In reply to UKC Articles:
Borrowdale has also meant a lot to me – and continues to mean something more that makes my heart constrict in my chest.
I was there just the other day, leading a small party of Italian relatives, the family of my partner, Benedetta. We parked at the bottom of the valley. Langstrath and the high coombes were full of mist and the light slanted through in big sheets of pale blue and silver.
The Italians were fascinated with the pillows of moss on the drystone walls and the peculiar Englishness of the damp cottages. I tried to point out Raven Crag, Coombe Gill, and Sour Milk Gill’s cascata leading up to an illuminated Gillercombe. Questo circo, sulla cascata – siamo stati la una volta per fare arrampicata sul una falesia grande... Ho un foto! Il foto hai visto di Detta con piedi nudi nel fume. I tried to explain... struggling to find the words. Some things are hard to say.
We continued to a stream under trees beside a field and followed the riverbank. I remembered seeing a dipper there with Detta one quiet weekend day, when Detta was too tired to continue climbing. She marvelled at the little black and white “stream-penguin”, hopping, darting, skimming the water in flight. My first dipper sighting was in Borrowdale, too - with an old school friend, one of my first times out leading the rope up VDiffs and HSs at Shepherds: we stopped to watch its strange antics from the stone bridge at Grange.
The last time Detta and I were in Borrowdale, we had also spent the day climbing easy things at Shepherds, then walked back to Grange and idled on the stony riverbed, watching birds and talking quietly and bouldering out the bridge. We took photos. Later, at the car, we saw a red squirrel... “Look!” hissed Detta – hushed, tense, excited all at once. It made her day. Afterward, unusually, we drove out of the valley via the west road. We were about to move away from the Northwest and knew it would be our last time in Borrowdale for some time. Driving slowly above the lake, full of conflicting emotions, as the evening settled in upon Skiddaw was profoundly elegiac.
Whilst these memories leaked through my mind, we continued along the stream. Zia Eli and Detta’s sister, Noa, were taking photos of the Herdwicks, so I showed Detta’s mother the exposed tree roots interwoven through the path: radisce, si! I noticed a couple of tubs lurching around the field and thought of the lambs of early spring climbing trips, joyfully leaping around with wriggling tails or squeezing under their mothers on frosty mornings as we set off from the campsite at Chapel Farm. I set out on a faltering account, in Italian, of over-grazing and a reported memory of 50-years ago: the valley floor, full of wild flowers. Abbiamo perso tutto.
Leaving the wooded stream, the hill climb was fine for Noa, busy with her camera, and Detta’s brother, sweating lightly in a neat leather bomber jacket, but tough for Zia Eli with an arthritic foot. We made slow progress – first through trees and then up piled dinnerplates of slate. I wondered, vaguely, whether this had been a good idea. In the distance, Eagle Crag hovered darkly in the bright fog obscuring Langstrath, while grey-black clouds rolled down from Glaramara and Great End. The wind was picking up and I knew rain was coming, eventually.
After some time, we found the top of the hill and a bonsai garden of wind-twisted evergreens: cedar or juniper, perhaps. At the lookout, there were wreathes of poppies. The Italians admired the view north across the valley as we sat, huddled against the wind, to eat bread and cheese and other picnic things. Mm, mi piace questo formaggio – come si chiama? Il Cedder? Si, Cheddar extra maturo. I did my best to point out places: Bowderstone Pinnacle, Shepherds, Steel Knotts, the ridge line from Catbells to Maiden Moor... other places Detta and I had been.
And then we had finished eating and put everything away. Zia Eli had gone to sit slightly apart from the others, her face a little crumpled. I put my arm around her. Gradually the others drifted over – Detta's mother last, with a hollow look. Siamo pronti? And then I took from a rucksack a plastic bag, and from the plastic bag a glass jar and from the glass jar one more small part of the ashes of my beloved Detta. Daughter, sister, niece. And we took it in turns to spread them, one handful at a time, weeping.
