WE READ, WE LEARNED

WE READ… Wild Signs and Star Paths: The Keys to our Lost Sixth Sense, by Tristan Gooley £20 www.hodder.co.uk

WE LEARNED… Spruce shoots taste different with each season.

“The passage of time is marked in our senses of taste and touch. I love the spring shoots of spruce: they have a cleansing scent when crushed between the fingers and it is sanitising to nibble them. They have a friendly softness to them at this time. I knew we had left spring and found summer when I plucked one from the tree and brought it to my nose, only to flinch as the now firmer, sharper needles pricked my nostril.” WE READ… Tiny Britain: A Collection of the Nation’s Overlooked Little Treasures, by Dixe Wills £17, www.theaa.com

WE LEARNED… The history of the Pooh Sticks bridge, as found in Ashdown Forest, Sussex. “For a short and

otherwise obscure footbridge, an awful lot is known about its history. It was constructed in 1907 by a team of 14 led by one John Charles Osman. It survived well into the 1970s when a major restoration took place. The revamped bridge was opened by Christopher Robin Milne in 1979. This lasted rather less time and was replaced at the turn of the century by the current wooden bridge which, happily, is still very much in the style of the original, with its fenced sides on whose bottom rail Pooh could just about get his chin.” WE READ… High and Low: How I Hiked Away from Depression Across Scotland, by Keith Foskett £10, www. keithfoskett.com

WE LEARNED… Sometimes, ‘the black dog’ is no match for a beautiful sunset.

“Aware of my sporadic unhappiness, in moments such as that evening on the banks of the Allt Coire Easaich, I forgot my problems. Even on difficult days, Scotland sensed my sadness and occasionally threw light my way, an outstretched arm of support. Perhaps it was suggesting, whispering, that I needed to accept I had problems. If I could accept that admission, then I could begin to resolve it.”