Introduction
There’s no such thing as a favourite month when April can be like August, September like July, May like December. The varying light is a constant factor, flowers and birds always seasonal. But with erratic weather we don’t know the months.
The names however have associations, certainly for me, so June is warm but not hot like August. In May, light has fully arrived, and warmth is still growing. September and October can be summery or dull, true even when weather was more stable. I like thinking about names, ideas, and seasons.
Trouble in America
The weather in Glossop is worse than Kendal, a man said to me in a pub. I don’t think that’s correct but he lives in an elevated area nearly 700 metres above sea level. I had a taste of it. Mild in Manchester then six degrees at his local height.
Glossop sits below big but bleak moors. Not all the Peak District is similarly attractive. In a nearby village there’s a pleasant coffee shop. It’s busy after school, relatively speaking, when children arrive wanting chocolate drinks with mounds of cream half the size of the mugs. Mothers arrive too, when I was there, and a man who’d been walking.
A few doors down the road there’s a hard to describe shop with framed pictures, toys, clocks, cushions, and limited opening. A mini Co-op, where I was surprised at the reception. She saw immediately I wasn’t local so thought I needed assistance. “Can I help you?”
Nearby, there’s a woman who works at home for Manchester University. Fund raising, and at one point I mentioned the Confucius Institute and how they are lovely people but which involves infiltration concerns. Not from the staff teaching Mandarin, calligraphy, and offering autumn moon celebrations which I enjoyed. The bad stuff is back home politics, not the culture here.
I’m in the coffee shop, shortly after lunch, before schools close so it’s quiet. People know each other by name and music starts playing. I like it here. It’s called Twig. Small, simple, good coffee. The girl behind the counter sings along to the tune.
The worst thing in the world, it seems to me, is mob sentiment. The best is inside the individual heart and “the quality that we call beauty…must always grow from the realities of life” (Jun’ichirō Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows). This is what was playing.
Books
As a teenager I liked Steinbeck, Heinlein, H.G. Wells and not so much liked but was puzzled with Borges and The Aleph in particular. A similar mystery feeling with Hesse, whom I liked, when The Glass Bead Game was my introduction. In a small book shop, visited around the time of birthdays and Christmas, they had bookmarks I also liked. One of them described Hesse. It was green with white writing and I forget the words but they were something like masterpiece, magnificent, or similar. I searched for and found Hesse in the library.
This book however, to put it into context, is what I now describe as a masterpiece and this line is mysteriously and astoundingly good. The meadowsweet beside the lake is no longer there. It’s been cut back, and the fence expanded, no doubt for ecology reasons although I’m not impressed.
“What we may well believe has the power to cut and shape and hollow out the dark form of the world surely if wind can, if rain can. But which cannot be held never be held and is no flower”
– Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing pic.twitter.com/ZOOqhFmrt6— James Lomax (@walkfoto) December 13, 2019
Featured Walks
I’m a big fan of varied walking, by which I mean not only focussing on big hills. They are the best, but what about summer evening in the city, or a Saturday afternoon? Societally, not personally, there’s a case for saying the rivers, woods, and fields of modest nature areas are as important as National Parks. People walk those places when for whatever reason – access, expense, time, inclination, ability – they don’t visit Snowdonia or the Lake District.
I doubt I will try this kind of adventure but people do and it’s pleasant reading: mild walking and stealth camping. The latter makes me nervous and wonder if I could relax enough for sleep. Or possibly it’s nothing to worry about. I don’t know. Anyway, there it is.
Note to self: I know nothing about this next trail apart from 30 minutes of clicking around after I read someone’s report. It looks interesting. The mountains are a bit like the Pyrenees, sometimes similar to the Dolomites, and perhaps the lower level Alps. It’s called the Peaks of the Balkans.
It took me a long time to warm to Wales. For a few years I was comparing it, unfavourably, to years of walking the Lake District. Cader Idris, I thought, was about as good as Lake District walks I liked. The Nant Gwynant valley, I thought again, was almost as pleasant as Borrowdale. Both were singular in that respect for Snowdonia, while other places were not as good.
But Wales has a character of its own part of which is being quieter, wilder, and not a worldwide attraction. There are walks like this you find for yourself which are not in the books and rarely visited. I’ve driven through Bala numerous times but not explored the hills as you see on the map, and the route, which Geoff provides.
Conclusion
I have many memories of the hills, although one was in a valley. I’d been walking at Eskdale and Wasdale then was driving back home. I decided on a longer but scenic route down the Duddon Valley then across to Silverdale. But not immediately, so I walked a little then saw a comfortable looking rock.
It was a moment of perfect contentment in warm sunshine and a beautiful landscape as I closed my eyes and laid down with a relaxation so deep as if there were no differentiation.