Three Prophets

Dylan fans have always known that Bob has a touch of the John Dee or the Nostradamus about him. He's predicted much through the doom-laden warnings of some of his lyrics - in a generalized, artistic kind of way. Apocalypse is put into metaphor, and we feel the frisson of truth in such verses as Senor, senor, do you know where we're headin'? Lincoln County Road or Armageddon? (Senor, Tales of Yankee Power from Street Legal) or We live in a political world/Where mercy walks the plank/Life is in mirrors, death disappears/Up the steps into the nearest bank (Political World from Oh Mercy). The line But even the president of the United States/Sometimes must have to stand naked ( It's Alright, Ma, I'm Only Bleeding from Bringing It All Back Home) is universally true about people in power but also seems eerily to foreshadow Nixon, Clinton and now Bush, and always gets a big cheer at a Dylan gig. I was leafing through my copy of Bob Dylan Lyrics 1962-2001 (Simon & Schuster, 2004) last night and on almost the first page I turned to was printed the song Dark Eyes from Empire Burlesque which contains the line Oh, the French girl she's in paradise and a drunken man is at the wheel... Now I know the late Diana, Princess of Wales, was not French, but she was fatally in France, in Paris, exactly 10 years ago to this very day, and a drunken man was at the wheel (or so the French police seemed to prove), and she may be in paradise now for all I know, but she certainly was in paradise then, with Dodi Al-Fayed, during the weeks before the car crash in the Place de l'Alma underpass... So, a spooky prediction from Bob - and a strange instance of synchronicity for me, reading that line on the eve of the 10th anniversary of her death...

Theatre Of The Absurd

Continuing the surrealistic theme, I took these photos in Sepember 2005 in Spain at the Salvador Dali Theatre-Museum in Figueres and at the Mediterranean house he shared with Gala in Portligat...

This Is Not A Pipe

That Magritte discovery this morning gave me quite a jolt... Must lighten things up a bit. Hmm... How about a surrealist joke? Q: How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb? A: Fish! Yes? No? Oh, well, perhaps I'm blogging a dead horse... PS. Q: How many outdoor bloggers does it take to change a light bulb? A: 2. 1 to screw in the bulb and the other to adjust his buff... Yes, it's that silly time of night with 3 beers gone and nothing on the telly...

René Magritte

I've just discovered that, apart from Rousseau's Reveries Of The Solitary Walker (which inspired the name of this blog), there's also a picture by the surrealist painter René Magritte (1898-1967) with the same title. Les Reveries Du Promeneur Solitaire (1926) depicts a ghostly white body floating behind a bowler-hatted man who stands beside a river. It's clearly influenced by the nighttime suicide of his mother - she drowned herself in the Belgian Sambre River when Magritte was 14. It's likely that paintings such as this helped him exert some control over the trauma of his unfortunate experience.

Stoat Encounter

After writing about Annie Dillard's encounter with a weasel, I thought I might describe my own. Or with 2 stoats in my case. But first some background information - I've been doing research. Family: Mustelidae (meaning the weasel family, from mustela, the Latin for weasel); Order: Carnivora (carnivores, obviously). The stoat is chestnut brown with an off-white belly; in winter its coat becomes thicker furred and changes to pure white all over. (This coat, called ermine, was highly prized at one time for its use in judicial robe-making.) Its body is adapted for speed - long and thin, with short legs and a long, black-tipped tail. The male is much larger than the female. The stoat is highly territorial, and travels alone, except in the mating season or unless it's a mother with her older offspring. Its sense of smell is highly developed, but its vision is not so good - particularly in the daytime. When alarmed it will emit a musky odour from glands near the anus. Stoats are opportunistic carnivores and will eat almost anything - birds, eggs, rodents, rabbits, insects, fish, reptiles - and kill, in the case of vertebrates, with a swift bite to the base of the skull, sometimes after administering other disabling bites to the body of the prey. Their breeding cycle is fascinating. Stoats breed once a year; the female is on heat for only a few weeks in May/June. After mating, her fertilised egg is stored ex utero for 11 months. Actual gestation then takes place over 1 month, after which between 5 and 10 young stoats, known as kittens, are born. A different male will then mate with the mother and also, after 2 or 3 weeks, with the family's young females which, though blind and toothless, will already have reached the pubertal stage. The annual cycle then restarts.

