keep all your anglophile friends at bay for birthdays and at Christmas. I loved being able to read it whilst flogging it out in my January mid-summer-Dante-inferno heat.
Original Review posted at:
Rain is pretty much what it says it is on the tin and I am thankful to have spotted it at my local bookstore. Melissa Harrison embarks on four walks across the year, first in Wicken Fen, then in Shropshire, The Darent Valley and Dartmoor. All of her walks preach 鈥榯oss鈥� to fine weather and are footed in the rain. The reading feels just a little bit sacred and mythical; part of me believed in the possibility that she would come across a whole other universe鈥� I mean, who has ever seen the countryside in the rain?
Melissa Harrison is beautifully intuiting and quietly compelling. The enormity of her knowledge is very modestly cast into being and she forms an entirely acute picture of her surroundings. Her insights on nature, biology and the perennial make even the silence of the country after a storm feel like a profundity. She has a very English voice and sentiment, she even brings up that idiosyncrasy which I believe is held by all British people: to describe where a place is by telling you what motor way you went down to get to it. The M25 just sounds like a Messier object!
Rain is a wonderful coffee table book and it will certainly keep all your anglophile friends at bay for birthdays and at Christmas. I loved being able to read it whilst flogging it out in my January mid-summer-Dante-inferno heat.
Original Review posted at:
May 30, 2022
lovely lovely lovely. who鈥檇 have thought a book about rain would make such a good read. I personally love the pitter patter, the light rain you get when it鈥檚 warm, how flowers seem to bloom more after a shower. this book got it all spot on and I love melissa harrison鈥檚 writing. delicious
January 17, 2025
The vocabulary uses sometimes seems unnecessarily highbrow, but otherwise this is a delightful exploration of the English countryside through that most English of features - rain.
Owen鈥檚 Review: 4/5 milk bottles. I already don鈥檛 mind getting a little wet in the rain, and now I expect dad to take me out anytime it鈥檚 pouring.
Owen鈥檚 Review: 4/5 milk bottles. I already don鈥檛 mind getting a little wet in the rain, and now I expect dad to take me out anytime it鈥檚 pouring.
November 4, 2019
Four seasons, four walks in rain from refreshing rain on a hot summer day to fine autumn rain. The 100 words for rain at the end of the book were interesting.
March 15, 2020
Some small books can feel very full, but this one was just a bit too slight. The content wasn't bad by any means; there just wasn't enough of it to make for an absorbing read. I think I was hoping for a more 'imaginative' take on the subject (and the marketing reinforced that expectation), however the author mainly sticks to surface-level descriptions of what she is observing on her walks.
Melissa Harrison's writing is clear, and at times her description really places you in the countryside. I particularly liked her account of sheltering from the Dartmoor rain in a forested nook and feeling as though she'd entered a magical space outside of time. That segment brought back a sudden childhood memory of playing for hours under giant mossy trees. It was interesting to learn about the role of the volunteer-driven British Rainfall Organisation and there is a charming anecdote about an invention, the 'Storm Prognosticator,' which aimed to predict storms using leeches (placed in containers facing each other so that they wouldn't get lonely.)
Overall, though, the mix of tones gives the book a disjointed feel. The writing is dense with scientific, geographical and geological terms and this is mingled with a matter-of-fact reporting of Harrison's own walks. I found my mind wandering off while reading some of these sentences and although it picked up slightly towards the end, the book didn't settle long enough on any one thread - the personal, the poetic, the historical, the philosophical - to be truly engaging.
It was just okay.
Edit: The cover is gorgeous though. Really well-designed.
Melissa Harrison's writing is clear, and at times her description really places you in the countryside. I particularly liked her account of sheltering from the Dartmoor rain in a forested nook and feeling as though she'd entered a magical space outside of time. That segment brought back a sudden childhood memory of playing for hours under giant mossy trees. It was interesting to learn about the role of the volunteer-driven British Rainfall Organisation and there is a charming anecdote about an invention, the 'Storm Prognosticator,' which aimed to predict storms using leeches (placed in containers facing each other so that they wouldn't get lonely.)
Overall, though, the mix of tones gives the book a disjointed feel. The writing is dense with scientific, geographical and geological terms and this is mingled with a matter-of-fact reporting of Harrison's own walks. I found my mind wandering off while reading some of these sentences and although it picked up slightly towards the end, the book didn't settle long enough on any one thread - the personal, the poetic, the historical, the philosophical - to be truly engaging.
It was just okay.
Edit: The cover is gorgeous though. Really well-designed.
May 3, 2017
I chose Melissa Harrison's Rain: Four Walks in English Weather to read during my final Dewey's 24-Hour Readathon. It is truly lovely; within its pages, Harrison takes four countryside walks around various parts of England, and in different seasons. Her writing is lovely, and she makes the most of discussing the ways in which rain affects particular landscapes, and how the animals which live within them have adapted - or not, as the case may be. Rain is geographically, geologically, historically, and biologically interesting, and provides several nods to works of literature throughout. Charming, thought-provoking, and lovely, particularly when one considers it in tandem with its glossary, which provides one hundred words for different kinds of rain around the United Kingdom.
