Walking the Line 8

Above Dunnabeck, Grasmere
It’s been a long time since I’ve added to my ‘Walking the Line’ series ... https://www.blipfoto.com/entry/2360907328519146485

This morning, inspired by Marj’s blip, https://www.blipfoto.com/entry/2576168107932389118 I spent some time this morning watching (again) a TED talk by Sebastian Salgado. Although on a different scale entirely, it made me think of all those bluebells and our lost native woodlands. I’ve been resisting the urge to go and see the Rannerdale bluebells. It’s hard because it has been such a good year for them and they are a lovely sight but they are mobbed and not really as they should be. I decided instead to go to one of my old haunts and it was a joy (extra ... insert sound of cuckoo ...my first this year).

I headed up to the line of the Thirmere aqueduct in search of the old pay station that I remembered G showing me so many years ago. I remember him telling me that the navies were paid on the aqueduct side of the wall (the back of the building as you see it here) and you can see the opening which has since been walled up. I scrambled down to see it from this angle - I couldn’t quite believe that we never did this when we used to walk here but we were usually walking the dogs. It has a fully slate flagged floor. It looked magical with the light and spring greens today.

I followed the Line for a while, the May blossom was positively frothing and then remarkably (considering I was noisily sliding down scree) I saw a pied flycatcher who even waited for me to get my camera out.

By this time the call of tea and cake was urgent so I went on to the cafe at Rydal Hall and then dropped down to see if Keith was at home. He went to school with G. There he was in his greenhouse and we had a catch up. I asked him if he remembered Mayme, a woman that G used to talk about as being a healer that lived in the village. He said that people who couldn’t afford the doctor would go to her. Keith said that as a boy he did remember his dad coming in one day and saying that Mayme had died and that the news quickly spread round the village but the next day she was seen alive and well the in the Co-op. We reckoned she was probably pretty good at her art!