But back to my own meeting with stoats. On the morning of Wednesday 6 June this year I was climbing up to Calf Top (609m), the highest point on Middleton Fell, which forms the high ground between Dentdale, Barbondale and the Lune Valley. The going was quite steep at first so I paused for a rest near Eskholme Pike above Barbon Park on Thorn Moor. No sooner had I stopped than 2 stoats appeared, winding sinuously downhill obliquely above me. They were moving fast down hidden, narrow trackways in the turf and between the rocks. Each was like a mirror image of the other. They ran side by side, close - very close - but never touching. It was the mating season, so they must have been a male and female engaged in some kind of running courtship ritual. So absorbed were they in their intricate weaving dance that they paid no heed to me at all - I doubt if they even saw me (their eyesight is dim anyway in daylight) - as they rushed right past, intent on some unknown goal, until they twisted and turned out of sight. I felt privileged to see this - I've seen stoats and weasels in the wild before, but only as quick streaks of fur - and continued my walk energised, blessed that a window on the often-so-secretive natural world had briefly opened up before me...

Spend The Afternoon

Here are some more things Annie Dillard wrote:

There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by.

We are here on the planet once only, and might as well get a feel for the place.

If we were to judge nature by common sense or likelihood, we wouldn't believe the world existed.

I have never read any theologian who claims God is particularly interested in religion.

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.

Spend the afternoon. You can't take it with you.

I'm off now to spend the morning, the afternoon and, I hope, the evening too, wisely and fruitfully. Or will they just slip away mindlessly, unsensationally, without anything very much being "achieved", as they often do?

Living Like Weasels

I came across the name Annie Dillard some time ago but had never read anything by her until now. I'm deep into her dazzling collection of essays Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters (1982, published as a HarperPerennial paperback in 1993). It's richly rewarding. She writes about her (our) ambiguous, complex yet palpably real relationship with the natural world and with the divine. I'll be eagerly tracking down 2 more of her books as soon as I can - Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, which won a Pulitzer Prize, and The Writing Life. Here's an extract from a short but brilliant piece in Teaching a Stone to Talk entitled Living like Weasels: Weasel! I had never seen one wild before. He was ten inches long, thin as a curve, a muscled ribbon, brown as fruitwood, soft-furred, alert. His face was fierce, small and pointed as a lizard's; he would have made a good arrowhead. There was just a dot of chin, maybe two brown hairs' worth, and then the pure white fur began that spread down his underside. He had two black eyes I did not see, any more than you see a window. The weasel was stunned into stillness as he was emerging from beneath an enormous shaggy wild-rose bush four feet away. I was stunned into stillness, twisted backward on the tree trunk. Our eyes locked, and someone threw away the key. After a few more paragraphs ratcheting up her weasel encounter, Dillard continues: I would like to learn, or remember, how to live. I come to Hollins Pond not so much to learn how to live as, frankly, to forget about it. That is, I don't think I can learn from a wild animal how to live in particular - shall I suck warm blood, hold my tail high, walk with my footprints precisely over the prints of my hands? - but I might learn something of mindlessness, something of the purity of living in the physical senses and the dignity of living without bias or motive. The weasel lives in necessity and we live in choice, hating necessity and dying at the last ignobly in its talons. I would like to live as I should, as the weasel lives as he should. And I suspect that for me the way is like the weasel's: open to time and death painlessly, noticing everything, remembering nothing, choosing the given with a fierce and pointed will. Notice how she repeats the adjectives "fierce" and "pointed" at the end, echoing the beginning, reinforcing her identification with the weasel. This is quality writing of the very highest order.

