Ushering of Angels

It’s been a soggy, foggy, boggy morning up on the moors, today. I set off at 6.30am and trudged up the hill. There has been a lot of rain and flooding lately. Although, this morning there was the merest of fine drizzle and little wind when I began.

I saw three dead sheep. They are probably the victims of flooding, as they slip on the steep sided gullies, fall into the swollen streams and can’t escape as the weight of their now sodden wool holds them in the water. It is sad because they would all have been ewes about to give birth. I saw one new lamb with its mother. They give birth much later up here on the hilltops, in lowland areas some of the lambs will be two months old by now. I often wonder how these upland farmers can compete financially with their lowland counterparts and yet the moors would completely change character without these sheep biting at the grass and keeping the ecological status quo.

I heard the curlew’s burbling call coming out of the mist. I was surrounded by dense white walls but could hear the bird’s song rising and falling. The wind was beginning to pick up but in calmer interludes I also heard the skylark as it took to the air. The songs were punctuated every so often by the chesty bleating of sheep close at hand but still invisible in the fog.

As I reached the summit of the hill I found my way blocked by a fence with an attached notice declaring that the area around the transmitter mast, which is located at that place, was to be fenced off until the end of 2009. Apparently, it was undergoing a major refurbishment to upgrade it for digital transmission. The footpath was diverted around the fencing so I followed it. It crossed a bog and ended at a service road. I decided to go back home and turned around and took two steps. I heard a noise like somebody lobbing a half-brick onto the soft ground. I turned round mystified as to who would be around throwing bricks into a bog so early in the morning. I heard another land then another. I caught one in the act of landing and realised that the ‘bricks’ were in fact lumps of ice that were falling off the hawsers that supported the mast. They could have fallen from the height of a thousand feet and the wind, that was picking up speed, was carrying them outside the safety fence. The amazing thing was that I had been prompted to turn back home just at the very moment that the lumps of ice had started falling.

After looking at the ice and contemplating the situation I set off downhill. The wind was blowing from the north and shredding the mist, which flowed in clumps down the road as if it had urgent business elsewhere. I passed a nature garden near a group of stone cottages. There was a dark pink Ribes sanguinea flowering against a background of pale yellow daffodils. In a couple of weeks the whole area will be green but at the moment the colour combination is near perfect.

I passed a mixed hedgerow where the sloes are heavily in blossom. This is not a natural area for sloes, they prefer limestone and rarely make a good showing of fruit. Added to this we often get late frosts which wreak havoc with these early flowering shrubs. Tomorrow will be a case in point as snow has been predicted and feeling the icy northly cutting through my jacket I can well believe it.

 

Easter Saturday

I’ve just breezed up to Two Lads and back down this morning. It’s the middle day of the Easter weekend and compared to the hordes that would have been up there yesterday it was quiet. I saw two other people and they were indistinct shapes on the horizon. I did think about waiting around for one of them to reach the cairns so we could discuss the amazing strength of the wind up there but then I decided that they, like me, may want to be alone with their thoughts.

I feel that I have fallen out of love with the moors at the moment. They are so battle-scarred from the wheels of mountain bikes, quads and scramblers as well as the inevitable fly-tipping that takes place up there. I’m like a shallow person that no longer feels the same level of affection now that my loved one has grown old and weary. Or maybe I’m just disheartened because the moors seem to be losing the battle with the abusive biking fraternity. Is that too strong a word? Many of the people who now use that landscape for recreational purposes seem to have little appreciation of the damage they are doing. Most of the paths are worn down to the boulder clay and in some places even to the bedrock. The peat is not going to be replaced, it won’t be laid down again in my generation or the next or the next. It probably took a thousand years to develop the bogs on the hilltop to the depths they are now.

Still, I do continue to find it startling up there. This morning as I tramped up the last leg of the footpath above George’s Lane, small insects kept flitting down the wind. I was surprised to see so many as the weather is very cold then I realised that they were tiny snowflakes being blown from the other side of the hill. By the time I had reached the top there were flurries of snow and the wind was so strong that you could barely breathe. I climbed right up to the cairns and leant back into the wind feeling again that childhood joy that something invisible could support your body weight so reliably. I did wondered, as the wind whipped the spit out of my mouth and across my face, if I would be able to get back down but once I had struggled the first few yards of the descent I was back in the shelter of the hill.

I decided to risk falling branches and walk through Wilderswood. The treetops clacked together like so many old skeletons as the wind tossed them to and fro. Some trees have come down at the lower end of the wood but not as many as I would have thought considering the weather over the last two weeks.

One last thing of interest happened on the way home. I met the old man and after the normal greetings he told me that he had seen a dead badger on the lane we were standing on. He said that the body had been tossed onto the banking and did not show any outward signs of damage. We wondered over this a little then went our separate ways.

