The Fells In Coverdale

Once I met a countryman on the fells on such a day and we talked about the indefinable sweetness in the air

. I think, said he slowly thinking out every word before he spoke, I think it is just the sum total of all the goodness of the fells. We lazed a little longer. Looking skywards we saw young kestrels hovering there, gold edged as their wings caught the sun.

Looking down we beheld Walden dale, cradled beneath green hills, its green divided and subdivided by curling walls and hedgerows. We had at least three dales within the view; Waldendale, the adorable, a little world to itself, the little sister of Coverdale, born also in the heights and reared in seclusion, and farther west the blue, ethereal hills of Bishop dale. Coverdale was east of us, from Cover Head to the wood lands of Coverham Abbey.

Soon we dropped from the fells, from the From 1,600 feet, in a mile and twenty minutes, we are down to 700 feet and lapped in the warm airs of the enclosed valley. A lazy saunter by the river to West Burton drawn thither by waves of perfume from lime trees in early flowers sweeter far than any scents of Arabia. The whole villages drowses in the perfume, the vast green, the prim houses ringed about, the squatters in the mid-stand even inside the Fox and Hounds it followed us.

Only a desire for lunch and a sight of this pretty village brought us out of our route, but it was worth it. Two o'clock: southward bound along Waldendale, making, we hope, for the source and the mountain tops. For three miles a narrow lane probes into the hills parallel with the river; instead we made a path between the two, over pastures where occasional apprehension was aroused by the appearance of lone animals, or lordly animals with a number of heifers, looking suspiciously like bulls. From wall to wall and eyes ahead on a landscape revealing more and more charm with every mile, the throwing off of trees and hedges marking the transition into an exciting Unknown. We stumbled on a deserted cottage with goose berries going abegging on bushes in a tangled garden; we came to the farm of Bridge End and climbed up to the farm, Asheswhere once we struck over the moors by a coal pit track to Bradley, discovering that the way so clearly marked on the map was not so easy to find WIth the feet.

Now the dale narrows, the moors crowd inwards so that Walden Beck is confined between them and one looks upwards at crags and kestrels hovering above. The beck has nothing of the river about it now, from the uppermost farm at Walden Head the dale is a gill, the bed is rocky and steppeddown between rocks. The silence grows, and one can with truth say that one can hear the silence growing deeper. The heat haze trembling on the skyline increases the feeling of unreality. Why Walden dale? asked Jeune after a long silence.

by: Adrian Vultur

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