Kentmere pastoral: a reprise

25 May 2010. Kentmere barn with Rough Fell ewes and lambs

• A spring day in late May eight years ago.  The farmer stopped to tend a ewe who was giving birth in the shelter of a stone wall where blackthorn buds were bursting in a froth of white blossom. That spring, I often met him driving his quad bike up Kentmere to deliver feed for his flock of Rough Fell ewes  who have a nursery pasture here, raising their lambs beside the barn.  Once they're strong and independent they'll be up on the fell, on Kentmere Common. 
  

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Somewhere beside the barn there was once a Viking settlement.  And there's a cluster of rocks- one with  a flogron, a flying rowan rising from a cleft in  the rock. I was entranced by pastoral and the coming of spring. And the evocative light and low cloud was perfect for landscape photographs. My publisher had asked for a selection of possible cover images for my latest book. She was exacting: a mountain landscape on a day of clarity with a horizon of distinct fells. Spring is the season people want to see, apparently.  And a gate inviting the viewer into the scene.  As I nature writer I photograph wildlife. She insists on 'life'- meaning people or animals.  Ewes with colourful bums. The interest has to be on the right of the image, she told me this after a season gathering cover images.  Try asking sheep to trot into a carefully constructed landscape shot, pause before a gate,  face the camera whilst showing the colours of tupping on the rump. I was preoccupied, so on this occasion I merely glanced at the rowan coming into leaf and my archive for 2010/2011 is crammed with ewes, stiles and gates in a mountain landscape.  
Somewhere, in my photographic archive, I know I have images focusing on that flogron. But they're elusive, which is fitting for rowan magic.  It should be a secret thing. So on this January day in 2018  I'm eager to look at the flying rowan once again, in a different season.

The January morning was brighter than forecast as we headed up the valley to Kentmere Reservoir fringed with ice,  where a chill descended, low cloud prevailed and took out the sun.  The track was icy and as we approached the barn where the Rough Fell ewes were feeding we clung to the wall.  The light was now so poor that the magical rowan was powerless to attract my companions who didn't linger. And the gravelly ground was a sheet of ice, so it was eyes down.    Another day, another season perhaps. A good reason for returning to this lovely spot.

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There's ice on the track, brightness falls from the air and low cloud hangs over Rainsborrow Crag.  Then these Rough Fell ewes with their heavy fleeces and red rumps trot before me and remind me of all my other times here in this place.  My fingers are numb, I slip my smartphone into what I hope is a pocket and hurry over the ice to catch up with my companions.
Creating this blog, I trawl the archive seeking the image I'd hope would impress my publisher. And I see that in 2011 I was out in Kentmere on successive days through spring in  pursuit of the perfect cover image.  So here's a glimpse of that flying rowan, with sheep. And a shot approaching the barn from the south, in June.