 

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

And it has, ever so briefly. A few white hours early on Friday and then by midmorning it had gone, vanished, but a memory. I rushed up the hill this morning to see if there were any remnants left in which to run amok. It was disappointing because there was nothing but brown, soggy moorland as far as the eye could see. I started off towards the mast on the summit then I saw, cowering under a tussock of soft rush, a couple of tablespoons of snow. I knelt down and picked up a small handful letting it melt through my fingers wondering if this may be the only snowfall of the year.

I can only remember snow staying on the ground once last year. It stays in my mind as I had a minor bumpette in the car when I was driving between work placements.

I was going to walk up to the television mast this morning. It stands on a ridge of the Pennines and can be seen like a beacon for miles around. It’s strange how homely such a technical landmark can look after you’ve driven on the motorway for hours and then see it coming into site, low on the horizon at first then gradually rising up the nearer you get to that chain of hills that divides the country north to south.

Along the way I saw a bunch of apricot roses tied to a fence post, their delicate petals buffeted by the stripping, winter wind. They were somebody’s memory there, cable-tied to that post. They seemed a poignant reminder of frail mortality in a wide, unrelenting world.

The garden – in a word, muddy. Too wet to work on at the moment except for a little pruning. I expect to see the new green blades of daffodils soon along with a flourish of buds on the primroses. Last year the primroses took it upon themselves to flower whenever they saw fit, it was a sparse spring-showing with a follow up display in the autumn. I think the unseasonal temperatures are throwing them out of sync and they are exhausting their supplies out of season and then are unable to perform the following spring.

 

Do you recognise this view?

It’s one of the many towered hills along the Pennine chain and in a blast of pre-Christmas exuberance I decide to climb up it and view the world before descending into Christmas shopping mayhem. I can’t say I was fortified by a sterling breakfast but a banana and a satsuma can go a long way on a frosty morning.

It has been one of those crisp, frosty days that Dicken’s specialised in describing and I did, in a moment of inspiration, re-read that passage in ‘The Pickwick Papers’ that describe the Christmas eve wedding and that glorious skating scene on Christmas day.

It has been a few years since we had a prolonged season of freezing weather in December, it is usually a damp, murky month where you have to keep the house lights on all day and everybody has a continual cold with intermittent bouts of flu.

 

There has been a lot of shock and horror at the prolonged cold. People appear to be mesmerised by the global warming debate and are under the impression that we are now entering an age of tropical weather as opposed to the reality that we are, and always will be, a little country situated on the north-west reaches of Europe. Still, as I stated before, it’s early in the season for this type of weather.

 

It does produce a beauty of its own, though. The trees have a frosting that enhances their bare winter shape and the moorland grasses, that are normally a dull reminder of the hills in the summer, are miniature ice-sculptures that bear looking at in close detail. In the sheltered spots the ice in smooth and rounded on the long-dead flower heads. In the exposed areas, on higher ground, the ice has formed into blades on each stem, sharpened by the wind.

The whole hillside had a ‘Joseph Farquahrson’-esque feel to it. Although, two sheep do not a herd make. There were very few people out to enjoy this morning, normally by 9 o’clock the hill is awash with dog-walkers and cyclists. It’s a pity because there is a lot to appreciate on the bare hill tops in the winter, there is often a strange kind of loneliness up there even when there are people about.

 

I tried to record some of my thoughts when I got to the top of the hill and sheltered behind the tower but when I listened back to the recordings all I could hear was the howling wind. I sounded as though I was walking across an Antarctic glacier. It did occur to me as I was walking back that if I fell over forward with all that digital recording equipment in my pockets I could do some financial damage. I did ponder the idea of wearing a rucksack but then I may fall over backwards and being a past master at falling over both forwards and backwards whilst tackling those muddy paths I may have to reconsider photo walks.

 

On the way down I passed a jogger wearing one of those bluetooth ear-pieces and as hard as I try I can’t but fail to be reminded of the Borg everytime I see somebody wearing one. It’s scary. I do realise that by mentioning the word bluetooth I’ll probably get a lot of hits by people who are going to be very disappointed when they arrive here.

 

Burbling

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.

 

Drumming

This is the first post of the month. Last week I was pre-occupied with Mission: Operation Rabbit. I know pets are meant to, well, just be pets and not take over your life but sometimes … The operation went well and the rabbit appears to be on the road to recovery. I’m maintaining an open verdict on house-rabbits at the moment as he makes his presence felt in much stronger terms than a cat and tends to dominate the action most of the time.

