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BB2306
: Where You Lead.....
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Thursday
23rd February 2023
“As Tony isn’t with us, how
about the Howgills?” I asked the
boys.
Terry obligingly started singing,
in a voice not quite resembling that of Carole King. “Where you lead, I will follow”. I was touched.
Martin might have said that he
wasn’t born to follow
but he didn’t. The Howgills it would be.
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It was a beautiful morning, indeed
it was one fine day
as we drove to Sedbergh.
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Then we ran
into a spot of bother. Heading down the narrow
one-way street through the middle of town, a white van man leapt from his cab
and vanished. We thought about going back but by now
traffic had built up behind us. “It’s too late,” said Martin
who was driving. “It’s
going to take some time before he returns.” He was right.
Eventually the driver came back
and locomotion was
achieved once more. Once parked in the
main car park, we were able to set off up Winder. We passed through the farmyard
where the farmer was bemoaning the loss of a sheep. “I’ll never find another ewe as good as that
one,” he sobbed.
We chose a route a little different
to our previous visits. We are all somewhat
less than match fit so I opted for what looked to be a more gentle approach
from the south west.
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It was still rather
steep. Fortunately there was a nightingale in full song
so that gave us an excuse to keep stopping to enjoy his rhapsody.
At the summit is a trig
point
where I made a hash of sending TV Mike a photo of the identification plate (he
likes to see such things to determine where we are).
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We looked at the spread of the Howgills to
the north. “Is that The Calf?” Martin asked, pointing. “No, I responded, “The
Calf is way over yonder. You are looking at Arant Haw.” This was confirmed by one of those things
that points to and names the different summits.
The
Lakeland hills could also been seen although
the visibility wasn't quite as good as earlier.
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We set off for, and subsequently
reached, Arant Haw where two questions hung over us.
Firstly, where should we have
lunch? Answer- just down a bit and out
of the wind. In the valley below, the
fields were laid out like a tapestry.
Very peaceful. It was almost like being halfway to paradise.
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Secondly, should we press on to
Calders?
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“It’s so far away. It’s too late now to do that and then meet up with John. He’s in town,” I reminded them.
Or would be by the time we got down.
In the distance we could see a
group of walkers heading to Sickers Fell.
They stopped at its summit and we engaged in
conversation.
On learning that we were
the BOOTboys, one of the ladies suddenly said “You’ve got a friend called Bryan, haven’t you?"
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He hadn’t been able to join us today because
of school holidays.
The lady was
Margaret of the Kendal Fellwalkers, the group with whom Bryan goes out on far
more exciting adventures than ours.
Margaret took a picture of us
and sent it off to Bryan who subsequently forwarded it to me and now, me to
you!
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There were nine people in her
group so they were tackling nine tops, which quite put us to shame. We walked with them down the hill until we
came to a stream. There we had to take a giant step to get
across. We parted company when they went
straight up Crook whilst we opted to take the path that curved round its
side. I wish we had gone with them. The path was narrow with a very steep drop on
the left hand side. It was too scary
(for me) to stop and take any photos. Occasionally
the ground was loose and I
could feel the earth move under my feet. Quite
disconcerting. And it seemed to go on
forever. I only want to do that for once in my life. Never again.
Eventually it levelled out and
joined the track used by the others on their descent. Coming off the fell, we found a gate, seemingly
locked by chains. Fortunately we could undo them and took the
path down into town, passing the Motte and Bailey Castlehaw Tower which appeared
to have something rather strange up on the roof. We couldn’t
tell what.
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Eventually we reached the Black
Bull and met John. “What are you
drinking?” we asked. “Oh,” he
replied. “I’m into something good here. It’s Landlord’s bitter”. He was right. It was good. What a session- all too soon it felt as if it’s over. Time to go home again.
Don, Thursday 23rd
February, 2023
PS:
Yes, you are right. This was a rather contrived report into which
I have weaved quite a lot of Carole King song titles. How many can you spot? Some kind of wonderful prize awaits he or she who spots the most.
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