Bowfell

The Lake District is wilting, like an ant under a magnifying glass. Its buccaneering streams and waterfalls are dry and soundless, the peaty bogs are hard sponges, boulder fields are too bright to look at. Everything is foreshortened, fells that usually stand tall amongst the swirling clouds are shrunk against the massive blue sky. Below, in the valleys, air squats heavy, farmers cut grass to dust, dogs pant, tourists are dotted like Lowry-men along rivers, car parks, sun dappled lanes and afternoons that last all week get hotter and hotter by the hour.

Walking along the last bit of road to the top of Langdale my trainers are sticky with melted tarmac, the guy whizzing past on the quad is topless and the collie on the back has his mouth gaped wide open looking for air where there is none.

We’ve popped up to look for good places for a wildcamp with Dan & Juli in a couple of weeks, Bowfell seems a good choice with views down Langdale and west into Eskdale and the Irish sea. It was just a matter of finding a little grassy area amongst the mess of shattered rock that characterises this central Lakeland terrain. At the col, amongst the small tarns, I sit to eat my tea, looking out over the silhouette of Scafell and Scafell Pike I remember walking with Ali and Boz up there from Eskdale, enjoying a whisky on the summit whilst the sun went down and walking back through the dark to a cottage full of very worried family. I remembered walking up to this col with Helen and Becky too, the four of us taking our time nosying about the tarns before descending slowly towards a rising hunters moon. Looking down into the deserted plain of Great Moss I can almost see Ali & I ascending, on our way up to Crinkle Crags a couple of years ago, wandering past these tarns, me reminding her its where we came with Helen & Becky and her smiling through laboured breath. I couldn’t see me sat by this tarn alone, eating a sandwich, and I couldn’t see that this was her last mountain. It was hard for her on crinkle crags, the big steps and jagged ground making the pain in her back difficult to tolerate, at one stage not really being able to move for it. There was a silent agreement that we wouldn’t be back up here, some things can’t be spoken, or thought of, I mean, who’d stand and say goodbye the mountains. Like Joss Naylor once said, talking on the psychology of keeping on in the hills “It doesn’t do to think about it, if you thought about it you’d lie down”. Sometimes you’ve got to apply this to life, put the brakes on your mind, take shelter behind a rock a while, let the storm rage on without you.

Two topless lads appeared from the Langdale side with nothing in their hands or on their backs. One pointed up at Crinkle Crags and shouted over to me “Is that the highest bit?” I pointed over to Bowfell the other way and told them that’s higher but its 200m more ascent and maybe not to take too much on without water. I said it might take an hour, which they scoffed at and then one of them said “what, is it up and up again?” When isn’t it in the lakes. I explained they’d climbed 700 metres and it’s another 200 now. “Sound mate” They wandered off and I got back to my memories, taking care with the warm hummus that was spilling out my roll everywhere and trying to persuade Rab to have a drink rather than stare at sheep, how do you tell a dog there’s not water after this for miles? On my way up Bowfell I caught up with the topless wanderers, they were really struggling in the heat so I shared my water with them. They were grateful and I didn’t inhabit the miserable, grumbling Wainwright that was hanging in the air between us. There’s a balance, two fit people up on the hills with no chance of cloud, plenty of light and every route off the fell leading to civilisation. They weren’t being that irresponsible and they were having a lot of fun. They joined me on the summit and took pictures, we chatted a while and then I departed towards Ore gap in search of more pitches.

