Twenty years ago my husband and I set out to walk the 220 miles of the Severn Way, the path that traces the length of the longest river in Britain through Powys, Shropshire, Worcestershire and Gloucestershire. As we were both working full time in those days, we had to do it in short bursts; in the end it took us two and a half years to complete. But yesterday evening I travelled it again - in under an hour, at Griffin Books in Penarth, in the company of Sarah Sian Chave, the author of Hafren, the Wisdom of the River Severn. Her fascinating talk brought back so many memories - but also introduced me to so much that I hadn't known about the river, despite living by it throughout my childhood and walking every inch of the Way.
It's hard to categorize the book (which I then stayed up reading well into the night). It's a travel book, a nature book, a history book; it looks at the mythology associated with the river and its surroundings, speaks of the poetry inspired by it, points to the sustainability lessons we so urgently need to learn from it. It's beautifully illustrated by the author's sister, Rachel Collis - and it so makes me want to walk that path again.
For rather different reasons Sarah's travels along the Severn also had to be undertaken in a bits and pieces fashion, and she relied on family support to complete them. But in her Reflection at the end of the book she writes about learning from the river - learning that we are all interdependent. And that it's only by realising and acknowledging this that we can ensure survival - our own and that of our planet.