Constable Country

From Thursday 16 to Saturday 18 August my wife and I spent time in Suffolk. I used to go to East Anglia for family holidays as a child - to Cromer, Sheringham, Southwold, Frinton, that kind of genteel seaside place. Nothing's altered that much. Just a few more people, cars, South-of-England retirees, smarter shops - as everywhere. But the creeks and estuaries, reed beds and lazy rivers, painted cottages and flintstone churches are unchanging. We supped Adnams ales in the Crown and the Lord Nelson and The Sole Bay Inn at Southwold; we ate take-away fish and chips on Aldeburgh sea front and they were excellent. I passed a few hours late on Friday afternoon at Minsmere RSPB Reserve - I could have spent the whole day there quite happily - and saw a marsh harrier (earlier I'd seen 2 floating over the reed beds near Snape Maltings), an egret, 2 avocets, 2 stonechats, several reed warblers, common terns and barnacle geese, some redshank and lapwings, a flock of 50 feeding black-tailed godwits - and a small deer, which could have been a muntjac. On the Saturday we explored Dedham vale and John Constable country. Many of Constable's magnificent canvases were of scenes centred on the small but sublimely picturesque area surrounding Flatford Mill (see photo). We stood at the exact spot from where The Haywain was painted - or at least initially sketched as most of his paintings were worked on and finished in London. This is one of the greatest of all English rural life pictures according to the art critic, Sir Kenneth Clark. I would not disagree. It's such a tranquil, timeless scene, beautifully composed, and coming to life in such details as the spaniel with its wagging tail, the 2 figures in the horse-drawn cart, and various other country people and animals merging with the landscape. We walked the few miles to Dedham and back, across the water meadows by the river Stour. It gave us a strange feeling. What with the willow trees and the reflecting water, the grazing cows, the clouds and the big skies - it was just like walking through a series of those Constable six-footers. Like Cornwall or the west coast of Ireland, Suffolk has always attracted artists. It's to do with the water, the sky and, above all, the light. (Thomas Gainsborough, Sir Alfred Munnings - and the art forger Tom Keating - are also associated with the area.)

Wild And Dangerous

It is a strange and magical fact to be here, walking around in a body, to have a whole world within you and a world at your fingertips outside you. It is an immense privilege and it is incredible that humans manage to forget the miracle of being here. Rilke said: 'Being here is so much.' It is uncanny how social reality can deaden and numb us so that the mystical wonder of our lives goes totally unnoticed. We are here. We are wildly and dangerously free. (From Anam Cara: Spiritual Wisdom from the Celtic World by JOHN O'DONOHUE)

Nearer To Heaven

Carrying on from yesterday, I was wondering why those unlisted lumpy bits were called "The Bridgets" by that walking website. It's quite clever, really. On the one hand we think of Bridget Jones - these are hills which our dear, not-very-sensible Bridget could puff her way up, burn off a few calories and look forward to a ciggie on top without it having taken hours and hours to get there! On the other hand, and more seriously, there is St Bridget. I'm reading at the moment one of the best popular books on Celtic spirituality I've ever read, Anam Cara: Spiritual Wisdom from the Celtic World by John O'Donohue (1997), and in it O'Donohue writes ...St Bridget, who was both a pagan goddess and a Christian saint. In herself, Bridget focuses the two worlds easily and naturally. The pagan world and the Christian world have no row with each other in the Irish psyche... This reminds you of the fact that Christian churches often appropriated sites that were pagan in origin. Whether pagan or Christian, we're talking "sacred" here. And hills and mountains, throughout history and pre-history, have always had sacred and mystical connotations. Chomolungma, the Tibetan name for Mt Everest, means "Mother Goddess of the World"; Mt Kenya is sacred to the Kikuyu tribe; and each year around 25,000 pilgrims climb the 765m high Irish mountain Croagh Patrick, Co Mayo, following in the footsteps of St Patrick who fasted and meditated on the summit in 441 AD.

Fancy A Bridget This Weekend?