The sun was dropping nicely now, picking out crags in orange here and there and we had got into the shade of Esk Pike, enjoying a relatively cool descent form Ore Gap towards Angle Tarn. As we got closer to the tarn, a huge lake really, sat in a bowl under the immense north face of Bowfell, I noticed a buzzard fly below us across the water, it made one call and then perched on a rock. So we sat on the path as still as we could and waited to see if it would fly and not notice us. After a while a guy came descending towards us very slowly. He had that hobble of a long day under the sun on rough ground, I could feel his knees throbbing and the weight of his pack. He stopped near me on the path to chat. He was Australian, “I split with my girlfriend earlier in the year so came to Europe, got a van. What else?” What to say? Bloody girlfriends, mine died would you believe, and I don’t even have a fucking van, I’ve got a Honda Jazz with folding seats and a steady job though, that’s something isn’t it mate? I say I’m sorry to hear about his girlfriend and say nothing of my situation, why I’m out here alone. I don’t even show him the buzzard. But when he says he’s come at the best time to see the lakes, looking up at the blue skies, I do correct him. I paint him a picture of the rushing gulleys, the waterfalls, the power that the water brings this place. I tell him about winter, that’s when to come, those fleeting afternoons amongst the snow, low sun flinging shadows across frozen tarns. Or the grey days, no views, no vistas, no warm rocks or shimmering haze. Just water everywhere, in the sky, in the ghylls, cold so you can’t feel your fingers, the tussocky ground saturated beneath your feet, ravens croaking through the mist, telling you you’re lost, a compass in your hand, not long till four, not long till it’s too dark, when your head-torch just lights up the mist anyway. That’s when you feel alive here, not that you need adrenaline to enjoy the fells, but you need drama in the scene and under this permanent sun there is no drama, just one big fuck-off postcard.

I didn’t quite say all that, but I did want him to know how this place can be, how it can steal you away and hold you for life, how it’s not just another beautiful place he’s been. It’s my entire self, and it’s not on show properly. Anyway, in no time I make everything awkward. I’m finding that increasingly easy out on my own, without Ali to seamlessly keep the world well oiled. He asks me if I’m going the same way, and I jump to my feet and say yes I’ll walk with you. He didn’t mean that, he meant just to ask me if its far…back to Langdale? He needs to rush you see, get back to the van. So I watch him rush off, a much faster hobble that I’m bound to catch, and which I do even though I take in Rosset Pike. He’s really struggling, and fair enough, he climbed Scafell Pike from Langdale and took in Crinkle crags first, an insanely long and technical route. We meet where I join back up with his path and have another chat. To spare him being forced into a walk back with me, that he’s already declined once, I say I’m needing to rush off so speed ahead. Only, about half a mile downstream I see a perfect rock pool for Rab to have a drink, and for me to have dip.

So to our third meeting, I think of maybe shouting tortoise and the hare as he passes, but he speaks first “see ya” he’s not looking, probably thinks I’m naked, but I can’t shout up that I’m in boxers, and I can’t really pretend I’m in a rush anymore, basking in a pool. I watch him hobble off and wonder if I’ll catch him again. I’d almost like to, there’s something I want to tell him, a reason why I’m so incredibly strange at the moment. Maybe that wouldn’t help, no, definitely it wouldn’t help – Ali’s shaking her head and smiling at the ground. She always used to say, about social anxieties, that, in the nicest possible way, nobody gives a fuck about what you say or wear, or anything. They’re all busy with their stories and thoughts.  

We almost get back to the car, but as I pass the Old Dudgeon Ghyll pub I realise its only 10.30, and can hear a folk band playing dancing in the Moonlight. It’s warm and sweaty inside, the walls are covered in paintings of climbers. Rab lies on the stone floor whilst I buy a pint and then we’re out the open door into the bustling beer garden. One star is out across the valley above Pike O Blisco and the sky is moving through the blues into black, bats are swinging around the corner of the building and moths keep smacking into my face and legs. Conversations are raucous inside, they come tumbling out the door with the music and the light, it’s still warm out here, Rab is flat out again on the floor and I feel in touch with the hills again. It’s been a while and I doubted if they were still there, or if something of them went with Ali. Bowfell says different and I know who’d be pleased to hear that.

Strid woods

Its half an hour until the third world-cup game of the day and I’m flat-out on the sofa, letting myself off the hook whilst I recover from the laser eye surgery I had the other day. I’m full of lentil dahl and a lethargy that only comes from hours and hours of watching sport, all that movement and chaos on the pitch sliding past your eyes whilst you lay stone-still with just a farting, twitching lurcher for company.

