A glorious day today, spent entirely outside, getting healthy exercise. Work, in a formal sense, was just something other people were doing, and the day was all the better for it. I do not apologise for the Jesus & Mary Chain reference either, as no one should for referring to such a seminal musical beat combo.
Busied myself up enough to get to the Lake District once more: those who follow my other blog can read all about my day there. Gray Crag was the most dramatic object seen — but fortunately not climbed — today (I’ve done it before, and it’s proper work I can tell you). Below it to the left, just visible, Hayeswater, which supplies the taps of Penrith a dozen or so miles away, hence the need for the access road. But I don’t think that spoils the shot; instead, like a necklace, it seems to accentuate the graceful lines of this fell.
Ivy House FC (of Halifax) come out for the start of the second half at the rather picturesque, if basic, ground of Midgley United. They were 1-0 down at this point but recovered for the draw. But who cares about the game today? I went for the landscape, and it did not disappoint.
Midgley has appeared once before on the blog, on 17th December 2013, day 845. Returning after 3,035 days, this little village on the hillside between home and Halifax now takes over (from Nottingham) as the place with the longest gap between appearances.
Although I spent most of the day in Manchester, Hebden Bridge should feature on here for the fourth day in a row thanks to the unexpected scenes which greeted its residents when opening their curtains in the morning. While we were enjoying the balmy spring weather a week ago, I joked with my international students saying “British weather — it could snow again before we’re done”. But I didn’t necessarily think I would be proven right. This was all gone again by the time I came home, however.
it’s taken Clare and I over a year to get round about four-fifths of the Calderdale Way’s 50 miles, after today. Still a couple of legs to go yet. Today introduced us to the side valley of Shibden Dale, a beautiful spot and, somewhere previously unknown (except as a brief glimpse now and again from the train, as the line crosses the dale not long after leaving Halifax) despite having lived here 21 years now. The cow looked happy to be there too.
Having done Craig Airie Fell the day before, today I continued walking and bagged two more County Tops. This cairn marked the second one of the day, Kirriereoch Hill, high point of Ayrshire. Apparently its name translates as ‘Hill of the Brindled Quarter’, which to me is no translation at all. When I came up over the final slope and saw the cairn sitting next to the vast granitic lump of Ailsa Craig out there in the Irish Sea, the photo was immediately assured. A mild shame about the wind turbine poking up to the right but one can’t have everything.
After coming up the M6 yesterday, we turned left as soon as we hit Scotland, and headed for Galloway, the south-west corner of that country. There were various motivations for doing this, but getting some walking in was certainly one of them. This is the view from 1,050 feet above sea level, on top of Craig Airie Fell — not a substantial eminence in its own right, but it has a great panorama of the surrounding area, as a proper County Top should. Read all about it on the other blog, if interested.
Driving along roads not taken before, on the lookout for photo opportunities: this was a good one. Huddersfield is apparently Britain’s largest town (as opposed to city), and it looks pretty sizeable from up here.
“Please. You’ve gotta get me out of here. I didn’t ask to make my life here, a day’s journey from the nearest grooming salon.”
I might think the same if, like this critter, I was living at Scalderskew in the Lake District — I do not know of a more isolated dwelling in the country. If you’re interested, the most prominent peak in the background is Seatallan.
Wales is the nearest bit of the world to my house that is not England. All the same, thanks to its particularly pervasive Covidnoia, it has only appeared three times on the blog in the last two years. One of these was as the background of the shot I took from the Wirral in January, and I think, in turn, that spot is the hill in the distance here. Connah’s Quay — which is where this shot was taken from — is a rather sad-looking place, oppressed as many electrical pylons as I’ve seen anywhere: shuttered up and closed down. The bridge rejects it too, taking people past it, not through it.
Being 42 