Further to my Listmania post of Tuesday 26 June, I've just discovered a further twist on the hill classification game. I was clicking through the site http://www.go4awalk.com/ when I came across a reference to The Bridgets. Apparently to qualify as a Bridget the hill/mountain must 1. Fail to meet the criteria of any other sensible Hill and Mountain Classification System and 2. Be somewhere worth walking to, eg Mam Tor in the Peak District, or Wansfell Pike in the Lake District (though do they realise this is a Birkett?) What terribly good fun!

dawning

after long night of wind & rain
lulling the tent, there is silence at dawn
then birdsong & faint roar of faraway streams

woodpecker tapping frenzied telex
chaffinch's trickle-down song
the cushat's burr-burr burr
& great tit's insistent bi-syll ab-ic

all bursting with communication
but i know not what they are saying

my heart is beating
against the ground
night thoughts

stilled

my heart is beating
hard against the ground
but i know not what it is saying

my body is warm
on the cold ground

put aside the arcane things of the night
the fox's bark, the owl's shriek
the dark thoughts of the night

for it is dawn & there is
the heartmelting cry of lambs
& my heart is beating so hard
as if i am really living at last

Windermere To Ullswater

Sunday 12 August was my last day in the Lakes. I wanted to end with a big climax. So I decided, not on the usual circular walk, but on an airy 10 mile high-level linear traverse connecting Lake Windermere with Ullswater. I would start from Ambleside, negotiate the Fairfield massif, and head north-east high above Grisedale to Glenridding. I thought there was something neat about this - connecting two lakes. Perhaps there's a germ of an idea here for a grand future expedition - linking two Lake Distict lakes each successive day in a great circle till you arrive back at the starting point? Doubtless it's been done before. But would you include smaller stretches of water such as Esthwaite Water or Grasmere? A thought to ponder... Meanwhile I was up to my old tricks of trying to find free parking. Not easy in Ambleside, but I managed it by parking in the minor road signposted "Under Loughrigg" by the river Rothay on the west side of town. You have to be there fairly early to secure a space. So I set off, soon striding quickly along the farm track to Rydal where I picked up a very steep path up Nab Scar, the start of the classic Fairfield Horseshoe. It was very hot and I was out of breath almost immediately. However the angle of ascent gradually lessened. There were cairns on Heron Pike (612m), Heron Pike North Top (621m) and Great Rigg (766m) where I had a break. The temperature had now dropped considerably. It was cool and breezy with rain clouds rolling in from the west. There was a temperature inversion as the mist streamed off the eastern side of the Great Rigg-Fairfield part of the ridge - the western side was quite clear. The flat top of Fairfield (873m) soon came into view as the cloud dissolved. It's a confusing place, with a stone wind shelter and a number of cairns littering the summit plateau. It would probably be difficult to route-find here in the clag. I took the scrambly path down to the col on the northern side of Fairfield, up and over Cofa Pike, then down to Deepdale Hause, passing high above Grisedale Tarn before climbing the ever-narrowing ridge up to St Sunday Crag (841m). Superb views from here of the Helvellyn range on one side and wild Deepdale, with its awesome crags and buttresses, on the other. I stopped for a while at the summit, but not for long as the wind was blowing hard. I took in Gavel Pike (784m) then rejoined the main route and went down, down, down - it seemed to go on forever - to Patterdale at the junction of the Hartsop and Grisedale valleys. My legs were aching and my troublesome knee twinging after all the extreme up-and-down. It was a short walk along the main road to Glenridding where I called a taxi to take me back to Ambleside. It had been a tiring but magnificent day on the fells. (The photo shows St Sunday Crag from Cofa Pike. The snatch of blue is a tantalising glimpse of Ullswater.)

Epiphany At Orrest Head

Saturday 11 August. In brief. Grasmere: Breakfast at Miller Howe café - where there's an Internet connection. Cotswold Rock Bottom Outdoors shop - bought bargain Teva sandals for £19. Wordsworth family graves in churchyard. Wordsworth's Dove Cottage, where he lived before Rydal Mount. Didn't go in. Ambleside: 3 bookshops - Wearings, Henry Roberts, Good Book Place. Went in. Also Public Library with Internet. No really outstanding pubs but The Golden Rule on Kirkstone Pass road is good "local" drinking pub - no bar meals, no pool, no music. Brotherswater (just south of Patterdale): walked from here to High Hartsop Dodd and back in rain. At spot by lake party had left beer cans, soft drinks bottles, plastic bags and, inexplicably, 2 perfectly good towels. Why do people have to leave rubbish in one of the most beautiful places in England? Beats me. Kirkstone Pass Inn: great pub dating from 1496. Windermere: circular walk taking in Orrest Head, where it all happened for Wainwright. Having visited his resting place on Haystacks earlier this year, thought it only proper I should pay tribute here too (see photos). Rain stopped. Great Langdale Camp Site: Uncle Ben's Express flavoured rice with diced-up vine tomatoes and boiled eggs. Yum. Watery sunset. Early night. Funny how it's much more exhausting on days when you're not climbing the big stuff!