I decide to break the dordling flow of the day and get up to Barden Bridge for a walk round Strid woods with Rab. Sod the final game, let’s face the head rush and stand up. As we drive through Silsden the debris of an early England kick-off is everywhere, a girl is swaying about outside the Jet garage in an 1966 shirt and denim shorts, the pub doorways are a ajar with men and their pints, and there’s a que outside Curry Corner where two people are bend-double laughing. Nothing is at rest tonight, and Monday doesn’t exist for a few golden hours.

I reach the little car park just as Bolton Abbey packs its bags, a thousand families are heading home with fishing nets and sunburn, doors slam shut on tired children and then their faces peer out, fighting sleep until the very last. A young girl approaches me from the ice cream van she’d been hovering around when I pulled up.

“Do you have a phone? It’s just my boss was meant to pick me up ages ago and hasn’t turned up. My mum will be worried”

“I do, but not signal, never get it here” I’ve got my phone out to prove it

“Oh its fine” she seems suddenly very happy to leave it there, but I’m concerned now

“I can give you a lift if you like, to wherever you need to go”

“No, I’ll wait”

I don’t realise what’s going in until a few minutes later, how scared she is. There are a few things about me that I had forgotten when I left the house. For a start, the whites of my eyes are bright red with blood since the surgery and I look like I’m dressed up for Halloween, add to that the fact I haven’t washed today and the large helping of dahl that I have down my front and you’ll see how quickly she must have regretted talking to me.

But I wasn’t done, in a bid to reassure her, to let he know I wasn’t deserting her, that I am a good Samaritan, I say if he hasn’t turned up by the time I’ve finished my walk I’ll give her a lift. Poor girl. Never mind worrying about mum, now she’s got precisely as long as this weirdo’s walk takes to get picked up, or he’s giving her a lift even though his eyes are bleeding and he’s covered in what might be sick.

It’s a few weeks since I’ve been down here and the sweet smells of wild garlic and bluebells have given way to a musty, dry smell as ferns start to tower by the path and grass is cut for silage in nearby fields. It hasn’t rained properly for ages, earth is cracked and the moss is brittle on the baking-hot dry stone walls. It’s been an unrelenting day of tall heat, no clouds, just a moon out early in the blue above fells, who are resting now in the low evening light. Curlews are frantic about everything, and every so often one gets caught from underneath by the warm glowing sun, orange now where it should be grey. Gulls too, they’re not at rest for some reason, not the blackbirds either who are scalding alarm calls back and forth all over. Surely a hawk is around?

I’ve been drawn down here a lot since Ali died, she came here to be free when undergoing treatment, to magic up characters and plots for her novella and to blast herself out from under a disease that hard as it might try couldn’t keep her from nature. She was no doubt pleased with the lack of phone signal too, a bit of time where none of us could be in touch, subconsciously seeking her reassurance, hoping she was having a good day. I think about her when I’m walking these same paths, and it makes me smile that she had this place, this time out of mind in the woods. Of everywhere I go this is where I find her easiest and it’s her defiance that inhabits me as we trudge around under the filtered light, me looking for hawks and Rabbit looking for squirrels.

When we get back to the car the girl has gone, and I’m probably more relieved than her, I mean how could I make it any better – I’d end up refusing her the lift to make a point or something. I drive back over Embsay Moor as the sun tilts off into one of those eternal midsummer sunsets. I catch the last ten minutes of the match on the radio and I’ve missed a good game but nothing compares to an hour or two in Ali’s woods.  