February 20, 2016
I'm not a huge fan of rain - it's the most depressing kind of weather and it often seems to be the only weather available in England. But this book enabled me to see it in a different way. It is exactly what it says on the cover: 4 walks in 4 seasons in 4 different kinds of rainy weather (from thunderstorm to drizzle, from showers to steady curtains of rain). The author's love and knowledge of nature, observations on changes in climate and perceptions of the weather, filled with quotations and tangential erudite remarks, are all delightful. Almost makes me want to head out into the miserable rain for a walk.
May 2, 2020
Melissa Harrison's Rain: Four Walks in English Weather is another of the "random walking books I picked up while browsing in the travel section of Blackwells" (a category that accounts for a fairly substantial proportion of my TBR pile). It's exactly what it says on the tin; four short essays describing four rainy walks taken across the course of a single year, one each quarter. Each essay blends description of the walks themselves and the varied landscapes and rain Harrison walks through, which range from the flatness of Wicken Fen to the tors of Dartmoor, and from steady winter rain through spring showers to a summmer thunderstorm, with meteorological detail about the causes of the different types of rain storms and showers which are such a feature of the English weather, notes on natural history, quotes from other writings about weather, and snippets of memoir. It ends with a glossary of regional terms for rain and another of meteoroglogical definitions for different types of rain (I now know the precise difference between light, heavy, very heavy and extreme rain, although alas there's no waty to work that out without standing still holding a rain gauge for an hour). It's a lovely little book, which evokes each different setting and type of storm perfectly, and I'd particularly recommend it to anyone who is longing to get out into a different bit of countryside, or any countryside at all, after weeks of lockdown.
September 16, 2019
I loved this book as it creates moods that vibrate with me and my feelings when I鈥檓 out in nature. I must read it again soon.
June 12, 2016
A beautifully written, gentle and informative book about exploring the English countryside in the rain.
"... to experience the countryside on fair days and never foul is to understand only half its story."
"... to experience the countryside on fair days and never foul is to understand only half its story."
September 5, 2022
A beautiful, atmospheric book by nature writer Melissa Harrison.
August 22, 2022
Wonderful read! Reminded me a lot of Strands: A Year of Discoveries on the Beach
Book by Jean Sprackland. Another favourite book of mine. Melissa poetry and facts about the weather are evocative. I've never really been a fan of rain walking but after reading this book, I feel I need to try some rain walking especially as we move into Autumn. Not sure you would ever get me out in a thunderstorm like Melissa though.
Its a wonderful read if you love the natural world and this amazing planet we live on.
Book by Jean Sprackland. Another favourite book of mine. Melissa poetry and facts about the weather are evocative. I've never really been a fan of rain walking but after reading this book, I feel I need to try some rain walking especially as we move into Autumn. Not sure you would ever get me out in a thunderstorm like Melissa though.
Its a wonderful read if you love the natural world and this amazing planet we live on.
February 1, 2024
The cover design of this little book is so gorgeous. I love the idea of this book- it's so up my street, but I think it could have been executed a little better. My main issue was the flow of this book, I found myself re-reading passages a lot because I was getting distracted. It felt disjointed and quite difficult at times to really grasp what she was saying, some very wordy paragraphs that took me out of the moment and felt a little jarring. There are actually some beautiful descriptions in here and at times I could really visualise what she was seeing, if the sentences were rephrased with that same concept, it would have read a lot better.
September 2, 2018
My mother loved this place, and I think about the day when we brought her up here one last time, right at the very end of her life. It was a strange afternoon; it felt to me as though it should have had more shape, more meaning, but none of us quite knew how to give it the significance we needed. Like so many things in life, you just do your best; but for a long time after we all straggled back to our waiting cars, leaving the gritty ash to blow from the tor's top, I thought every time it rained, of her body passing slowly into the moor around the tor, and becoming part of it, drawn down by the life-giving water and returned slowly to the earth.
February 7, 2019
What a beautiful little book from the UK National Trust. Melissa Harrison takes us on 4 rambles through the English countryside enjoying the rain at all times. Along the way we learn about the birds, insects and mammals that are to be found as well as the plant life and the author includes snatches of poetry. I particularly enjoyed the glossary at the end in which she lists all the names for rain to be found in different area of the country. A charming little read.
January 31, 2020
A beautifully written book about the pleasure of walking outdoors in rainy weather. As Harrison quotes famous walker Alfred Wainwright "There's no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing.". And after just getting home from another very wet dog walk, but arriving home dry because of my rain gear, I can totally agree.
June 21, 2020
These guided meditations through rained-on landscapes are incredibly vivid. It feels a lot like taking the walk yourself - there are a moments of very dramatic beauty, with a healthy amount of gentle plodding in between. A lovely, soothing, ambient lockdown read.
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