Palimpsests

 In Cumbria for a walking break, the weather uncharacteristically clement.  Some walks we take so frequently that no particular occasion stands out; others are overlayered with memories.  So, the walk to High Nook Tarn.  We did this first in the mid-90s, in a party including my mother and an old friend and her husband.  My mother, dressed in her tweed skirt and hiking boots, was still game for a hike even after her dementia had begun to reduce her capacities.

 Two of this group are now no longer with us, but every detail of that day remains: the steady climb up behind Jenkinson Place where we were staying, the stile at the top, the swooping track forming a terrace high above Loweswater, finding a complete dragonfly exoskeleton by the tarn, even what we had in the sandwiches...

Another time we chose the higher of two tracks near the start of the walk, and found ourselves on a sheeptrod several hundred feet above the broad main track.  It gave us some anxious moments, although the photographs we took were all but aerial in viewpoint.

The actual path forms a broad terrace high above Loweswater.  Here, Crummock can be seen just peeping over above Loweswater.

Taking the walk this time, we were surprised to find that the track has now become the route of ferocious mountain bikers, hammering along it in pairs and at intervals so that peaceful walking was impossible.  Doubtless they felt that walkers constantly created hazardous obstacles for them.

At the far end we saw evidence of the flash flooding which affected Loweswater some months ago - notice how the stream has flattened the vegetation around it.

 

 

On the knitting front, I received a reminder of the Wrapped in Care shawl programme which aims to provide comfort shawls for mothers.  Elizabeth Zimmerman was of the view that a large shawl is ideal holiday knitting, and I have to agree with her - minimal shaping and a repetitive pattern on very long rows.  I am using a Drops pattern, but am not sure that the edging matches the shawl so perhaps a change of some kind is in order.