Lanercost

6 at 60: turning 60

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Every time I write or think those words – that I am now 60 – it is difficult to believe. After all 60 is grown-up, right: middle-aged even. But somehow I feel more like I did when I turned 40; 50 sounded older but 60 sounds fun. Perhaps it’s also because I’m happy on my own again, and achieving things which matter to me: at 50 I had a baby, two young children, no career and was in a marriage which was not bitterly unhappy but was not happy either.

Perhaps the lesson is that when I’m doing the things I love – enjoyable work; exercising; music; time with people I love – then I am happy and feel energised. Life feels abundant; but I’m also perhaps more confident than I’ve ever been before.

The week started with a spa day with Anne. The treatments which we’d booked had to be cancelled as they were short-staffed: but we were amply compensated with a glass of champagne each, a free side order with lunch, and another half day, with the missed treatments, at the spa in November.

On my actual birthday I travelled down to Kent via London. I hadn’t been to St Pancras International since it had been redeveloped: it’s now an amazing location to spend time between trains, with far too many tempting shops and wine bars. Getting on the fast train to Kent was amazing: it zooms out of St Pancras between huge concrete walls, arriving at Stratford in about 5 minutes; unfortunately once it gets into Kent it slows down somewhat, and I then had to change at Faversham on to a bog-standard suburban train.

I was staying with Jo and Mike – the pair who came up in the summer – and we went into Whitstable for dinner, picking up Jo’s daughter en route, and walking to a lovely fish restaurant by the sea. My shoes were already hurting so I took them off and walked barefoot: but it was hardly a sandy beach, unfortunately. It didn’t matter though – it was a great evening and to see someone who I had looked after from time to time as a small child and who is now a beautiful adult was great.

There was a two-day work conference at the castles in Dover, Deal and Walmer and my memories – although the content was interesting – are of seeing the white cliffs of France in the sunlight on the other side of the channel; running up on to the white cliffs of Dover and into the National Trust nature reserve; and of the sun being out and walking around the gardens at Walmer and then along the shore to Deal. I am resolved to go back sometime and take the boys, as I think they’d love it.

Having arrived home late on the Thursday night, Friday was then a day of whizzing around and friends arriving before I got up early on Saturday to drive down to Cartmel for the Cartmel trail race (10km challenge). I was really pleased as it was actually 11km and I ran it in an hour and 6 minutes; my 10km time was about 1.01 (I’d love to get it under an hour!). The results were all over the place, but it looks as if I was second in my age group – having just sneaked now into the Female Vet 60 age group.

I got back home to find my lovely friends had prepared some food for the soiree; I got changed and headed down to Lanercost to set up the Dacre Hall and have a final rehearsal. I had an incredible amount of help from my generous friends – generous with their time and support as well as with their donations of food for the party, presents and with their contributions to my chosen charity.

The party/soiree went well and people seemed to enjoy it; I was delighted that my two older children were there and proud to see them being so charming to my friends. Bella in fact enjoyed it so much that she wants me to organise something similar every year. Rather than reproduce the entire programme, I will just upload a handful of photos (I thought, having subscribed, I’d be able to upload a video but it appears I can’t – unless I perhaps do it via YouTube – there are two here now if you click on those two links – one of the others that I wanted to post is sideways for some reason). I do realise that I sound very amateur when compared to other renditions on YouTube – but as I love singing and have no ambitions to be a professional singer, I guess that’s OK. It’s the music that matters.

“Music, when soft voices die, vibrates in the memory“. Percy Bysshe Shelley

New runs and lockdown 3

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I’ve always had a relatively low boredom threshold, and love exploring. A third lockdown (really the 2nd ‘proper’ one) and I was more than ready to start to look for some new running routes. But just how far was ‘local’: if I was taking the kids down to Penrith to their Dad’s, was it OK to run down there (not a question the police could answer when I emailed them)? However, there were certain site visits which were necessary for work, so I started trying to plan off-the-beaten-track routes which would take in the site visits, and trying to find alternative routes locally.

