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Surrounding loveliness Find!

"I started on the scaling in Tup Close, and found that the time taken for twenty-five piles was one hour, including a break for a few puffs at a pipe. The sun had come out. Harter Fell stood clear and shining, its purple ravines streaked white with the remaining snow, its rocks wet and glittering in the sunlight, its mosses a yellow-green shimmer. It looked clean and kindly and everlasting. In the distance the flattened curve of Hardknott Pass expressed that nostalgic lure of the old phrase 'over the hills and far away'. There was nothing to hear but the voices of the water, nothing to feel but the absurdly simple content of manual work watched by surrounding loveliness".

This is one short passage from a hidden gem called "Below Scafell". It was written by Dudley Hoys and published in 1955. This book is written from the heart. As a hill-farmer living and working in Eskdale, Dudley Hoys writes as someone to whom the seasons have a close and practical signifcance. However beautiful the scenery it is a place where the weather and the landscape are important because they immediately affect his life and livelihood. For 26 years (my time working at Grange Library!)  this small book has nestled on the shelf in the Local Studies collection and without Reading Detectives I would never have thought to look inside and try reading it. What a pity that would have been. It is one of the most delightful books I have read in a long time. It tells of a close-knit community who are so in touch with the landscape -  and what a landscape.

"The dale road curves past modestly, its narrowness guided by dry stone walls. Beyond lie small fields bordering the Esk, and above them the fells slant backwards and upwards towards the purity of a cold blue sky. An undulating ridge rises to the left, merging into the broken pyramid of Harter, twenty-one hundred feet high. All this side is in shadow. The January sun cannot sail high enough to clear the barrier. On these still frosty days the fells are friendly. The crisp air gives them a clean outline and a genial nearness that invites you to be with them and on them. It is a nearness quite different from their threatening loom when the glass is falling. Then they seem to rear up and press in closely with almost evil intent. Looking northwards from the ridge, the view this morning should be magnificent. Odd jobs on the farm can wait. I am going up to look and look and look."

The farming year is described - gathering the sheep, lambing and shearing. Walls are repaired and hay is harvested. Foxes are hunted by the Eskdale and Ennerdale Hunt and walkers are rescued by the farmers (this is before the days of Mountain Rescue teams). Gosforth Show is the big event of the year but there is also the smaller, more local, Puppy Show where the whole community gather to enjoy hound-trailing, fell-racing and Cumberland wrestling and then there is the Sheep Show which combines business with pleasure.

And I've left the best till last as they say! John and Tom and Will who work on the farm. They are quiet men whose lives have been shaped by the landscape that surrounds them.

"Tom is slow and sure and peaceful. He may have been to a cinema once or twice in his life. I doubt if he has ever visited a large city. He can drive a car and a tractor, and has some knowledge of wireless. But he has kept his sense of proportion. Work to him is not simply a means of earning a living. It is something full of responsibility and quiet pride. The sheep are his children, and they come first and foremost, far above all the synthetic distractions of our modern world. He enjoys a spell of walling for a brief change. He can carry on a long conversation by varying infexions of the single word 'Ay'."

And finally, after a long day of sheep shearing by hand "The heat of the sun began to wane, and in the shadow the sweat on my temples changed to a delicious coolness. The sky lost its burnish. It was a deeper, undazzling blue, and the light on the dale itself grew limpid. Upon the face of the upper fells more and more detail was being revealed, as if some invisible hand had started to etch in delicate coloured lines and curves and shading.

'Finish afore dark,' said John.

'Ay,' said Tom".

'Below Scafell' by Dudley Hoys - a true hidden gem.

3 September 2009 from Mary Rossall

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