The road rises up from Gawthwaite. It turns right, where the road from Ulverston joins it. The fells extend to right and left and ahead: nothing but bracken – reddish, auburn – and grass and sheep grazing. Ahead the hills of the western Lake District and everywhere sky. It was an intense blue this week: clear and fresh, warmed with spring sun, so welcome after days of relentless rain.
Norman Nicholson wrote in Cloud on Black Combe:
“The air clarifies. Rain has clocked off for the day.”
But whatever the weather, season or time of day, my spirits lift when I get to this stretch.
Ahead the road curves round, ready for the fast descent to Beanthwaite and Grizebeck.
Those hills: Black Combe, White Combe, the Whicham valley, the Duddon Estuary, the blues and purples, the clouds and, in the evening, the setting sun lighting up the sky along the Western coast.
The Duddon estuary, Black Combe behind, the Irish sea to the left – and somewhere in the distance – home.
