It feels strange that I met writer Maddie Grigg via twitter. We both live in the back of beyond in deep rural West Dorset, yet it is via the weird world web that we connected with each other some years back. Weirder still, I moved into her village from my Far from the Madding Crowd Dorset hill on the other side of that Emminster town Mr Hardy writes about.

Maddie calls my new village Lush Places, in her ‘The World from my Window‘ blog that Google picked up on as a blog of note, no less, and her subsequent Lush Places book .

Even I wrote about what is now our village, I guess, family and all, when we got together to write a blog for a year with third writer Sophia Moseley; The Lady Shed.

Not one to ever stop and rest, Maddie has started a new project. A Dorset Year. And we’ve decided that my photographs and her words could complement each other rather well.  She’s even given me a gallery. Sometimes she just runs off, inspiration grabbing her with no time to spare and she uses her own photography, which to be fair, is pretty damn good.

Together we’ve covered a local Yew Tree that would have been around in Roman times, selfish off roaders that trash an ancient path, winter weather. Who knows what will happen in the Spring, Summer and Autumn. We’ll see where this new path of words by Maddie and images by Nathalie takes us.

It will be Dorset,  a whole year of it, but who knows where the wind will blow.