Not playing out

We haven’t been going up the lane much recently so it was a nice surprise when the top field was free of sheep. The wind hadn’t died down yet and the long grass was swaying about all over. I dispatched Rab off into it, gallivanting down the hill after her ball. It’s warm, so she curtails her joy-loops and settles down about fifty yards away, I smile over at her stupid head, poked up above the long grass, tongue flopped out in the wind all daft. I decide to sit down too, on the path where the grass is a bit shorter, and I watch the wildflowers tip this way then that in the breeze. Occasionally she feels ready for another chase and drops her ball, just out of reach so I have to get up. I tell her firmly she’s getting trained one of these days. After a few of these ups and downs I hear a guttural scream which sounds so odd I wonder if it’s some kind of machine, or maybe even a cow in distress, but then the shock subsides and the sound takes form:

“OOOIIIII, it’s not a bloody playground”

I’m stood looking at where it’s coming from - the big detached farm house across the next field - and then finally decipher a guy stood on his wall. Blimey what to do? I shout back as loud as I can:

“I can’t hear you” cupping my ears in case he’s not sure.

This is mainly to buy time, find a reaction that respects both my pride and my safety but also it’s quite funny, asking him to shout louder given how enormous his first attempt was. But he tries, and hell, he succeeds.

“I said it’s not a bloody playground, clear off”

This time I respond immediately “I never said it was”

He doesn’t seem to hear, or I’m not giving him chance, but I shout again “What is it, is it not a footpath?”

“YES! It is. Not a playground. Now CLEAR.OFF.” He’s motioning now back the way I’d come

I’m a bit done-in by this sudden confrontation, I was just starting to loosen-off from a day of malfunctioning spreadsheets and really didn’t need any of this. So it’s in this state, on a beautiful evening amongst the wildflowers that I shout back over the wall, almost pleading:

 “I’M NOT PLAYING”

Well fuck me. Look at us, bellowing back-and-forth across a field as the world spins on all around us, spring in full flow and a million birds singing their evening songs. Its two angry men filling the air tonight though, crying inside about territory and rules, masculinity raining down and clogging everything like frogspawn. But for it to finish on that broken holla of every little boy that ever got upset, that final act of defiance. “I’m not playing”. Well that’s unwritable.

Rab and I take our ball home and turn on Springwatch instead. I hope we’re not on there tomorrow, “Look at these two male pipits disputing territory, very common this time of year when headspace is in such short supply”.

Leighton Moss

The colours all gone out the world again. I know, I know. We’re watching marsh harriers dancing over the reeds and Christ, an otter just slithered past all casual but I’m full up. The memories are fresh and warm in each hide, in the swaying reeds, in the smell of the shiny books and t-towels you loved so much in the shop. Memories of fear, of hope, the miracle around the corner, a hand on a knee, a shared cup of tea, the finches and tits on the winter feeders. Your face alive with the power of everything that ever lived as a robin lands on your hand to feed. You came good here, each and every single time, you came good. 

On the skytower staring at some dust out west by the sea, willing it to come closer and settle over the reed bed in front. A starling murmuration we’d travelled fifty miles to see but which wouldn’t shift the half-mile up the reserve to meet us. Cruel nature. But there's not time to be missing things like this, so its down the tower and into the car, we’ll catch them near the Eric Morecambe hide. 

“Are you sure?” I say 

“Well they’re not here are they? lets go” 

“Pullover!”. A thousand, a million of them in the shape of a whale over the field. And now look, look at you. Head tipped back on the car, eyes packed full with life, lips motionless and slightly apart, begging the sky to beam you up. Throw you into that seething pack, sway this way then that back to the roost where its just you and your birds crouched under the winter sky till dawn. But your hands. Your hands are too cold, let me get you in the car and home for a bath. Maybe this was the last time we came to Leighton? I don’t know who to ask.

“What’s that, there?” Dan’s question so succinct that it must be urgent, I see a long bar flying up the lake and think black-backed gull because I’m not used to seeing ospreys. At some point we realise, there’s maybe some words exchanged but I don’t recall them because the colour’s all back in the world and this bird just tilted into a curve showing me its big brown back. Three failed attempts at catching a fish, each time banking round and flapping like a kestrel as it waits for its next moment, a call from the tower to land. We’re close enough to hear the splash and see it shaking the water from those thick feathered legs, maybe in frustration. We don’t drop our binoculars for what feels like ten minutes, swifts keep crossing in front but they’re midges now against his ungainly frame. A woman asks me if they eat mammals too and I wonder if she’s scared. I feel like we all should be, nobody move until he’s gone.