Reflections On Water

It's been raining again today. All day. Surprise, surprise. But without rain, without water, we would not exist. And there would be no gills and rills, becks and burns, gullies and gorges, streams, ravines, clints and grikes, dykes and sykes, forces, water courses, waterfalls, Niagara Falls, tarns and lakes, ponds, dew, tears, beer, oceans, Évian and Volvic...

Wonderful Walker

The Duddon Valley. One of the most entrancing, remote and unspoilt valleys in Lakeland. There's a narrow road running through it paralleling the river, and two hamlets: Ulpha with its small post office/shop and Seathwaite (not to be confused with the other Seathwaite in Borrowdale) with its 16th century Newfield Inn, the floor laid with banded, beautifully marked Walna Scar slate. And that's about it. Oh, apart from woods, waterfalls, rapids, gorges, packhorse routes, fells large and small, and peace and quiet. There are brown trout in the river, Herdwick sheep on the hillside and buzzards soaring above the trees. Evidence of early industry remains visible if you know where to look: slate quarry workings on the slopes, and "pitsteads" which were woodland clearances made by charcoal burners. The shapely pyramid of Harter Fell rises up near the head of the vale, and Cockley Beck at its very top links the lonely passes of Wrynose and Hardknott. This was Wordsworth's favourite valley. It inspired his River Duddon Sonnets (1820) and The Excursion (1814) which was partly about an 18th century parson, the Rev. Robert Walker, known as "Wonderful Walker", an educated man revered by the locals. He was both intellectual and practical, and famous for sitting on his own special "shearing stone" as he clipped sheep with great skill once a year at a nearby farm. This stone now lies at the entrance to the church porch in Seathwaite (see photo). My 2 and a half hour walk, on an overcast but warm Friday 10 August, took me from Seathwaite up the bridleway of Park Head Road, an old packhorse route, towards the Dunnerdale Fells. After a few miles I turned down Kiln Bank before crossing the Duddon on some stepping stones. The valley road brought me to Hall Bridge from where I followed a track to the foot of Wallowbarrow Crag and then through woodland and across 2 footbridges back to the village. And the pub. I think it would be good to come back here and slowly soak it all in - I noted there was camping at Turner Hall Farm.

Bowfell And Esk Pike

One if the finest Lakeland rounds is: Old Dungeon Ghyll Hotel - Stool End - The Band - Bowfell (902m) - Ore Gap - Esk Pike (885m) - Esk Hause - Angle Tarn - Rossett Gill - Mickleden - Old Dungeon Ghyll Hotel. This I walked on Thursday 9 August. It was a lovely, warm and rain-free day with interesting cloud formations. The views from Bowfell were excellent, including Skiddaw, Helvellyn and the Coniston fells. The Scafells were so near it seemed you could almost touch them. The Nuttalls wrote this about Bowfell: If Bowfell were a few feet higher it would be a three thousander, but then like Great Gable it has no need of feet or metres to give it status, it is a magnificent mountain, one of the finest in the Lake District. Massive buttresses face east at the head of the Langdale valley, to the south Bowfell Links presents an impregnable face, while to the north a rugged line of rocks descends to Hanging Knotts overlooking Angle Tarn. Above these ramparts is the summit, a tangled mass of boulders through which tiny figures wind their way to their goal, the cairn at the very top. (The Mountains of England and Wales Vol 2.) Just a word about the Old Dungeon Ghyll Hotel - steeped in climbing history and superbly positioned at the foot of Raven Crag, for my money it has the best bar (Hiker's Bar), food and real ales in Langdale. Their lamb curry, or beef stew, with half-rice, half-chips is simply delicious, and the chips are home-made. (The photo shows the Esk Hause intersection of paths on the descent from Esk Pike. Above Esk Hause you can see from left to right Great End, Great Gable and Green Gable separated by the cleft of Aaron Slack, with Base Brown further along the ridge. In the centre is Sprinkling Tarn on Seathwaite Fell, a fascinating yet under-visited fell which I climbed a few months ago. Between Seathwaite Fell and the foot of Allen Crags lies the ravine of Ruddy Gill, which drops down to Grains Gill and Seathwaite.)

