countryside – Narrative Places

Climbing the Pike

This week is a flashback to the time I climbed the highest mountain in England, Scarfell Pike, following the route from the Borrowdale Valley.

Slug Cheese and Peeled Almonds

The Dales were, for the first hour, swathes of green velvet, scrubby moorland peaks and granite mountain tops. It wasn’t quite the blistering wilds made famous by the Bronte sisters. Instead, it was tempered by a kind of human tenderness which transmuted the land from desolate to verdant. Before our eyes flashed farmsteads, drystone walls and chocolate box cottages; all lying in wait for the artist’s brush.