Wet Sleddale

Heading home from a weekend in Cumbria we called at Wet Sleddale, a little cloudier than on the last occasion I blipped it.

The sky was overcast but for an oasis of sunshine down this valley so we turned off the road and took a few images across the reservoir towards the glow.

It was good to catch up with old friends and watching the fox hunt yesterday was a revelation. You could argue all day about the pros and cons of hunting. But when you travel through this area, you realise that almost everything you see - the fields, the stone walls, the hillsides - have been shaped by sheep farming for hundreds of years. Lambing time is one of the most important times of the year for the farmers.

The hunt was entirely on foot and the hounds are following a scented trail since fox hunting with hounds is illegal. Anti-hunt people were out on the hills because they know that foxes are still killed by the hounds. Of course foxes are killed. The farmers want the fox population to be suppressed because foxes take young lambs. The fox isn't a bad animal. It doesn't discriminate between foraging on a dead animal, catching a mouse or taking a lamb. It's a successful animal and it's a beautiful animal. We saw one running down in to the valley, missed by the hounds high up on the crags.

For visitors, like me, a weekend in the Lakes is a privilege. I wasn't born or raised here. I cannot know these hills in the way that they're known by my farmer friend. What right have I to bring my urban values here? What right have I to judge on what is or what isn't cruel? All I would say on the legal question is that the law as it stands is virtually unenforceable. Also, I sense that there's little sympathy for enforcement among the police who seem, quite rightly, to be far more concerned about maintaining public order.

When a fox is killed, the followers refer to it as an "accident" as if the fox got in the way of the hounds. But the farmers know where the foxes are. I would guess - and this is a guess - that trails are laid over known lies. If the law is repealed it will not stop anti-hunt protestors trying to disrupt hunts any more than the law against fox-hunting has stopped hunting.

The answer in the long run might be better education for all; better understanding and a willingness to put ourselves in someone else's shoes. If foxes have to be killed I would rather it be at the hands of the hunt than through shooting, gassing, trapping or through the main cause of unnatural death - under the wheel of the car. When we make judgements on cruelty we should reflect on the carnage we inflict in our daily lives, whether on the road or indirectly through our pets. The plastic bags we use for convenience in the supermarket are never our plastic bags, are they, when we see them floating over the fields. We didn't put them there did we? We didn't stuff our uneaten sandwiches under a stone while walking the fells, thus helping predator populations thrive. Judging right and wrong here is difficult, but if I'm anti anything it's anti-ignorance.