No Wealth But Life

Tuesday 7 and Wednesday 8 August. I'm denying myself the high fells for 2 days and enjoying some low-level walks. Walk 1: Elterwater - Skelwith Bridge - Colwith Force - High Park - Fletcher's Wood - Elterwater (very pleasant); Walk 2: A circular stroll round Tarn Hows (disappointing, rather tame - it's such a well known, picture postcard beauty spot, but just too pretty and not wild enough for my taste). Also visited Far Sawrey (where a dog was lying fast asleep in the middle of the road), Near Sawrey (busy because of the tourist attraction, Hill Top, Beatrix Potter's farmhouse home), Hawkshead (spoilt by more tourists, gift shops and Beatrix Pottery) and Coniston (not impressed - even if meant partly in jest, this notice in the Sun Hotel car park immediately got my back up: "Freeloaders risk being clamped and are at risk of negotiating release with the rottweiler"). However, though Coniston Water is not my favourite Lake, spending several hours on its eastern shore at Brantwood (see photo), Ruskin's home, was the highlight of these 2 "rest days". John Ruskin (1819-1900) lived here from 1871 till the year of his death. He's buried in Coniston churchyard. One of the greatest figures of the Victorian Age, he was a polymath and eccentric genius. The local Coniston folk looked upon him fondly and called him "The Professor". He was passionate about all things that interested him - which was more or less everything. He was a writer, an artist, a poet, a critic, a social reformer, a geologist, a meteorologist, a botanist, a conservationist, a landscape gardener and much more. He warned of the dangers of factory pollution, fought to improve the working conditions of the city poor, championed the Pre-Raphaelites and was the intellectual influence behind the foundation of the National Trust. He advocated the minimum wage 150 years before Tony Blair. He was a man of ideas but also eminently practical. His genius lay in the multiplicity of his talents. Nowadays people like this are in short supply - we tend to specialize in one thing at the expense of all else. Diversity is unfortunately not a characteristic of our own age, a time when science and art, experience and imagination, the practical and the conceptual are poles apart. Sadly Ruskin suffered from periodic bouts of mental illness - many have put this down to an over-active brain! Among the multitude of quotes one could cite from Ruskin, how about this one: There is no wealth but life. Beautifully and succinctly put. And so, so true.

The Langdale Pikes

Monday 6 August dawned cloudy but clear. The Pikes beckoned. How nice to leave the car at the campsite and just walk. In this case down the road to Stickle Barn where at 10am I had a cup of coffee. Half an hour later I joined the walkers' procession along the beautifully engineered footpath by Stickle Ghyll, which begins just behind the New Dungeon Ghyll Hotel and climbs up to Stickle Tarn under Tarn Crag. A lovely ascent - rocks, waterfalls and short scrambly sections. Paradise. Here I met up with Scott, another solo walker, who became my on-and-off companion for the day. After what seemed no time at all we reached the top. No false summits here to lure you on - just over the lip and Stickle Tarn magically reveals itself, dominated by the astonishing rockface of Pavey Ark (see photo) in front and upthrusting Harrison Stickle to the left. Time for a rest and a snack. It's a memorable spot - but popular, so we quickly moved on. After boulder-hopping across the ghyll, we saved for another day the more strenuous delights of Jack's Rake and Easy Gully, and followed Bright Beck, the tarn's main feeder stream. Soon we crossed the beck and slanted round the north-eastern foot of Pavey Ark. A clear path led to North Rake, the easiest route up. This was a delightful and entertaining corridor - but all too short. Abruptly we gained the top, and it was only a matter of minutes before we'd breached a stone wall and were standing in the rocky enclosure of Pavey Ark's summit (700m). The weather was breezy but fine; the sun even came out out now and again. What a splendid view from here, overlooking Stickle Tarn. Next stop was Thunacar Knott (723m) reached on a westerly compass bearing - an undistinguished top with no sharp edges. From here a path led to Harrison Stickle (736m), the linchpin and highest point of the group. Here we met someone who'd lost her husband. He'd climbed up Jack's Rake and hadn't been seen since. Down to grassy and slightly boggy Harrison Combe (stepping stones over the worst bit) and up again to the shapely, conical, unmistakable Pike of Stickle (709m). The hard, volcanic rock hereabouts was fashioned into axe heads in Neolithic times. We overshot the usual path and came to a dead-end at the brink of a precipitous, climbers-only gully channelling down to the Mickleden valley. However an interesting but easy scramble soon deposited us on the summit where we met the "lost" husband. Had we seen his wife? Yes, but she'd headed off Harrison Stickle in a completely different direction... Hope they were eventually reunited! Then a short, bumpy ridge took us to Loft Crag (670m) which is actually the summit of Gimmer Crag, the rock climber's playground. We descended to the col between Loft Crag and Thorn Crag where a large cairn indicated the way down. At first this was hard going on slippery rock and scree - particularly since a heavy rain shower had set in. However the path became easier, and before long we'd crossed Dungeon Ghyll (its waterfalls were audible but invisible somewhere above the path) and had completed the circle. A pint and a chat at Stickle Barn were very welcome after 6 hours on the fells. What a day to remember.

