At the MOTHTOWN book launch, I was asked whether there was a real place that inspired the story. Is Mothtown real? And if so, where is it?

Well, dear Reader. Be prepared for a tale of daring. Adventure. And stupidity.

Close your eyes and imagine Midwinter’s Day. You might be cosying around a fire. Drinking milky hot chocolate. Biting into a mince pie. Snuggling beneath a lovely blanket.

But not THIS Midwinter. Imagine you and your husband decide to go for a walk. Somewhere new and wild and mythical.

And you end up here.

This is it. Simonside, in Northumberland. A place of fells, forests, and waterfalls. Cliff edges and winding paths. Caves and burial cairns. You pass heritage signs depicting dwarves luring travellers under the rock, and will-o’-the-wisps leading wanderers to their doom. If you’re lucky, you might find wild goats hiding amongst the grasses, or spy a emperor moth fluttering in the dark.

It was the most wonderful place. And because it was winter and everyone else was – quite sensibly – huddled up at home, we felt like we were the only people left in the whole world.

We started walking.in typical ‘us’ style. We didn’t check the length of the route and just thought we’d turn back when we got a bit tired. But after a while we wondered if maybe we were nearer the end than the beginning, so we just kept on walking.

Big mistake.

What followed was several hours of trekking through water, fields, and over fells. At one point we were passing through a stretch of open space and somewhat panicking at how far we were from where we left the car, when we finally saw another couple walking the same route.

Hope!

The couple overtook us in silence, but despite there being no trees or hills for miles, they soon disappeared from view. It didn’t make sense.

Don’t get me wrong, we sort of loved it. But it was FREEZING cold. We were lost. And it was starting to hail. My husband had my scarf wrapped around his head. Any videos we recorded were distorted by the incredible winds that blew, and most photographs seem to document me getting increasingly worried that we might have to call mountain rescue.

This was Mothtown.

Simonside is ALIVE, I swear it. I’ve never been anywhere like it, and I don’t know if I ever will again. I took so many photos of the grass and the heather- convinced that it looked like fur or the hair on a giant’s head. The rocks jutted from the ground like bones. The fact that it was winter just added to it all. A feeling of stillness and otherness sweeping over the landscape.

Beautiful.

But Simonside didn’t quite swallow us whole. After several hours of stumbling around in the near dark, we finally got back to the car, just as the heavens opened.

We’ve been back several times since, but weirdly could never quite find the same route we took that Midwinter’s Day. It’s genuinely weird.

But what else would you expect of the real life Mothtown?

Keen to find out more about Mothtown? Discover more about the book, here.