Launchy Gill

I had half thought about driving back from Norfolk today and had seen that mollyblobs was leading a group on the BSBI New Year Plant Hunt and it would be on my route home but I ended up heading back yesterday as planned and considered joining the group I joined last year instead. As it turned out they weren’t doing it this year and the next nearest group was a bit far to go to today. So I was going to do it myself but couldn’t update the app. I tried several times and realised it was probably jammed up with lots of users. It’s been fine this evening.

In the end I caught up with my sister who has just got back to Norfolk from their trip to see G and the grands in Basel and then went over to Thirlmere and got a good soaking in the persistent rain that I was sure wasn’t forecast. The echoes of the past are all around here (extra), including the presence of G who spent so much of his early working life in these woods. 

I scrambled up the path that Useless Utilities has long neglected and is now virtually lost and went see the if any of our handywork, all those years ago, was still there. As I climbed I wondered how on earth we’d managed to clamber up there with all those tools and equipment we used. I had a sudden flashback memory of thinking I felt like one of the seven dwarfs in Snow White with my pick and shovel. Bits of the path and the steps that we built are still there but the bridge is completely lost and remnants of it can still be seen high up on the opposite slope. It couldn’t have survived Storm Desmond but I suspect Useless Utilities wanton neglect hasn’t helped.

I sat on a rock and drank my thermos of tea listening to the water rushing down the gill wondering what the point of building it had been. There was little trace of our matchstick efforts now and it was almost entirely reclaimed by nature. I couldn’t help but feel it was a metaphor for where humanity is heading.