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OVER THE HILL

ON DARTMOOR AND IN LAKELAND

I’ve enjoyed wandering the rugged and sublimely beautiful Lakeland fells for over 55 years and since moving to the South West 40 years ago have found the same solace and joy on remote tracts of wild and wonderful Dartmoor. Many writers have gone to great lengths intellectualising their relationship with mountains but, put simply, the attraction for me is that I’ve always felt “more alive” on the hills.

Over the years I’ve accumulated many walking memories. This blog delves into my mountain memory bank and also record some current ramblings. I aim to go beyond simply describing the walks as, unlike the doyen of Lakeland fell walkers, Alfred Wainwright, I actually quite like people (well, some of them), so I’ll also reflect on the folk I’ve met along the way and the places and sights I’ve seen. Talking of the miserable old curmudgeon, Wainwright could write a bit and I think he perfectly captured what many of us feel about the value of our mountain memories when he wrote;

“The precious moments of life are too rare, too valuable to be forgotten when they have passed; we should hoard them as a miser hoards his gold, and bring them to light and rejoice over them often. We should all of us have a treasury of happy memories to sustain us when life is unbearably cruel, to brighten the gloom a little, to be stars shining through the darkness.”

An account of my walk around the South West Coast Path can be found here.

FROM THE BLOG