Lud’s mud is deep and sticky and brown.
It lines the floor of the aisles and the knave of Lud’s Church.
The stone walls are green and dripping.
The sky is a thin strip above my head.
It takes concentration to negotiate the logs, stepping stones and sunken walkways through the mud.
I think of the reaction in other churches I’ve visited to mud like this.
A tell-tale dampness suggests my boots are not as waterproof as I would like.
The next day, in the bath, I see the brown mud line, a meridian round my heel.
I have bought some of Lud’s mud home with me with the memories of the green ferns and mosses dripping a benediction on my head.
Category Archives: weather
Water proof
I’ve always been fascinated by water, that marvellous molecule that make life on this planet possible. I’ve seen oceans, lakes, glaciers rivers and streams. I’ve seen rain fall on several continents and what happens when it doesn’t. I’ve drunk it every day of my life, or something made with it. I’ve used it in speech therapy and ministry and ‘Living Wet’ is my motto. However a drip running down the back of your neck on a damp morning’s walk is not the most exhilarating form of water.
Gilsland claims to be the wettest place in the Roman Empire. I’m not arguing. However, it does also win the award for ‘top toilet’.
It must be quite wet because the trail is on a temporary diversion here since a flood demolished a foot bridge. It means a stop for hot chocolate at the village cafe cum shop. I am now in Cumbria.
On the whole the weather dried up for the rest of the day, the wind coming and going. There was plenty of wall left until Hare Hill where I saw the last of it. Strangely it was also the highest remaining section, or so an excited family explained to me before they hurried on east to see some more.
There were puddles here and there and the odd little stream or brook taking its time amongst trees and stones. A few more drops fell from the sky just before the turning to Lanercost where the 12th century Priory was a welcome sight.
Trying to Live Wet,
I give thanks for these marvellous molecules,
Mindful that I do not dissolve before time.
As the rain waters the earth,
Gathers in streams and rivers,
and travels to the oceans,
There to rise once more in the clouds
May I also rise
On the Last Day.
The Roman Way
Ant-like walkers
Roman stalkers
History catchers
Shower watchers
Wide-eyed wakers
Early mist breakers
Just imagine, if the Romans hadn’t built this wall nearly two thousand years ago then I’d not be able to do this walk today. Just one of the things the Romans did for us.
Me, I like to look on the Brightside even when it’s raining. Milecastle 34 had a brighter inside, with sheltering trees, and some stinging nettles. It was clearly most often used as a sheep fold these days. Sensible sheep.
There were a number of small woods; one was Sewingshields Wood, which bordered a small farm. This was a very wild place with the rain lashing down, but the wood was gentle, green and welcoming. Most bizarre of all the abandoned privy, door hanging off its hinges next to the path. This not One of those things the Romans did for us.
In Houseteads Wood it was possible to walk on the actual Wall. Mostly you just walk beside it or sometimes in a ditch. But the most noticeable thing about today were the ups and downs of which there were quite a lot. Each one has its own gap at the bottom, the best known of which is Sycamore Gap, for featuring in quite a few films.
There were many more people walking today, thanks largely to a trek for the Alzheimer’s Society. This led to some queues on the downs and ups due to the stone steps being slippery from the rain.
Milecastle came and went. Number 39 gets a particular shout out. By now I’m past half way on the Wall and there’s only tiredness in the legs to stop me, which thankfully came true at Twice Brewed. I was revived by sausage and mash and half of ale, before Bob went back to Yorkshire. Coincidently there were some Romans from Eboracum in the pub who cheerfully agreed to a photo opportunity. Well, they’d not met the Rev before. It was just one more thing the Romans did for us today.
In our coming and our going
The Energy of God
Bog, sweat and cheers
The Wall goes on, and on and on. In the rain there’s fewer walkers. However, there is Bob for company quite a bit of the time today as he moved the car on to keep up with me. There’s the occasional muddy patch but little true bog so far. A damp patch caused by a spring a Brunton Turret didn’t really count as bog as it was visible running water.
Even in wet weather there is plenty of sweat. There are up hill bits and occasional patches of blue sky later on; both possible contributors to sweat.
Today’s route went past St Oswald’s church once again. We stopped for our picnic lunch there. Then it was onto Chesters fort, which we visited once before with friends. This time we just had ice cream. I then did a further mile to Walwick, to even out the distance for today and tomorrow.
Our accommodation tonight is the new YHA The Sill. The walls in the bar area (the place for cheers, particularly after over 11 miles of walking, the longest so far) are decorated with some good poems about the local landscape, including one by Emily Dickinson. The Whinn Sill is the geological feature that Emperor Hadrian chose for the Northern frontier of the Roman empire.