Enough of rabbits. What has the weather been doing here in Lancashire? Mostly frosty crisp days with clear nights and persistent fog filling the valley areas. I think it will change soon though, this morning, for a short time, the light had that strange yellowish quality that is hard to define but often denotes that change is on the way (plus they’ve given snow on the weather) :)

It has been marvellous being on the moors as the sun is rising and the whole scene changes from bluish-grey through salmon pink then achieves a myriad of hues as the sun clears the horizon. There are no endless vistas at the moment, the pollution puts paid to that. An ominous band, rising to 200-300 feet covers all the lower areas across the plain towards the coast and down towards Cheshire.

When it’s windy the pollution is dispersed but during high pressure it simply sits on the lower ground. From a distance it’s brown but when one drives through it the air appears hazy. When it is really bad the level of pollution can rise to 600 feet and you are hard-pressed to get above it.

All around are signs of spring, even the air has a certain smell that’s indefinable, I always think of it as a ‘green’ smell, it has a fresh zingy quality to it. I can’t truly describe it but once smelt I know that the year has moved on and from now on nature will push ahead with new-life as surely as the damp mushroom smell of decay signifies the coming of winter at the end of the year. And just to prove a point, I heard the drumming of a woodpecker as I was walking home and looking upwards I caught sight of a black and white bird flitting through the top branches of a nearby tree.

 

Running on somebody else’s legs

I was out again before dawn this morning. As I approached the wood that lies below the moorland I startled a deer that darted away up the stony track and disappeared into the undergrowth. I couldn’t tell what species it was in the half-light but it was probably a roe deer as they are the more common round these parts.

I felt as if I was running on somebody else’s legs today. I stumbled along feeling heavy and tired. The wind was coming from the north-west and moved the dense fog present on the hilltop from one place to another but never blew it away.

It’s hard somedays to tell which is low cloud and which is hill fog, although that in itself is cloud by any other name. When the wind is in the west it blows across the sea then reaches the land and rises slowly as it crosses the Lancashire plain. When it hits the line of the Pennines it is suddenly forced upwards and the mild moist air cools as it gains altitude. The cooler air is unable to hold as much water vapour and so water begins to condense forming a hill fog. It then spends its time skulking about on the moors, occasionally creeping further down in order to make its presence felt in town. The wind will normally carry it off as the day wears on but it often returns overnight and fills the sky with a heavy greyness the following day.

So, to combat the damp I’ve included a recipe for ciabatta bread, an ideal accompaniment to those winter soups. The recipe is from allrecipes.com.

Ciabatta Bread

The dough is very, very sticky but the resulting bread is excellent and very like shop-bought ones in texture.

• 1 1/2 cups water
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 3 1/4 cups bread flour
• 1 1/2 tsp dried yeast

1. Put ingredients into pan of bread machine in order recommended by the manufacturer. Select dough cycle and start.

2. When cycle is completed remove dough from pan. It will be very sticky, resist the temptation to add more flour. Let it rest on a lightly floured board for 15 mins.

3. Grease and lightly flour 2 baking sheets. Divide dough into 2 large loaves or 6 smaller ones. Roughly shape into oblongs and cover with a damp cloth and leave to rise in a warm place for approximately 45 mins or until doubled in size.

4. Preheat oven to Gas Mark 7 (220C/425F).

5. Dimple dough and place loaves in oven. Bake for 15-20 minutes for smaller loaves and 25-30 minutes for larger loaves. Swap tray positions over halfway through and spritz with water every 5 to 10 minutes during baking to give a crispier crust.

 

‘Sighted a mackerel with stripes on his back’

I set off this morning in the bluish pre-dawn light. The dusting of snow on the ground made the paths more visible especially in the darker areas under overhanging trees.

I walked up across the moors to the trig point. The pillar is only easily accessible when the ground is frozen. It sits on a concrete platform in the midst of a bog and I gingerly crossed the patches of ice covering the dark patches of water. They crunched and crackled underfoot but I didn’t go through.

The view was breathtaking, which is remarkable when I consider the number of times I have stood on that skyline and looked across to the north and east. It was the clarity of the air that was unusual. Mostly, you are either peering into a mist close at hand or glimpsing shrouded grey shapes in the distance.

Today, I could see the Pennines rolling away before me, line after line of elongated, rounded hills that remind me of a shoal of fish breaking through the surface of the water. Beyond these, I could make out the peaks of the hills in North Yorkshire, they were covered in snow and gleamed in the early morning sunlight.

I spent some time gazing across this distance not knowing when I might make out those distant hills again. I walked away from the trig point and crossed a stile to come back to the main path by a different route.

It was one of those mornings when you are loathe to abandon the moors, their beauty is captivating on days like this and I found myself taking in deep breathes of air like it was some wonderful vintage wine I might not taste the likes of again.

