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The Howgills - a geography of being English

26/2/2020

1 Comment

 
PictureThe Howgills, looking east from Scout Scar
Fresh snowfall on the Howgills and cloud hugs the fells.  Mountains make their own weather.
Up on Scout Scar there's a panoramic view. We are encircled by sunlit, snow-clad fells.  
The Howgills are distinctive fells, rounded and grassy- smooth and voluptuous under snow.  Stone walls show dark  and gullies gleam, packed dense with snow.
To the north and west, the Lake District fells have a different geology, a different  configuration..

Simon Armitage, poet laureate, says he's British, of course, and English.  He studied geography, he has written of walking the Pennine Way - it's his home ground.  The names of landscape features tell of settlement over a millenium: beck, dike, gill, gully, fell, force, scar and rigg- regional names..  And haw-  what might that mean? 
Dike/dyke -  of Old Norse origin, a ditch, a watercourse, an embankment.  I wonder if a dike-reeve was appointed by the Court of Sewers to take charge of the drains and sea-banks in the south west of Cumbria and the Lyth Valley.
From Scout Scar, look east over Kendal, Lambrigg Fell and the wind turbines , The M6 motorway is  hidden from view,   over Fox's Pulpit,  over the River Lune then come the Howgill Fells,  Being English ( being British, if you will) is about history too.  Fox and the Quakers are written into this region. 
Above, a sequence of the Lake District fells west of Scout Scar.  Again, clouds form over snow-clad fells.  Fells of a different geology and appearance.
How many of those landscape features are familiar to you?   
RIgg-  a ridge,  Northern and Scots geography
Lambrigg Fell-   lots of folk pronounce it Lam Brigg- which ignores the meaning of rigg -   Lamb -Rigg
Haw-   as in Arant Haw.  'Enclosure' seems rather odd and that's the only definition I've found.
We walk the Howgills with theses words  tripping off the tongue.   The Mushroom Shelter had a map inscribed within its dome, so you could name the peaks of the panorama.  Now the map is weathered and worn away. Folk delight in a naming of tops but what about the names themselves, their origin? And the peoples who first used these descriptive words.
What you see below, on the Howgills, is cloud upon cloud.  Cloud is atmosphere and the fells below.  I love to see a fusion of cloud and fell and to know that the word, in its origin, is all-encompassing. 
Picture
Left to right. Fell Head, Bush How, White Fell Head, The Calf, Bram Fell Top, Calders, Arant Haw
​with thank to Geoff Brooks for identifying the Howgill tops. 
Saturday 29th February 2020 and Storm Jorge hits Cumbria as darkness falls. The third named storm on consecutive week-ends: Ciara, Dennis and Jorge.  February is usually the driest of the three winter months. This February has broken all records as the wettest. 
1 Comment
D Tibbett
29/2/2020 10:56:54 am

Nice to access on the same morning the wonderful photographs were taken. Just like being there, which is especially good from rainy Lincolnshire today.

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    Jan Wiltshire is a nature writer living in Cumbria. She also explores islands and coast and the wildlife experience. (See Home and My Books)

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