#46

Another year older - hopefully a little wiser.

I'd a lot to get done today so I was out relatively early - "but it's my birthday & I deserve a good walk" I thought to myself - Pushka fully agreed. With the sky full of drama and a (turned out to be wrong) forecast for rain  - on this a day when I'm aware I've much to be thankful for - another one of those blessings was apparent in being able to walk out of my door into beauty such as this.
Up onto the fantastic glacio-karst landscape of the Orton Fells is an easy but rewarding choice - there is drama here - albeit often on a subtle scale - and a little knowledge does help in the appreciation, well for me at least. Geologically the area is one of our finest examples of its kind - the remnants of a sheet of rock created under a vast sea which once covered most of the North - the rock now nearly gone but so important that local place names are recorded in geological history - the Asbian, the Holkerian - and used by geologists as key identifiers across not just the UK but also the continent. The passing ice ages left their marks too - the exposing & eroding at first seeming the most obvious signs - the process that created the grikes- but once you start to look you can find examples of their passing in the huge boulders of rock types only found elsewhere - carried miles by the ice and then finally left to rest atop the limestone when it receded - as I say there's a lot to take in here and I'm well aware I've only scratched the surface.

But hey - sometimes its just good to sit & take in the view.