We’ve had snow, too – nothing terribly thick yet, but I couldn’t wait to get out running in woods with snow falling. It always reminds me of the Robert Frost poem Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening – even though it hasn’t been evening nor actually snowing as I’ve run. But even feeling the crunch of snow under foot brings up my memories of that poem: the images the words conjure up; the sounds and stillness of being out in woods in snow; the magic of running through the woods back from Lanercost, with snow floating down around me.

I’ve run to Lanercost and back twice in snow recently: one time it was fairly firm underfoot but the second time it was wet snow on top of wet mud, which, as I trod into it, made a squishy mess. Nothing pure white and virginal that day, unfortunately – and the second time there were also a lot of trees down across the beck. It’s still a lovely run though, and Lanercost is an atmospheric place, choc full of history and thoughts of Edward I, Robert Bruce, the dissolution of the monasteries and parties in the Dacre Hall.

Locally I also found an ‘extra’ bit of route which I have now done twice – the first time I tried it out my car was having its handbrake repaired and I ran while waiting for the car, saw a bridlepath and thought ‘I’ll see where that goes’. It linked up with a path I’d been along a long time ago, next to the river Gelt, and then took me back into Gelt woods. Today I did it again, clocking up 11.5km. I’m not really much good at spotting wildlife but I have seen deer in the wild grass near the woods, and today there were miniscule buds on some of the trees, a mix of snow and sun on the fells, and snowdrops having burst out of the ground getting ready to throw their flowers open.

Standing over the railway line feels like a real ‘Railway Children’ moment.

At the end of January I had to go down to Bristol to take my mother in for her second cataract operation, and my father in for his first Covid jab. It gave me a chance to run around Bristol, feeling a little nostalgic for when I’d lived there for 4 years when I was first married and my two oldest children were babies/toddlers. I was at school in Bristol for 5 years as well, and so the place feels familiar. I ran along the Portway, past a wicker sculpture of a whale (it’s quite well camouflaged in the photo) and up through Stoke Bishop before crossing the Downs, that lovely open space in Bristol perched on top of the cliffs of the Avon gorge, and back into Clifton Village. The following day I ran from my parents’ house along to and up on to Wavering Down: the sun was out and spring was in the air. The day after that there had been snow over night and my sister and I walked up there under a completely different sky!

The snow has been somewhat sporadic so far this year, and when I ran yesterday from Shap Abbey ruins to Rosgill, cutting through towards Burnbanks across muddy but beautiful scenery, the snow was on the felltops rather than on the ground, and the streams were all running energetically. Having taken rather a long time to run the first 6km or so, due to squishy ground and unclear footpaths (and having to keep checking the map), Penny and I decided to run back along ‘the concrete road’ rather than a bridlepath which was a bit further south (that will keep for another day). This road was built to help get materials and construction workers from Shap to Haweswater, to build the dam – the one which flooded the village of Mardale. It passes through what feels like an almost-unknown valley before we picked up the Coast to Coast route to return to the Abbey ruins.

While I like understanding the history of the land and buildings – I was going on to Penny about rows of standing stones I’d read about and so forth – she was busy spotting wildlife, like a dipper in the stream. Its white chest makes it rather striking. And we both liked the belted Galloways, though there was a bull amongst them and calves, so we gave them a wide berth.

Talking of standing stones, there are tons of stone circles in Cumbria. One of my favourite ‘small’ ones is Mayburgh Henge, which sits right next to the M6 just south of Penrith (and en route to running on Askham Fell). Another is Castlerigg Stone Circle, near Keswick. Visiting it towards the end of a cold wet day during lockdown made it feel even more atmospheric than normal. A lone dog-walker went past on the opposite side of the circle, but otherwise I had it to myself. Historians and archaeologists believe that one of the purposes of this circle may have been as a meeting point, where axe heads created from the stone from the Langdale valley were traded. Places like this, and there are many of them in Cumbria, are a reminder of our deepest human roots; of the continuum which is human life. Other people have trod these ways before us; others will after us.

