Country diary 1976: A place where change has lain lightly

A long shaft of sunlight fell on to the bracken below the crags making it smoulder into colour in sharp contrast to the dead grass and the dark scree. This is a place where change has lain lightly, the farms keep their old, protecting belts of trees – and they all settle comfortably into their places under the fell’s edge.Curlew voices ripple along the low fields and although farmers elsewhere may complain of lack of moisture the land here is sodden, the river is brown with flood and the fell becks bounce with white water. Many of the ewes are gathered near into the farms for lambing but one ewe – for reasons best known to herself, sheep are individualists – had lambed all alone fields away from the rest on a small green shelf in a ghyll above a stream. The lamb looked shivery, too, and was yet damp from its birth when the farm lad came with his tractor and hay-lined trailer to take the pair back nearer home – lest, as he said, the lamb should fall in the beck when its dam went down to drink. Continue reading...