Outdoorswoman

Stella: Why, Blanche, it sure is hot in here.

Blanch: (Fanning herself with a copy of The Manchester Evening news) It sure is Stella. Hot and humid. It’s especially hot considering we’re sat here in the little ol’ county palatine of Lancashire.

Stella: (Slumping down further into her chair) Why Blanche it’s so hot I might just take my flat cap off.

Blanche: Yeah, Stella and I jus’ might take off ma duffle coat before I take a bath.

(Meanwhile a blues piano plays in the background)

So April and May have rushed on by, drier and warmer than usual apparently, although the heating has been clicking on in the morning until about a week ago.

I meandered up to the Pike yesterday, having managed to have a lie in until gone 6.30am. Most mornings the light finds its way through the pinpricks in the curtains and stabs me awake at the glorious time of 4am, or thereabouts.

It was a clear morning with no breeze and an inversion fog, my favourite kind of fog, filling the valley. The air was already warm and the lack of wind meant that there was no incessant motorway drone in the background.

The green of the trees is spectacular, some mornings it is exhilarating, especially when there is that drizzly type of rain because then the colours seem to glow. The vibrancy of the different greens leap out from the grey background on such mornings.

I have been informed, by a painter, that June is the best month for doing landscape watercolours because the colours of the trees are at their best. This is probably true, as by June they have moved on from the pale pinks and lime greens of newly unfurled leaves but they haven’t yet reached that dusty appearance they get in August.

As I reached the highest point on my walk I happened to glance back and found that the fog had been creeping up the hill behind me. Just metres below my feet the whole world was a grey sea. I raced the short distance to the top of The Pike so I could view the surrounding horizons before the fog blotted everything out.

I turned to watch it move across the moors where it favours the narrow water channels that cut across the landscape. Narrow fingers curling and steaming up the slope. As it covered the ground curlews, which had been silent up to that point, started burbling. Not one or two but it sounded like dozens although maybe that was a distortion of the sound travelling through the fog.

I met one other person up there, a woman training for the ‘Three Peaks Challenge’. We exchanged a few words about the weather and the ability of hills to keep you fit then parted company. I walked into the fog and carried on back home.