And finally and on a lighter note – I’ve been making more cake. I seem to keep having bars of dark chocolate given to me or in the cupboard, so there are various variations on the theme of chocolate cake. And as that’s making me feel hungry, I’m going to go to make dinner!

Shakespeare

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In terms of runs there weren’t any new routes this week, but what I did do was combine ‘old’ routes together and on Sunday ran 13km locally. Other than that I haven’t done a lot of mileage, but I did have my hair cut.

A few people haven’t noticed as they thought I just had my hair in a pony tail, but on the whole the feedback has been positive. Of course I can’t make it look half as good as the hairdresser did.

It was an interesting experience in some ways but not a surprising one. I had to fill in a form (for track and trace purposes) when I arrived, and use hand sanitiser. I managed to squirt a load of it over the form I’d just filled in. My poor hairdresser had a plastic visor thing over her face which was great for me as I didn’t need to wear a mask, but she was developing a headache. I had to put my coat in a plastic bag and apparently they were washing every gown worn at 60 degrees after each client. It wasn’t how things used to be, but it was nice to see her and it didn’t feel unduly stressful.

Whilst I’ve fitted in quite a few runs, work was also busy: I went to Carlisle Castle for some meetings on Tuesday, Newcastle to the office to pick up some stuff on Wednesday, and Carrawburgh Roman Fort about a grazing licence on Thursday. It was a reminder of how the hours speed away when you’re out on site a lot, and how you then get back in to a load of emails and paperwork to do (I have several reports I need to get out). It’s always good to get out though and it was nice to see real people again, rather than just meeting over Zoom.

On Saturday a small group of us had decided to go swimming in the hidden tarn that Penny and I had previously run to. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t brilliant – it was quite chilly and we all put wetsuits on (and felt cold even so) – but the tarn was beautifully clean, a perfect size for a good swim, and there were no other people on ‘our’ shore. Despite the greyness of the day we had a lovely swim, and the others were delighted with their ‘magical mystery tour’.

We had the obligatory picnic afterwards: all the more special because it was Jo’s birthday. I had made two cakes, which had to be carried up the hill to the Tarn: Lemon and Poppy seed (with a layer of lemon curd spread in the middle) and Cappuccino Squares (with coffee butter icing as well as coffee sponge, partly because I’d run out of vanilla). The chocolate ‘sprinkles’ on the top are lovely Hotel Chocolat hot chocolate, so not any old powdered chocolatey dust but real chocolate.

You can see that I look a bit cold – I’m still wrapped in my swimming tent over my clothes – and Anne (foreground) has borrowed Tricia’s gilet. The others were more prepared.

Otherwise I’ve been doing some singing and reading and am trying to watch some more of the plays on television, as I’ve missed a couple of weeks of the National Theatre at Home now – early on in lockdown that had been my special Thursday night ‘thing’.

I’m re-reading 1599, a book about that particular year in Shakespeare’s life. It’s as enthralling this time round as it was the first time I read it: it relates what was going on in England at that time to the plays which Shakespeare wrote during that year. The Globe theatre was being built: the main structure was taken down at dead of night from its location within the City of London to be established at Southwark, outside the remit of the City. Elizabeth I had decided to send troops to Ireland to quell the rebellious Irish. Led by her once-favourite, Robert Devereux Earl of Essex, it was a bit of a disaster: and the conflicting national feelings are reflected in both Henry V and Julius Caesar.

Reading this made me go away and look up what was on not only on the Globe’s YouTube channel but also the National Theatre’s: and discovered that the BBC iPlayer has ‘Culture in Quarantine’, including some of the Globe Shakespeare plays. I’ve just watched The Tempest and now have The Merchant of Venice, Othello and Midsummer Night’s Dream to catch up on – as well as the National Theatre’s The Deep Blue Sea. I don’t think I’ve had such a rich cultural life for years, if ever. As Jo said, I’ve begun to enjoy staying home in the evenings (though getting out for some exercise, fresh air and vitamin D every day is also a priority).