The trig or triangulation point is part of a network of pillars erected all over the UK in the 1930s to aid with mapping the country. In these days of satellites and lasers, the trig points are defunct. Some of them are being removed from their, often high and remote, locations. Why, I don’t know? It seems a little shortsighted, they are not ugly, bulky things that impinge on the countryside in the way, say, that the endlessly multiplying mobile phone pylons do. They are a little part of history and should be preserved as such. Also, if they are ever needed again, it would prevent the need to re-construct them.

I reluctantly trailed off back down the hill and home, glancing up at the sky and noticing the formation of a ‘mackerel’ sky. The barred clouds glowing pink, quite pretty really but a sure indication that the weather is about to change and these few crisp days are soon over.

 

Thro’ the Crisp Air

A biting north wind was blowing today. It was so refreshing to feel cold. The hills were covered with a thin layer of snow, not much thicker than a heavy frost. All along the top lane the early morning sunshine bounced off ice-covered puddles.

An area of woodland has been fenced off after the storm of last week and peering over the wall I could see many trees at an angle to the other trunks, great tall trunks of pine, the whole effect was like an open weave tapestry.

The sheep on the common land above the lane were set against the snow like a Joseph Farquharson painting. Some of them looked dumbfounded at what this cold white stuff could be.

I ran along the bottom of The Pike taking care over the icy patches, sometimes taking to the narrow grass verge for better traction, then walked back through the grounds of a long-demolished house that had once belonged to Lord Leverhulme.

The grounds are extensive and modelled on ancient Chinese gardens, or possibly Japanese, nobody seems sure on this point. They are planted up with all manner of non-native plants that were popular in Victorian times and even now the old borders glow pink and claret with Pernettya berries.

The local park wardens have hacked back the Rhododendron, which are a legacy from that Victorian planting. Every few years they are razed to the ground to reveal the stonework beneath and what magnificent stonework it is. Beautifully appointed follies, cascading waterfalls and hidden grottos are all built out of the local millstone grit and look so much part of the land that it is hard to remember that they are a contrived landscape.

I left the icy stillness of the gardens and wended my way back home only stopping to watch the motorway which, because the wind was from the north and not the west as it usually is, is playing out in the distance like some silent movie as people hurry, each to their various workplaces.

 

The West Wind Doth Blow

The weather yesterday was astonishing. When I first ventured out in the morning there was a damp wind flicking up litter but no hint as to what was to come. For the last 72 hours the weather people had been promising violent storms and sending out warnings by the hour. A warning had been given on the news in the morning regarding not going out unless it was absolutely necessary but that was a non-starter on a weekday. Nobody’s boss is going to accept the excuse, ‘I can’t come into work today because it’s windy.’

By the end of yesterday afternoon we had seen winds topping 91 miles an hour, as recorded by the weather station at the local TV mast on Winter Hill.

There had already been a lot of rain put down overnight which was now cutting channels through any loose debris and bubbling up through storm drains. I was visiting my mother where we sat drinking cappucino and watching the windows in the house opposite shimmy as the winds rose higher and higher. The contents of builders’ skips were flung up the street and ‘For Sale’ signs stood no chance, bending swiftly as the wind struck them. Through the kitchen window, in the back of the house, garage doors alarmingly took to flight like pieces of paper in the factory yard.

The aftermath is clearer today with gaping spaces on roofs where tiles have been ripped off and fences blown down. Several trees in nearby parks have been uprooted whilst, amazingly, my old, cankerous apple tree is still standing. The roof of a local Royal Mail delivery office has been partly ripped off and several gable ends have been blown in.

Six people lost there lives in this area, most through falling masonry. One man died as his lorry overturned and another man had a heart attack as he battled to secure his fence against the wind.

Yesterday was stark and frightening, many people escaped just in time as they fled from crumbling buildings. Several schools in the area are closed today as teachers and pupils look at the smashed walls and shattered roofs of their classrooms. It was often people’s vigilance that enabled escape in time as buildings came apart.

Today is quiet, it’s probably windy but not so you’d notice.

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Another recipe suitable for a breezy day.Tomato and Rosemary Soup

The secret of the excellent flavour of this soup is allowing the tomatoes and onions adequate cooking time so the flavours develop. Suitable for vegetarians.

Serves 2

• 1 tin of chopped tomatoes
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• a small bunch of rosemary, chopped
• oil for frying
• salt and pepper
• 2 oz of Feta, cubed, and ciabatta for serving

Method

1. Gently fry onion for 10 minutes.
2. Add tinned tomatoes and rosemary.
3. Simmer, covered for 45 minutes, not allowing mixture to become dry and burn.
4. Add a cup of water then puree.
5. The soup is now ready to serve with cubes of feta and ciabatta.

Can be frozen.