Rocks and Snow

A journal within a journal.  We are staying on Lake Windermere for a working holiday.  Came up on Monday via an icy Clitheroe Castle (where Justine and I have designed a new well-head, incorporating a poem of mine) and then to Kendal and Windermere on A-roads.  I spent yesterday morning at the Wordsworth Trust in Grasmere, researching Wordsworth and his family in Radnorshire; strange to be so far north and gently turning letters franked in Kington or Radnor two centuries ago.  

The cottage overlooks Windermere and Ambleside and the hills and fells above the lake.  The Rydal fells, Scandale and the Langdale Pikes are all covered in a snow like icing sugar on a chocolate cake.  The heavy snow at this level has gone but the nights are still cold and small pockets survive; wall-snow, hiding from the low sunlight behind dry stone walls.  

These last two days have been dominated by sheep.  The cottage is surrounded by fields of Herdwicks - they were nuzzling the car as we unpacked - and we can hear the shepherd on his quad bike.  Last night he was still filling feeding troughs long after dark.  The cold smells   of snow and mud and sheep shit.  Justine has installed a second 'sheep line' installation at the Wordsworth Trust and we walked up to the Heaton Cooper gallery to see the shepherd sculpture, for some reason hidden near the bins and being colonised by a hydrangea.  We hope to see some of the Andy Goldsworthy sheep folds while we are here.  

For the moment we are reading and writing and watching the patches of sunlight move across the brown fells.  I love it here.