Meanwhile when Edward’s here we’ve started on another Horrible Histories book, this time Measly Middle Ages (I bought him a boxed set of all the particularly horrible Horrible Histories for Christmas). Reading about the plague of course initiates comparisons with the current pandemic: there were wild rumours about how it was caused (the medieval equivalent of 5G masts); about where it had come from (Arabs, the Spanish, lepers); and there were some wacky cures (powdered emeralds; sitting in a sewer – both probably no better nor worse than swallowing bleach). And somehow the fact that it was spread by fleas jumping off dead rats on to humans seems all too similar to a virus passing from animals to humans.

The other thing about the plague was that people of the time never knew exactly when it was going to go away nor when it was going to come back. We think we’re so much more clever nowadays – and I think it would be true to say that we have far more scientific knowledge – and yet we still seem to be floundering around trying to work out exactly where this virus came from, how it’s spread, and what (if anything) will stop it.

On that point, as I don’t really have anything else to write, I shall stop. This evening I had an extremely pleasant run to Lanercost (a fascinating site with a history which belies its current tranquillity: English and Scottish Kings made it their base or raided it; the Tudors ransacked it in the dissolution of the monasteries but allowed the locals to keep the nave as their church; a local wealthy family then converted part of it into their home) and back with Penny and Tim, the sun finally appearing in time to make it feel like a summer’s evening rather than an autumn one!

Penny’s had a haircut too, but you can’t tell under her hat.

Hadrian’s Wall run

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It’s ages since I ran along Hadrian’s Wall. My previous blog, supervet-sarah (so called for when I turned 50 and was categorised as a ‘supervet’ in races: soon I shall be ‘vintage’) describes several runs along Hadrian’s Wall, many for miles: from Carlisle back to Brampton for example. I have since then run from Walltown Crags home (something I must do again before too long) but generally over the past few years my local runs have been relatively short.

So when I was offered a socially-distanced lift along the wall to wherever I wanted, I accepted the offer and decided I’d run from Poltross Burn back home. This takes in some of my favourite bits of the wall, and during the 8 miles or so I stopped plenty of times for photos. Rather than write a lot, I’m going to upload the photos here and hope that you can enjoy a virtual tour of the wall as much as I enjoyed running it.

Poltross Burn milecastle. Roman soldiers would have slept in those dormitories. I wonder if they made the floor level or if it sloped and they all rolled downhill during the night?
The wall at Willowford – one of the longest stretches of continuous wall. I started a video at this point but didn’t press the right button, so there’s a gap now and no photos of the fab. Roman bridge abutments at the bottom of the hill
However there is one of this lovely modern bridge over the river Irthing. Look how low the water is though: we really need some rain
Big picture window in the cafe at Birdoswald – I wished it had been open to pick up a take away cappuccino! – and lovely apple blossom in the ‘orchard’
Wide open skies and views for miles, just past Birdoswald. I felt so free – and still had not seen a single other person
Years ago when I ran along Hadrian’s Wall a lot as training for Kielder marathon, these woods – Combcrag Woods – were boggy to say the least. A friend told me a few days later about a walk down the hill through the woods, to the river – I’ll try it out some day.

Turrets, lovely stone cottages (probably built from bits of the wall), tiny little gates – and my favourites, black lambs
Piper Sike turret (amazing views); Banks East (ditto) and Hare Hill – the latter has the highest remaining piece of wall (and even so c.1.5m lower nowadays than it would have been). It’s also where I held a torch when Hadrian’s Wall was lit up in 2009: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7ItBWuaVVE
Stunning views from the top of Hare Hill, above Haytongate Farm, over to Blencathra and the Lake District fells
Down the hill towards and past Lanercost Priory – another site of defence, conflict etc. – both Edward I and Robert the Bruce made it their HQ at different times. The priory is of a very similar design to Brinkburn Priory in Northumberland, with similarly stunning acoustics (I have sung at Lanercost and was hoping to sing at Brinkburn this summer)
The final couple of miles back home through lovely Quarry Beck woods and then Ridge woods: views this time over towards Scotland.
It won’t be long before we’ll be able to pick cherries from the park near home.