When he does leave I remember why we’re here, that the memories I’d been indulging all day were the bad ones, the in-between ones, the half-thoughts in a day otherwise perfect, they weren’t the story of this place. We came here to be lost, caught in the talons of an osprey and dragged off to a place where all that ever shines is the feathers of a bird, no strip lights or bleached floors, no glasses hanging from the neck of that no-hope consultant as he pauses over your blood results. No, not lost. We came here to be found, picked up from the debris of your illness and laid out in a winter sun, tenderly brought round from the dizziness of loss.

Dan and I wander on through some woodland that’s thick and sticky with spring growth. We don’t say much and it reminds me of the silences with you, respectful of that bird and the time we both needed to recover from it.

The evening is chirping-in at the car-park, blackbirds singing above the slamming doors as we throw our things in the boot. We’re not done, away to Foulshaw Moss to chase this osprey back to its nest. There’s a tower above the raised bog and some volunteers with a scope who show us what’s what before leaving. We set our scope up and watch the male perched in a tree, just a white smudge from all the way back here. Soon Dan sees him fly back over towards Leighton, sent back to do a proper job this time. We watch a marsh harrier for a while as the wind gets colder, we’re hungry but when the colours are back in the world there’s nothing to do but look and so that’s what we do, stood up there like a couple of kids with BMXs, watching the redpolls chase back and forth and letting dusk settle over us. When we finally pack up and wander back we see two greater spotted woodpeckers at their nest. After a full day peering and peeping through hides and scopes Dan is still brimming with of all the enthusiasm you’ll ever see in a person, staring at the mess of black, white and red on the tree, so much like you.

Helvellyn & the Dodds fell race 2018

“I live like my dogs now, got three cocker spaniels and I live in the moment like them. I’ve got work left in me like, but I want to be out here so I’ve been winding things down a bit”. His voice was thick and warm, a bit Cumbrian, a bit dales, and his skin was browner than late May would suggest. He was talking to a stranger in the car next to me, and I was sat in mine looking busy, pinning my race number on so he’d not see me listening in.

But fell races are fascinating for listening, stood on the start line the conversations were bustling like a swarm of midges, all positive and inclusive, conducted with a keen eye for pretence, that rather than shackling people, seems to free them up to say anything. Like what they’ve learnt from their dogs or how they’re skint this month so couldn’t afford to replace their old knackered Walsh’s. There is no judgement or jealousy here and as the marshall gets up to give us a few pre-race instructions she’s afforded silence after everyone helps her quiet the crowd down by shushing.

And we’re off, funnelled along the tarmac road at the foot of Clough head, bound for the long ridge that will take us away over Great Dodd, Raise and Helvellyn. Chatter continues along the lane but as we hit the fell, with the gradient bending us double into a slow climb all there is to hear are the bleating lambs. I keep checking behind me at Blencathra to get a fix on how much we’ve climbed and it looks great in this heat, stood shoulder to shoulder with Skiddaw against a hazy blue sky.

The real story of the race hits us as we crest onto the summit of Clough Head. The incessant wind that will turn us into tacking ships all the way to Helvellyn presents itself immediately and violently. It takes a while to adjust but people seem to and I’m just grateful it isn’t blowing my glasses off. Someone asks me to hold his bottle whilst he sorts his bag out on the final climb to Helvellyn and he offers me some food as we walk together a while.The view west from here is fantastic with the whole park on show, I could sit for hours watching. Maybe its the thought of sitting or just the lack of training in my legs, but after Helvellyn I find it hard and start to wilt, people go past me in a steady stream but always say hello.

Its bloody awful descending Clough head on knackered legs, almost three hours after climbing it, and when I stop to say bastard, a woman in pursuit stops too and says “I know”. We run back to the tarmac swapping places a few times and exchanging some words of encouragement. At the finish a guy sits down in the verge next to me and says he was done with the wind after an hour, I agree but can’t summon the energy to add anything else. I need some food and hobble back to the car thinking about the man living as a dog, on the way I see the woman who’d descended alongside me and she puffs her cheeks out. Everyone is spent, but we’re all here together in the endless summer making a go of things whilst we can.