Great Langdale

First at Elterwater, then just beyond Chapel Stile, on the winding road through Great Langdale, the view hits you. The Langdale Pikes in all their splendour. A fairytale fortress towering over the flat-bottomed valley. Impossible shapes rearing up - looking higher than they in fact are. All jags and crags, cliffs and cones, steep-sided gullies. Later, at the right-angled bend where the road penetrates no further westward but zigzags south up to Blea Tarn, you suddenly become more fully conscious of the magnificent girdle of hills that surrounds you: Lingmoor Fell, Side Pike, Wrynose Fell, Pike of Blisco, Great Knott, Crinkle Crags, Bowfell, Esk Pike, Rossett Pike, the Langdale Pikes, Raven Crag, Pike Howe, Tarn Crag... And can that be the bulky crest of Great End peeping out, above and beyond Rossett Gill? It hits you in the stomach. It softens you up. It's simply breathtaking. (My photo shows the narrow road up to Blea Tarn and a sunlit Langdale from Loft Crag, one of the Pikes. The National Trust campsite lies hidden in trees to the left of the picture.)

Loughrigg

Just back from a wonderful week in the Lake District. The plan was: to camp in Langdale and to follow a pattern of 1 challenging high-level fell day followed by 1 or 2 days on easier lowland paths. Because of my left knee problem. I'm pleased to say this generally worked. Saturday 4 August at 11 pm found me in a rainy Ambleside. Slept in the car. I was on a budget, so that saved a night's campsite fee! And, surprisingly, I actually did sleep, curled crookedly on the back seat with a rug over and a window ever-so-slightly open. Early next morning I pitched at the National Trust Campsite in Great Langdale. I was eager for the fells, but wanted something to ease me in gently. Loughrigg seemed ideal - that fine and friendly, knobbly lump of a hill overlooking Ambleside, full of nooks and crannies, ferns, tarns, rocks, caves, marshy bits and magnificent viewpoints. One of Wainwright's favourites. And justifiably popular with everyone else that warm Sunday. I approached Loughrigg Terrace from the western end of Rydal Water. Great views of Grasmere, Helm Crag and Fairfield from the Terrace, raking at a very easy angle across the northern flank before meeting an obvious path on the left which climbed directly to the 335m summit (see 1st photo). Then a lovely, undemanding descent via Brow Head Farm and over the river Rothay to the northern fringe of Ambleside, picking up the track to Rydal Park and Rydal Hall (see 2nd photo) which began at a stone gateway just beyond Scandale Bridge. Rydal Hall and its adjacent buildings now house a Christian Community and Retreat. Formerly this area was of prime importance to the Lakeland poets and their notion of what constituted the picturesque. Close by I located Rydal Mount, Wordsworth's home from 1813 to 1859 (see 3rd photo). From Rydal a path contoured the lower slopes of Loughrigg above Rydal Water, passing 2 caves. These were man-made, part of the Loughrigg slate quarrying enterprise. The higher cave was very impressive. Dripping water and the cries of sand martins echoed spookily; and the spoil heap outside was covered in English stonecrop with its star-shaped white flowers and pink-tinged succulent leaves. Soon I was back at my starting point and contemplating a much bigger and grander walk the next day...