Lockdown 6/Furlough 3

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Homeschooling

With a huge range of lessons, ideas, activities and support online you’d think it would be easy to home-school: but as almost every parent is finding, it’s not actually as easy as all that.

For a start, when has a child ever taken any notice of his or her parent as a teacher? Years ago there was no way my parents were going to teach me to drive; I attempted to teach Isabella piano at one point and we stopped after one lesson. My first day of homeschooling with Edward and Bella I had thought had gone quite well; however since then trying to get them to do anything has been an uphill battle (though once Edward has buckled down to something he normally gets on with it without demurring too much).

Bella is, fortunately, very self-motivated: she may not always study at a steady pace but when she puts her mind to it she throws herself into it. However having offered to teach her some French in order to help with the GCSE course (which she is doing outside school as school can’t timetable French for her), she told me she’d do it herself. The clear indication was that I was not good enough.

Edward then informed me that I was a ‘crap teacher’. This is because I taught him how to calculate areas and perimeters of triangles, squares and rectangles using some basic GCSE questions. Apparently I shouldn’t have done that… meanwhile Alex is teaching Edward history. Or at least, I thought he was teaching him about the First and possibly Second World War. In fact it is far, far more specific than that: Alex is teaching Edward about the development of weapons during that period. I think Edward’s historical perspective is going to be somewhat skewed…

Alex meanwhile insists he has nothing on and nothing to do, whilst admitting that he hadn’t looked at school emails for at least a week. He has at least signed up to a ‘MOOC’ (Massive Online Course or something) and it’s a topic he’s keen to study – the development of the British Army from 1815 onwards (notice a theme here?). However it’s already started so he’s going to wait for the next start date…

I hope he remembers to check when that might be…

Living alone – or not

Having had the boys for 3 or 4 days, Isabella came here when they went back to the house in Penrith. It meant that unusually, I haven’t actually been alone for about a week. It’s been nice having the kids separately and because Bella is old enough to leave on her own I’ve got out for a couple of runs: she’s also made me do more yoga as she has started doing yoga herself.

Meanwhile having finished Melvyn Bragg’s The Adventure of English (which was absolutely brilliant, and enthralling from start to finish – and made me so grateful that I was born in a country where English is my native tongue, and I haven’t had to learn it!), I then read Alexander McCall Smith’s The Unbearable Lightness of Scones. I’d picked this up as a bit of ‘light’ reading but then found passages with some insightful and relevant comments on the human condition.

The first was this, which was applied primarily in the book to someone who lives alone:

“…there are many of us, surely, in that category; we may feel that we have numerous friends, but how many can we telephone with no purpose other than to chat?”

It made me think about the current ‘lockdown’ situation; about being alone myself at times; who I have been in touch with and who not. Over time it’s changed: there was a slightly frantic flurry of activity in the early weeks as we adjusted to this slower, quieter pace of life and in a slightly panic-stricken way did our utmost to stay in touch with people. I’ve found – and I don’t know whether this is true of most people or not – that whilst I’m still chatting to people, I’ve become a bit pickier about it, and that some of the people I’m in contact with the most are not necessarily the ones who I thought I might have been. It’s been brilliant to have zoom ‘drinks’ with Caroline and Jo, who otherwise I wouldn’t speak to for months: we’re currently talking to each other more or less once a fortnight. I’ve caught up with friends I haven’t spoken to for ages, such as Kath – and then I’ve had phone calls to friends who I might otherwise see for a run or at choir but who I wouldn’t normally ‘need’ to phone. Workwise I actually feel closer to the nationwide team of which I am part than I had before this all started; and my sister and I have been conversing far more than we would normally do (which is nice – we hated each other as kids but we’ve grown fonder of each other over the years).

Then nearly every time I’ve been out I’ve ‘bumped’ into someone I know, which has meant having the chance for a nice chat, or at least waving and saying ‘hi’ as I run past. And everybody but everybody has been generally friendlier – it was always the custom to say ‘hello’ as you walked or ran past people at the Tarn, but now everybody seems to be doing it all the time. I feel even more part of the community than I did before, despite being in my house a lot and at times alone for days at a time. Saturday was especially good as I spoke to a couple of friends in my garden. It’s sad not to be able to hug people, but great that we can still chat.

