Light and dark

‘Where are you off to?’ ‘Not sure, I’ll decide once I’ve got going…’ Probably not what you’re meant to do whilst running by yourself, but sometimes it is the right thing to do. After a muddy three kilometres, I was at the completely ruinous Littlemire Farm above Mealbank, wondering about previous lives there and the investment to build it. 

Alternating bright light and intense showers brought one obvious conclusion about the rest of the route: it was lockdown, I’d not driven anywhere, so up and over Benson Knott it was to be, having first returned down to the industrial mill village of Mealbank (where 500+ people used to be employed in the mills at the turn of the 19th / 20th centuries) and into a really gusty, wet south westerly wind. There’s not a great deal of joy to be had in that process, but a quick turn round to catch my breath brought the site of a partial rainbow over the Watchgate terminal moraine, and once I’d cursed my way to the top, the rewards were bright patches of sunlight and virga, like galleons sailing up from Morecambe Bay.

Once back into the sheltered woods of the Fisher Tarn reservoir everything seemed so much warmer, and quieter.