Miniature Mountain

I'm on the fells, among the tarns and by the lakes. In Wordsworth and Ruskin country. I'll blog about it when I get back. In the meantime here's a Ruskin quote: There is no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather. He also observed that a stone could be considered a mountain in miniature. More of Ruskin later...

Foot And Mouth

Foot and mouth disease was confirmed last night on a farm near Guildford, Surrey. My great sympathy goes out to all worried livestock farmers throughout the UK. The last outbreak in 2001, badly handled by the government, became a devastating year-long epidemic which resulted in 6.5m animals being slaughtered and thousands of farmers losing their livelihoods. I'm sure plans are now in place to control far more effectively any possible spread of this highly contagious disease. Already Gordon Brown and Defra seem in charge of the situation. All movements of cattle, sheep and pigs have been banned throughout the country. Containment is the key and what happens during the next few days will be crucial. The last occurrence also led to a huge loss of tourism revenue when footpaths were closed and access to the countryside restricted. I'm convinced things won't spiral out of control this time - if everyone stays calm and rational.

The Wild Places

Talking of all things wild and wonderful, I'm eagerly anticipating what will be the publishing event of the year - the new book by Robert Macfarlane: The Wild Places: A Wonder-Voyage, due out in September from Granta. (His first book, the uncategorizable and quite brilliant Mountains of the Mind: A History of a Fascination was published to great acclaim in 2003 and won the Guardian First Book Award.) In this, his second book, Macfarlane seeks out the last remaining wilderness places of the British Isles, including the Lleyn Peninsula, the Isle of Skye, Connemara, Rannoch Moor, the Cumbrian fells, and, surprisingly, even the Essex salt marshes and the ancient hollow ways of Dorset. He wanted to see with new eyes his local landscapes or, as he puts it, the undiscovered country of the nearby, and found that Britain was an archipelago in its own right. His prose, as always, will be poetic, lyrical, exquisite, dense and rich. The type of book is a hybrid one - a blend of history, natural history, topography, biography, autobiography; the personal, the literary, the factual, the mythological: a genre-busting mix of experience and imagination. I expect it will annoy all hardcore mountain men and serious power-trekkers. I just can't wait to read it.

John Muir

I've been thinking about John Muir since yesterday's brief mention of him. I suppose he's the most famous conservationist of all, creating as he did the American National Park system. In 1892 he founded the Sierra Club. A complicated and at times difficult man, he was a hugely influential and multi-talented Renaissance figure: writer, lecturer, teacher, inventor, geologist, a scientist with religious leanings... When young he walked throughout much of the USA and Canada, taking odd jobs to support himself along the way. I have a big 900 page book of his Nature Writings published by The Library of America, but quite honestly I've only ever skimmed brief bits as it can be dauntingly verbose. I think he's probably best read when his prose is condensed into a shorter, more quotable style - though instances are hard to find. I like this: Most people are on the world, not in it; have no conscious sympathy or relationship to anything about them - undiffused, separate, and rigidly alone like marbles of polished stone, touching but separate.

Into The Wild

One of my favourite programmes on Radio 4 is Something Understood which is broadcast every Sunday at 6.05 then repeated at 23.30. Last Sunday the theme, explored in music, poetry and prose, was Wilderness. The presenter, journalist and writer Madeleine Bunting, described our relationship with The Wild as a complex one - wilderness can be "something to fear, to escape" but also "something compelling, even redemptive". She said that "wilderness is first and foremost in our head." Among other snippets there was a reading from Jon Krakauer's book Into the Wild (1996) and a poem by Wendell Berry called The Peace of Wild Things; an atmospheric composition by Norwegian jazz/New Age saxophonist Jan Garbarek and a song about John Muir by the Scottish folk singer Dick Gaughan. It's all well worth a listen and can be replayed on the BBC website till the end of the week.