Thread by @TLWforCumbria

This thread started 13 months ago, when a 17th century feminist I’d never heard of, got in touch via Twitter.

I finally got to explore further, yesterday.

@naturalistdara had sent me a sincere, helpful message whilst I was on my 2019 fundraising Coast to Coast walk.

Then this:

I’d heard of this valley but never been, only passed by.
Lady Anne’s story is a phenomenal, pioneering tale of fighting discrimination and of outliving those who would do you wrong.

Somewhere between two counties, I saw a tall woman coiling metres of black cable. A volunteer.

I recognised her work. She was volunteering for #B4RN to lay the world’s fastest fibre optic cable in the remotest parts of the north. Because BT can’t be bothered to.
She discreetly checked my boots & asked me if I’d be walking Lady Anne’s Way. Said she was in her eighth decade.

Their cables would be following that high ridge route.
The octogenarian women don’t mess about round here. (Lady Anne lived to be 86. In 1676).
I was walking up Hell Gill. Much nicer than you’d expect.
Curlew calling, circling.

That’s a hogg-hole in the wall. To let yearling sheep move from one ‘heaf’ to another. A heaf is where they feel safe, at home. (Doesn’t always work. They still get lost).

Don’t know what fearsome beast might’ve lived in the cave behind it...

The signs were odd.
River erosion worsening in this time of climate emergency and flooding rains.
Most buildings, including some grand ones, were now ruined, resembling the fells.
500 people lived around here 150 years ago.
350 a century ago. Now that’s halved again.

“I like the un-path best” (Nan Shepherd - The Living Mountain).
Something had dropped its lunch. A turn of the shrew took me through a field overflowing with thistles. Heading towards a tree and chapel of ease.

Oystercatcher & Curlew warned me of the wet.
Young kestrels waited.

It was unexpectedly open. With shelter and seating provided by the EU. And Victorian tiles from the oldest surviving tile factory in the world @CDJackfield
So I sat (carefully) and had my banana sandwich. I’d used jam as the butter had been left in the fridge.
Pretty good.

I thought about walking up to the curlew congregation. But looking at this particular summit height on the map whilst sat in a chapel, thought ‘maybe not’.
I’d pushed my luck, eating sandwiches in there.

I saw a grave of someone who’d lived across the valley, by the tree. Thought I’d call by and see. What a lonely, truly wild place.
High Shaw Paddock.
Wuthering Heights but with worse weather.
Buzzards keening overhead. A wind-hover swooped.

When I came back down, I followed the orchids.
The tall woman was gone. The last houses were connected to the world web. She was the only person I saw all day.

I’m going back next week to look for Lady Anne.
She did a great deal for others, once she’d won her lifelong battle.

She did a great deal for others, during her battles too.

Treated myself to a bookshop visit on the way home.

Read the best preface ever.

Have the best weekend you can. Maybe you could go and look for some mysteries?

But if you’re staying in - why not listen to this great outdoors podcast to hear more about Lady Anne and her 38 year struggle for what was hers, when it was stolen by devious men.

Follow @Countrystride1 along half of my wander.

countrystride.co.uk/post/countryst…