On The Marshes

Product Description

For three years, Carol Donaldson lived in a caravan on the North Kent Marshes while working for the RSPB, Britain`s largest wildlife conservation charity. Despite the hardship of frozen pipes & electricity which blew out in every storm, what began as a short term financial decision turned into a way of life she came to love. It was a simple life, under a willow tree & close to nature in a home that let the outside in. But Carol was then evicted, a devastating event which also brought about the end of a long term relationship. Carol moved to a nearby town & settled down to a more conventional life. Yet the new sense of security she felt from owning her own home was matched by a powerful urge to escape into the landscapes of the estuary, to find the unconventional people she knew who still lived there, on the watery margins. So in 2014 Carol set out on a series of walks across the marshes, travelling from Gravesend to Whitstable. Both an act of pilgrimage to a landscape she loves & an investigation into why people are drawn to live there, Carol meets the houseboat & caravan owners, the hermits who live in the woods & the men who choose to die in these remote places. On the Marshes brings us a fresh, honest & unflinching book for our times. Able to evoke the landscape of a marginalised corner of Engl&, Carol weaves her own story of alienation with those who have made the marshes their home. Along the way she never shies from confronting the issues of cultural conflict so relevant today, between marsh dwellers & corporate Engl&, between private ownership & conservation, between two ways of living.