Nordic berries Wonderful cloudberries, Nordic berries. I was amused to see cloudberries pictured on body lotion and hand cream because the plant features in Cumbrian Contrasts. It's found only in the eastern fells and the berries are even more rare. Cloudberry is interesting botanically, and in its various names. Cloudberry, Rubus chamaemorus- of the bramble genus. I found it on Knoutberry Haw on East Baugh Fell. Cloudberry, Knoutberry, it's all one.
Long before I found the hand cream I was immersing myself in clouds and cloudberry. Investigating. West of Ravenstonedale Common there’s limestone pavement and ribs of rock, shake holes, swallow holes, caves . And the place names I find so beguiling: Clouds, Stennerskeugh Clouds, Fell End Clouds.
Fell End Clouds. Imagine you are alone in the solitudes of Fell End Clouds, as if you might walk on and on to the very fell end and into the clouds. Clouds, those billowing masses of water droplets and ice crystals, all atmosphere. But clouds have substance and solidity too. Clud; the Anglo Saxon name for a hill or that mass of limestone. Cloud is both the atmosphere and the fell it envelops. Fell and cloud are indistinct. Hill walkers know this because we so often walk with our feet on the ground and our head in the clouds. It’s a breathtaking experience.
I can’t wait to return to Fell End Clouds and explore on a day of fleeting clouds and sunshine. Will there be sunshine? Surely this winter of floods will go down in Cumbrian folk memory.
Fell End Clouds. Imagine you are alone in the solitudes of Fell End Clouds, as if you might walk on and on to the very fell end and into the clouds. Clouds, those billowing masses of water droplets and ice crystals, all atmosphere. But clouds have substance and solidity too. Clud; the Anglo Saxon name for a hill or that mass of limestone. Cloud is both the atmosphere and the fell it envelops. Fell and cloud are indistinct. Hill walkers know this because we so often walk with our feet on the ground and our head in the clouds. It’s a breathtaking experience.
I can’t wait to return to Fell End Clouds and explore on a day of fleeting clouds and sunshine. Will there be sunshine? Surely this winter of floods will go down in Cumbrian folk memory.
Ash trees in invisible storm-force winds. 30 January 2016
Yesterday, on Scout Scar, I tried to photograph a wind so powerful it was hard to keep my feet on the ground. Blown over, blown away by the wind. It was exhilarating. No shelter up there on the ridge, none. I stood in the lee of a hawthorn that might filter the wind for a moment. Almost too wild to take photographs, I couldn’t hold the camera steady.
Now rain, again and again.
Now rain, again and again.
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