Look up from the pastures and to the north lie the fells, to the south is Morecambe Bay. Next day dawned fair and bright but up on the escarpment the mood had changed. The haylage was made and agricultural machinery stood idle. Peace and tranquility prevailed. The sharp, fresh-cut contrast of green and gold had blurred and faded, an ephemeral pattern.
By Helsington Church, I met a young woman preparing to take her horse for a ride and we chatted as she made ready I sat on a bench by the toposcope, looking out west across the pastures of the Lyth Valley and toward Whitbarrow. From up here, it was as if a map of agriculture was laid out before me. Through binoculars, I made out green pastures of cattle and of sheep, then a swathe yellow with buttercups, fields striped and patterned, then what must have been water-meadow with random buttercups where cows and sheep fed together. Then I could infer a rising contour and the gold where yesterday haylage was made. A wonderfully English scene. Directly below us, the sky was reflected pure blue in the recently flooded pastures by Park End where the RSPB hope to encourage birds. In a return to the time when this area was wetland, before Enclosure.