Boredom? The meaning of Life?

One of the characters in the Alexander McCall Smith book suddenly realises one afternoon that she has nothing to do, and she finds this unsettling and immediately starts to look around for another project: ideally one she can do from home.

It’s been crossing my mind the past few days that life has become like a constant weekend: no need to do anything at any particular time, or at all if you don’t want to. Is this what retirement is like? Are we given some sort of purpose in life by our jobs? It’s made me wonder what it must have been like in pre-industrial days, when ‘work’ would have meant, for some, surviving – finding enough food; ensuring warmth and shelter. We seem to have progressed to a stage where it is necessary to be using our brains and to be Doing Things in order to feel useful or important. Or is it partly so that we don’t have to face up to the reality that we are, in fact, no more than rather sophisticated (which in middle English meant adulterated/corrupted) animals ?

Bluebells

The bluebells are out in all their glory this week, and in fact I think look better than I’ve ever seen them. I had a lovely run through the woods down to Lanercost Bridge (there’s a plain modern bridge and then a rather lovely old packhorse bridge alongside it) with a haze of bluebells on the way back; then on Sunday I went for a walk round the Tarn with Edward and he did tree-climbing. Every time I go out I am conscious of the abundance of spring flowers, which never fail to lift my heart.

It’s always so good to get out and I am incredibly grateful – and relieved – that I can. I spent a day indoors last week, only going out to put something in the bin. Whilst I did extra yoga, it just wasn’t the same as being out in the spring sunshine and the countryside, and the day felt a bit weird – a bit incomplete. I’m resolved to continue to go out daily even if it starts raining soon!

The best things in life…

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About five and a half or six years ago, not long before David left, one of his friends said to me that from reading my blog you’d think I was happy whereas when you met me I was a miserable git (those weren’t his exact words, but close enough).

I’ve looked back at blogposts from around that time and in fact I wasn’t always that happy, but expressed that at times I felt low. But I also know that I have always found some solace in being out and about on my bike or running; with friends; in music. But when your heart feels completely and utterly broken and life seems black even these things are not a consolation.

I think it says something about my general state of mind, therefore, that despite having been desperately upset about the children last week, it didn’t take me long to bounce back and to have a brilliant weekend. Having reacted incredibly emotionally to something on Wednesday evening, by the time I’d had a huge amount of moral support from friends I felt calmer though still tearful on Thursday. The weekend – which, as I don’t have to go to Newcastle to work on Friday, starts for me on Thursday evening quite often – got better and better from there on in.

I went for a bike ride on Friday morning with one of the Claires (I have several friends called Clare or Claire). Her two children are the same age as two of mine, and we’ve been talking about going cycling together for ages. I got side-tracked doing something at home so she cycled to mine, I cycled back with her to her house and had a drink, flapjack and a chat, and I then cycled home again. I hadn’t cycled all of the route before so it was good to try something new, and I saw exactly what she meant as I cycled home – the view as you cycle away from Heads Nook (her village) with the Pennine Fells ahead of you is a lovely one.

Friday evening I very nearly backed out of going to a concert with two friends, Anne and Mark, but was really glad I did go. It would have been so easy to have said “I really don’t feel like it and I need some quiet time and to do my ironing”. We went down to Salkeld Dykes to see Kinfolk in concert in a barn which has been newly converted by Michael Sanderson and Katharine May to a music room, big enough to put on small concerts. Michael plays and sings with Kinfolk as well as being a classical musician – he and his wife Katharine are also Eden Music/Eden Baroque. Kinfolk was performing at Music on the Marr the following night, so it felt quite a privilege to be able to see them in this smaller and more intimate setting – and it was great to be able to chat to them later. I’m never sure whether I’m going to like a whole evening of ‘folk’ music but this was fantastic – I was tapping my foot and smiling for almost the entire evening.