Kestrel

I wrote this in January at a time that Ali was particularly ill, she'd just been discharged from hospital after complications with her lung disease. Whilst in the hospital I read Reality is not what it seems by Carlos Ravelli, a book about a potential theory to unify quantum and classical physics. I feel that  understanding nature in your heart and mind are the same thing, and that the separations we impose are arbitrary. I'd like to explore this more, but here is my first go...

Kestrel

As the wind lashed handfuls of rain along the valley and yesterday’s storm debris lay awkwardly in the mud something made us turn right into the rotten ferns and up along the side of a wall. We’ve never gone this way before, it all seems a bit private, but cloaked in the dusk of a stormy January afternoon we snook on. 

Rabbit had a lot of work to do, frantically joining the dots on a new field of scents, I upped my pace in keeping with her and then caught a hint of something fighting the wind. A kestrel fell and then rose, and by the time it began to hover I had it in the binoculars, focusing past the bare winter sapling that separated us. My heart began to beat faster, and now it was me joining the dots, guided by the fine brushstrokes that the kestrel sketched across the gloaming.

Its thin shape changed continuously and was as sharp as a crack in the sky, the occasional flash of colour from the top of its wing marked a dive, always to rise again effortlessly against a wind that swayed the trees like huge reeds. I felt safe here, in the reed bed, taking cover from the fretful grey sky. I kept my eyes on him and imagined what he saw in the field, the countless ultra-violet urine trails, a hint of some movement before a tilt into dive.

My mind drifts. What if we could see all of the electromagnetic spectrum? Radio waves lolloping by unhindered by the furious wind, the infra-red glow of a sheltering fox ten feet away, and always the distant hum of the big bang in the background. I looked again and saw the kestrel hanging in the great known, framed now by the science that had flooded my thoughts. More beautiful, I whispered.

Rabbit remained seated, her bulky back legs splayed awkwardly to allow her long spine to touch the floor, pink belly radiant against the fermented browns of  last year's ferns. She wanted to know what all the fuss was about. Not interested in birds. Taught frame, wide eyes, patient for a mammal to appear from the lichen-moss folds of the wood below. The kestrel took its final dive and disappeared below the horizon. I watched the empty stage for a while and saw the mills of Connonley crouched below the rushing gales, the Aire valley was going about its relentless business and I felt tired. Lights twinkled on and our fire needed stoking, I no longer felt fractured or confused.

Rabbit kept seeing ghosts in the trees as we walked home and etched on my retina was the perfect curve of a kestrel wing.

A run from Swinside to Buttermere

Approaching Hopegill head from the Whiteside, fresh snow kicks up and sails north off the ridge. The wind is smooth and is pouring over Grassmoor like champagne foam. My legs begin to tire but I resolve not to break stride until the summit but then instantly do. Marching now, looking around more readily and the triangle of Grisedale Pike feels for a moment implausible.

Before I finish that thought I’m descending, choosing light snow on scree over tussocks and drifts. The col was lower than I recall and colder than the tops. Quickly onwards, easing through the flattened v that separates Crag Hill from Grassmoor. It’s a wind tunnel this morning and my eyes water as I bend forward into a slow jog across compacted snow.

Wandhope can be avoided so I do, staying low and close to the craggy southern face of Grassmoor. Thoughts drift back to warmer days here, to the Buttermere Horseshoe race and an afternoon amongst migrating butterflies. I stop dreaming once I hit the short climb to the summit of Whiteless Pike. Suddenly the Alps appear and startle me in a way that only mountains can, surely we need a word for this? Buttermere and Crummock water glint below, the Scafells, Gable and Pillar tower over a black Haystacks. High stile cowers in their presence, cloud glues to Gable like moss and, as always, Mellbreak sits still, untouched by drama, squat and silent like a camel at rest.  

The descent to Buttermere is fast and grassy, thoughts bounce like road chippings behind.