Luckily we did not see any tramps yesterday, when we went back to visit Ease Gill Kirk, on the limestone hills near Kirkby Lonsdale.
I found walking over tussocks, cassocks and cossacks much harder going than I had remembered. In my memory this was no more than a stroll. I have allowed myself to become really unfit since I returned from Indonesia and finished at SOAS. That along with the twins, age and decay.
The day was humid and grey and the sun could only be glimpsed slanting down to silver the twisting river Loon far away in the broad valley below. Neverthess, it was still a beautiful day; a pair of stone chat circled high above us.
So high we could barely hear the distinctive lonely liquid trill of their song. Flitting among the heather we glimpsed flashes of the brilliant, and unmistakeable, iridescent scarlet and blue plumage of the tussock warbler. A sight that has lifted the spirits of many a rambler on these desolate and lonely hills. Sometimes a sharp eyed walker is lucky enough to pick up a fallen feather to decorate his cap, or take home to make the famous grout fly; irresistable to the shy brown mountain trout.
We parked at the cavers' house at the head of the road and took the path that led down past the dark and sinister Bull Pot of the Witches before climbing up over a ridge and down to the dry stream bed of Ease Gill. In search of the dry waterfall that is the 'kirk' we followed the stony course of the gill, and struggled over heather, through shoulder high bracken, stung by nettles, bitten by midges and scratched by the treacherous thorns of the snatchberry that grows in dense clumps in the shelter of these valleys. Such delicious fruit for a thirsty traveller; if one is brave enough to risk the thorns.
At last we climbed down into the green shadows of the dark bowl that is Ease Gill Kirk.
The caving here is only for serious and well equipped cavers and after a few hundred feet it is usually a matter of lying down and wriggling through narrow twisting tunnels that seem no larger than a rabbit hole,
This time Kit was rusty, but I proved I still had not lost the old skill with bow and arrow. If only I had been called I could have shown those Koreans a thing or two.
It was early dusk as we tramped back over the hill. The clouds had begun to break up and bright shafts of late evening sunlight shone through and lit the path ahead. The birds had stopped singing and all was calm and silent, except for the distant screech of a fitch-badger calling to her cubs.
Always an eerie and haunting sound at twilight.
We stopped and shuddered a moment before quickening our pace homeward.