The following afternoon I was singing at Lanercost Priory, with James Booth on guitar, as part of the celebrations for the Priory’s 850th anniversary. I was relieved that I sang far better than I had for the choir concerts back in May (back then being affected partly by nerves and partly as I was going down with a cold) and I’m really looking forward to singing some more with Jim on guitar. Mark and Anne had said the previous evening that they were going to Lanercost on the Saturday evening to see Jerry King’s ukelele band. By now I was on a roll… not at all sure what I’d think of an hour of ukelele music, I agreed to go and again had a brilliant time.

On the Sunday I had arranged to meet up with my sister as she was staying with a friend of hers in Cockermouth. We went to Crummock Water and swam, paddle boarded and kayaked. Not only do I now want a bass guitar for christmas (as a result of seeing Kinfolk) but also I now want an inflatable kayak. The water was beautifully clear – until you got into the deeper part of the lake you could see the rocks beneath you quite easily: completely unlike Keswick the weekend before, which had been muddy, weedy, opaque and disgusting!

Having had a good time splashing about in the lake, followed by a picnic lunch provided by Rachel’s friend Sara, I headed over the Newlands Pass and valley to meet Penny. We drove down to Grange and ran along by the river Derwent (very shallow at the moment due to lack of rain, but very pretty) through Rosthwaite to Seatoller, before turning to go uphill and head in a northerly direction back to Grange. It was about 7 miles in total and we were not particularly quick! However there were some great things along the way such as the metal chain pinned into the rocks just past the YHA at Seatoller – the rocks must be really slippery when it’s wet weather – and Castle Crag, which is stunning. The view of Castle Crag from a distance and at stream level I felt was an almost alpine one – but then I’ve often thought that about Keswick, and also sometimes about Penrith, when I’ve seen them in the snow with the fells behind them. This time was more the summer mountain pastures aspect and I guess if climate change continues the way it is so far then actually that won’t be so inaccurate.

I stopped off at Rheged on the way home to buy some dinner for myself (even the food in the petrol station at Rheged is of a quality you don’t normally find in such places – including some beautiful French-style patisserie, though I didn’t buy any of those on this day). I sang to myself up the motorway and thought how lucky I was. I had had a weekend which had included friends (and my sister, who it was great to see), music, running, swimming, cycling and the beautiful outdoors.

What could be better (other than perhaps my kids having come along too, and enjoyed themselves)?

Too nice to stay indoors

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The lovely weather continues and today I woke to another day of gorgeous golden autumn sun.

walk-around-lanercost-23rd-oct-3

I had thought of running up Talkin Fell, but somehow that didn’t feel like quite the right place to go, and also having cycled from Maryport to Ravenglass yesterday (feature to follow…), walking somewhere appealed instead – and I remembered that I hadn’t been up above Lanercost at Haytongate for ages – probably not since I was training for Kielder Marathon (see Supervet Sarah blog).

walk-around-lanercost-23rd-oct-5So, lazily (and as I was meant to be getting back with time to finish painting my utility room), I drove to Lanercost.  I wanted to be on my own, so when I saw some other people heading up the track to Haytongate I turned left to walk along the lane which heads eventually to Walton, knowing that I’d pick up the Hadrian’s Wall path at the top of the hill (you can cut across the field from Lanercost Bridge as well, to join the lane further west near Burtholme East).  The colours were fantastic and the views as lovely as ever.  I walked to the top of the hill above Haytongate, remembering using it for hill training (and Kerry not being too happy about me suggesting she sprint up it and jog back down at least 10 times); remembering the day when loads of people came out to light up Hadrian’s Wall.

Somehow photos of views across to the Lake District never come out very well, but some of my photos did capture a little of the essence of this autumn – so different from this time last year, when it seemed to rain and rain and rain and life felt as if it was just falling apart.  I’ve also added some photos from a run I did up through Rowbank to Milton and back on Friday: all those photos need is some snow to make them Christmassy!  It’s too early to be thinking (much) about Christmas, but the first snow of the year has already been recorded on Great Dun Fell.

Perhaps this winter will be a white one rather than a wet one…