Rural Architecture

Drystone walls

I'm not sure if this fits the bill for architecture as intended by the community challenge but drystone walls are such a defining feature of this landscape I thought I'd submit one (and more in extras - I couldn't decide which to post). This was a nice example of working with the underlying rock.

Wordsworth writes about the 'music' of walls as the wind comes through them and he once talked about having to ground himself in the world by holding on to the solidity of a nearby drystone wall. The line of his poem 'Michael' is a killer, 'And never lifted a single stone', in its symbolic expression of lost hope, love and loss. And he wrote a poem called, 'Rural Architecture'...
http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww176.html

Today, I'd missed the best of the day and conditions had gone very still and flat as I headed up from Rosthwaite towards Watendlath. The wall offered some line and definition. Great habitat too....I watched a stoat pop in and out of every little hole and gap keeping an eye on me. I went to an excellent talk on them (walls) a couple of weeks ago at Maulds Meaburn.