From the sky to the earth
The presence of God
The Path along the Wall
Butterflies
I saw a Wall on the Wall,
A Peacock on the path at my feet
And in the speckly sunlit wood
Two Speckled Woods danced
I met some more wall walkers, coming from the West. This was the best day’s weather they had had each reported to me.
Over breakfast this morning my host told me she worked for a churches heritage project in Northumbria. She told me about a small church dedicated to St Oswald on the route. As we talked it confirmed in my mind the importance of the stories of the Northern Saints and how the gospel came to this part of England. It is just one other pieces in my post menopause spirituality.
About the time I became Chaplain I began to take an annual retreat to Holy Island. The URC have a project there and I stayed several times, once writing a service for a dead school boy on St Cuthbert’s island.
Going on retreat has been important to me for over 30 years. This was just one place I visited. It was there that I first understood that Aidan missionary and pastoral ministry combined and how the monks from Iona had been re-christianising the North, after Paulinus and Ethelburga.
So I decided to seek out further bits of this story and piece them together if I could in a way that might speak to people today, both those of the faith and those of other faiths or none, so they could see what part faith had and might play in the future.
One person in the story of the Northern Saints is Oswald who is remembered near here for the Battle of Heavenfield. Sandra and I stopped there to see St Oswald’s church, mentioned earlier. The current building replaced a much older one, but it is still a relatively simple structure surrounded by a neat grave yard, and a view all the way to Scotland.
Later, with the evening sun still two hours from setting, I did a short local walk, surprising some deer, hinds and fawns, that bounded across the fields ahead of me
As pants the hart
For cooling streams,
when heated in the chase:
So longs my soul
O God for thee
And thy refreshing grace.
Glimpses of Goyt Valley
I saw a wind hover, where the winds gather,
Where the clouds whisked away
And the grass waltzed across the wild land,
While my hair whipped across my eyes
And the sun burst out brightly.
There was Pym Chair, not so good for relaxing.
Was he preacher or highway man?
Your money or my sermon, his sinister request.
I saw a wind hover and in its stillness
I saw the valley through God’s eye
Down the steep road the door to Jenkin chapel was open. Its simple interior a place my ancestors would have known. Set at the junction of the Salters roads its simple lines and homely interior looks out on a well kept graveyard. The local dead are still well regarded and recorded on aged stones.
The paths we followed along the valley were lined with trees old and young. Someone had counted the massive beeches and there were many contenders for ‘tree of the day ‘. There was a beautiful rich greenness in every fern and moss, every leaf and plant and the riverside meadows.
The butterflies seemed to particularly like the thistles. They danced around them in ones, twos, three and even fours. The other gifts of the day were the frequent stands of wild raspberries bringing a welcome fruity tang to the walk.
The sky changed from pale to dark grey. A strong shower swept through, followed by the widening blue window and higher whiskers of white feathery clouds. A summer day of contrasts and companionship.
In our coming and our going
The Peace of God
Pitching the tent
It was wet and windy on Friday afternoon when we arrived at the campsite with Hannah and the tent. Hannah loves camping and wanted to camp the last night on Kintyre as it would be easier to get to the early ferry from the campsite five miles away than the from the cottage up the small winding road at Carradale.
That was until the weather turned wet and windy. However this did not, of course deter Hannah.
The camp site is near the sand dunes, a beautiful setting and a nice looking site with good facilities. We three stood in a small inward facing circle. Team Lees-Warwicker were about to pitch the tent. We looked for Hannah to lead us, each ready to respond to requests for pegs or whatever.
It took only a couple of minutes for a damp patch of grass to be transformed into a dry place to rest. I crawled inside with mattress and sleeping bag as instructed. It was cosy.
I can, even now, see the attraction of this temporary type of living arrangements. The solitude and self contained but readily portable hermitage is something even the saints would have coverted.
So often we go for permanence when we really need something more flexible and transient. Of course there maybe times in our life cycles whether individual or communal when the whole putting down roots thing seems the right response. But then we encounter different challenges, restlessness, age, decline, change maybe.
There’s a hymn I like that has the tent image as part of the faithful response to the life of faith. I don’t remember the first line or the writer but I do remember one particular memorable phrase. It rang around my head the next morning when we returned to collect the tent before getting on the early ferry from Campbeltown to Ardrossan.
‘Pull the tent pegs up again’: we did and we’re onto the next adventure.
In our coming and our going
The Peace of God