This would be a nicer photo without the bushes in front, but I took it from a car, stopped in the middle of a road, in order to capture the sight of this hill wreathed in mist. This is the Wrekin, a well-known protuberance in Shropshire, and one that Clare and I had just hauled ourselves up in weather much like this — on occasion there was mist and cloud, in other parts, clear skies. Another County Top done, anyway.
This guy was very helpful today — not because he offered us direction as such, but because his bright orange and yellow gear was later seen heading up Harter Fell, our destination for the day, and this helped reveal the correct path. Hence the value of hi-vis. A good walk today but I never seem to experience Eskdale in truly good weather.
The beauty of Cumbria is not entirely found in its lakes and mountains. The coast is also very fine. After a terrible morning’s weather put the high country out of bounds, we got out anyway and Sandscale Haws, near Barrow, gave us something to enjoy as the weather cleared. Joe practices his ballet moves, it seems.
That was doubtless the thought in the minds of these two sheep as this foolhardy human (i.e., me) trudged into their territory in weather that could at best be termed ‘inclement’. I was certainly thinking it too. Taken at Stony Tarn, near Eskdale, at about the point I decided to give up on the primary target of the hike and go somewhere warmer and drier.
If you’ve ever been to the city of Newcastle, you will be plenty familiar with the River Tyne, which flows through the place like a big fat worm, and is spanned by a multitude of bridges.
This, however, is the baby Tyne: a mere infant in swaddling clothes, pictured a couple of miles south of the village of Garrigill in Cumbria, and as near the middle of nowhere as one tends to get in England. I think it’s rather cute.
This being a British summer, the balmy heat of Wednesday and Thursday has gone, and it’s raining again. It will do this until it feels like being different.
Old Town sits on the hills to the north of Hebden Bridge. In Christopher Saxton’s atlas of 1579, the first atlas of England and Wales ever published, it’s called The Old towne…. so it’s been around for a while.
I accept that we are not strictly trapped, whether at home or in the Calder valley itself: but with nothing open out there except a few shops (and by no means all), it’s still house arrest in all but name. I agree there are worse places to be stuck but this afternoon and evening I felt like my head was going to pop unless this ends soon. But there are too many people who like this situation — profit from it, even. These are the ones who will drag us all down.
Despite everything, it’s still Friday night, the end of a working week, time to relax. What tattered remnants there are of our social life at this time are up in Old Town, so that’s where we headed, despite it being the wettest day for a long while.
Haweswater supplies water for about 25% of the north-west of England, and when it was built in 1935 it raised the level of an existing lake by nearly a hundred feet and drowned two villages, including Mardale Green at the head of its valley. In times of drought, the old village centre has been known to re-emerge. It is not that dry yet, but the water is stil pretty low and as I passed today, there was evidence of several old buildings on the bed of the lake. Mute witnesses to the injustice of having their village eradicated to slake the thirst of others.
A burst of freedom. As we are allowed to visit family at the present time — under conditions of whatever — we had a day trip to the great gash in the landscape that is Morecambe Bay. On the other side, Grange-over-Sands. The figures seen on the tidal flats are presumably a family: but even if they’re not, what business is it of mine.
Being 42 