Wells at Troutbeck, Westmorland

It's not quite up to freespiral's '5 a day' but 3's not a bad well count for the day. Admittedly, like buses, once I'd found one the others came by in quick succession.

Troutbeck is a deep lakeland valley with a long village strung out along its length like a necklace and is really a series of hamlets that have grown up around the wells.

I was planning a walk today and thought I'd head over here to blip the wells. Interestingly, I was fairly sure in my mind's eye, that I knew where they were but they weren't, so I had photographed quite a few roadside hole-in-the-ground-possibilities before I reached these. They have been dedicated to the saints St John and St James and Margaret. I'm not sure if it is supposed to be St. Margaret or is just another Margaret.

I've included a couple of extras, including one of a chap walling which felt timeless and below him you can just make out the church tower in the valley bottom. In fact the whole day felt timeless, on many fronts. There was a huge trail hound meeting up the valley and if it wasn't for the 4x4's it could have been another century. And, as I looked above the waller towards Garburn pass and the quarries (another extra) I remembered the many times I had walked up there before with G and then, after he died, I had trudged up to the top of the pass on a mizzly wet day in my waterproofs, disappearing into the low cloud and murk and lay down by the pathside, and fell asleep in the rain for what felt like fathomless time.

So, all in all, a strange sense of meeting many different layers of time and with wells safely under my blip belt, I walked up Wansfell and the other extra is of Windermere stretching out towards Morecambe Bay on my way back.