Cunswick Fell and the snow-clad Howgills beyond Our day was pastoral. Over Cunswick Fell, then we follow a network of footpaths and green lanes linking farmsteads: Hall Head Hall, Bank End, Cappelrigg, Bonfire Hall and Cunswick Hall. On a winter’s day of sunlight and shadows we see no one and it’s as if we have slipped back centuries. Bonfire Hall, an evocative name. Cumbrian farmsteads are often designated ‘hall’, perhaps suggesting the status that might attach to a yeoman farmer.
To think back in time we need old maps, before the coming of railways and roads.
To think back in time we need old maps, before the coming of railways and roads.
Centred on Bonfire Hall. there are OS maps of 1897, 1903, 1925 and 1947. Our map includes springs and wells, vital information for farmers and their stock before mains water. In a pasture of sunlight and deep frost shadows a spring bubbles up out of the ground and the farm rises above on a sunlit bank. Further along our way, there's the stone structure of a well where water emerges at the foot of the limestone.
A tup wears a harness of dye and pregnant ewes huddle round a feeder of haylage put out to supplement their diet, their rumps stained with dye. We look for a sunny bank for a lunch stop but the ewes come crowding in, begging for food. Long shadows reach out from the trees and shadows run along with the sunlit flock. The lead ewe begs in a throaty gargle. It’s chilly out of the sun so it’s gloves on and off again, with a digression to back-track and find one we’ve lost. We walk on until we find a sunlit rocky outcrop free of sheep
A tup wears a harness of dye and pregnant ewes huddle round a feeder of haylage put out to supplement their diet, their rumps stained with dye. We look for a sunny bank for a lunch stop but the ewes come crowding in, begging for food. Long shadows reach out from the trees and shadows run along with the sunlit flock. The lead ewe begs in a throaty gargle. It’s chilly out of the sun so it’s gloves on and off again, with a digression to back-track and find one we’ve lost. We walk on until we find a sunlit rocky outcrop free of sheep
Our bright and frosty January day was preceded by Storm Arwen in late November and there are large trees uprooted, timber cleared from green lanes to keep the tracks open. After days of rain pastures are frozen hard, flooded and thawed into sloppy mud where the earth is warmed by the sun. The low sun touches the mossy top-stones of walls enclosing green lanes and we wade through puddles. To the south, there are floodwaters at the head of the Lyth Valley. I haven’t walked this way for some while and I remember being here at different times, different seasons in the 21st century, that's my time of living in Cumbria.
Toward sunset we reach Gamblesmire Lane. A name of Scandinavia origin, a friend suggests- gammel means old in Danish. Gamblesmire Lane is an ancient way, a hollow way - hollowed over centuries by the passage of carts and farm beasts. Thick hedges shelter the hollow way, hedges made stock-proof by repeated hedge-laying. A glance shows us diverse species that will indicate the age of a hedge: holly, bramble, hazel and rose with mossy stumps and secret places in the bank to shelter birds and small mammals. The low sun highlights unusual perspectives and the subtle colours of winter woods below Cunswick Scar and Gamblesmire Lane is deep in shadow, its icy floodwaters gleaming where sunlight reaches down to the track. Last winter we were watching a flock of fieldfare in the canopy when a posse of motor-bikes came roaring down the lane and the birds took flight. These days, Gamblesmire Lane is a BOAT: a byway open to all traffic. If we’d met bikers today we’d have been spattered with mud and squeezed into the hedge. In past centuries, when so many worked on the land these lanes would have been frequently used by farm workers. men with the skills of woodcraft, hedge-laying and coppicing, whose families had cared for this land through generations and who would know it intimately.
The last light lingers over the snow-clad fells in the distance and warms the winter trees in the wood below Cunswick Scar. The enchantment of this cold and bright January day lies in a quality of light specific to the season, in peace and solitude, in discovery, in companionship and curiosity. And in the challenge of interpreting this pastoral landscape we need not only 19th century maps but snapshots through millennia.
Our sense of a landscape little-changed was illusory and this was brought home to me as I listened to Open Country. There was a transformation of the wetlands of the Lyth Valley with the Enclosure Act of the early 19th century but what about earlier times? And Farming Today tells of constant change as individual farmers struggle to adapt to evolving Government policies in response to Climate Change, carbon sequestration, sustainability, biodiversity and so forth. A farmer who goes back generations will have inherent knowledge of his land, hefted to it, like his flock, and only he will know how best to farm it. So the picture is intricate and complex.
Saturday 8th January. Radio 4 Open Country Dartmoor with archaeologists, farmers and naturalists.
A programme that considers Neolithic and Bronze age peoples on Dartmoor, through to medieval times. Thought-provoking and informative, with specialists with in-depth knowledge.
Followed by Farming Today. Food, farming and the countryside. An interview with a Cumbrian farmer reminds me that individual farmers seek a way forward appropriate to the land they know and love, in keeping with what they believe to be best practice. To understand what you're seeing on a farm you need to talk to the farmer.
The last light lingers over the snow-clad fells in the distance and warms the winter trees in the wood below Cunswick Scar. The enchantment of this cold and bright January day lies in a quality of light specific to the season, in peace and solitude, in discovery, in companionship and curiosity. And in the challenge of interpreting this pastoral landscape we need not only 19th century maps but snapshots through millennia.
Our sense of a landscape little-changed was illusory and this was brought home to me as I listened to Open Country. There was a transformation of the wetlands of the Lyth Valley with the Enclosure Act of the early 19th century but what about earlier times? And Farming Today tells of constant change as individual farmers struggle to adapt to evolving Government policies in response to Climate Change, carbon sequestration, sustainability, biodiversity and so forth. A farmer who goes back generations will have inherent knowledge of his land, hefted to it, like his flock, and only he will know how best to farm it. So the picture is intricate and complex.
Saturday 8th January. Radio 4 Open Country Dartmoor with archaeologists, farmers and naturalists.
A programme that considers Neolithic and Bronze age peoples on Dartmoor, through to medieval times. Thought-provoking and informative, with specialists with in-depth knowledge.
Followed by Farming Today. Food, farming and the countryside. An interview with a Cumbrian farmer reminds me that individual farmers seek a way forward appropriate to the land they know and love, in keeping with what they believe to be best practice. To understand what you're seeing on a farm you need to talk to the farmer.
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