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About Scout Scar Find!

Last year we had a very enjoyable evening listening to Jan Wiltshire, the author of "About Scout Scar", giving a talk in the library about her book which had just been published. She explained how her habit of writing a daily journal evolved into a complete book as she explored this small corner of Cumbria.

West of Kendal there are escarpments and ridges with spectacular vistas of the Lake District Fells, the Kent Estuary and Morecambe Bay. This is a limestone landscape with a rich diversity of birds, butterflies and flora. Cunswick Scar and Scout Scar are both Sites of Special Scientific Interest and are of European importance for wildlife.

In the foreword of the book Jan writes 'I like to feel at one with a landscape: to be so focused that nothing intrudes on what is taking place right there before my eyes'. On 17th October 1999 she records 'Not a day for vistas, there was bright sun but no clarity so I focused on what was close at hand. I walked north above the escarpment with the sun shining a spotlight into the wood below. Fieldfare were calling and their pale underwings caught the light in a grove of dark yew rooted in the limestone scree of the buttress directly below the cliff edge. Scores of fieldfare fed on yew berries whose fleshy red arils glowed in the sombre foilage. Above the now steeper escarpment, I found a vantage point where I was half hidden in heather and could watch them foraging beneath the yew and flying above the canopy. Seclusion: the life of the wood had hold of me'.

Seven years later on the same day in 2006: 'So warm, like the air above an over-heated swimming pool. On Scout Scar, there was a bluish sky directly above and sunlight struck the cliff-edge but fog obliterated the fells to the west. Whitbarrow was a soft outline merely, the Kent estuary was blotted out and toward the sea an ethereal, luminous fog filled the lower reaches of the Lyth Valley. I walked toward Helsington Barrows enthralled by the light that rendered the fog beautiful and evanescent. A south wind blew up suddenly and visibility improved but the magic was gone'.

The book is illustrated throughout by the most superb photographs which record not just the spectacular landscape but the flowers and fungi, the birds and the animals which make these limestone ridges such very special places. In the long tradition of English nature writing, 'About Scout Scar' is a detailed portrait of a landscape. It is about one woman's voyage of discovery through the seasons: of looking, listening and seeing. The theme of how we all relate to the landscape and the natural world is at the very heart of this gem of a book.

With my detective hat on I have just made a really interesting discovery. I wanted to add a website link which would show readers the details of a walk they could take on Scout Scar and discovered the following article by Harry Griffin  - whom I have mentioned in previous finds. The article is entitled "One Small Step" and appeared in The Guardian on Monday 20th October 2003.   

'There's the famous Hillary Step, just below the top of Everest, the so-called "Bad Step" on Crinkle Crags scampered over, unnoticed, by everybody until Wainwright made a meal of it and named it, and now the Griffin Step on Scout Scar above Kendal'.

To read the full article follow the link to The Guardian website below.

 http://www.discovercumbria.co.uk/Scout-Scar.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2003/oct/20/ruralaffairs

17 October 2009 from Mary Rossall

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