Cutting through the chalk downland of Salisbury plain, in the southern English county of Wiltshire, is the gently flowing River Avon. The river runs south from its source in Pewsey Vale, through the medieval city of Salisbury, to the sea at Christchurch. It was along this river that I grew up on a small farm on the edge of a village not many miles from the ancient monument of Stonehenge.
The Wiltshire landscape is one of Neolithic burial sites, windswept hawthorn encrusted plains and chalk stream valleys, strewn with villages dating back to pre-Norman times. And above all this is the sweeping drama of the constantly changing sky.
