The Long Way Round to a Sense of Quietness

Sour Milk Ghyll gearing up for the rainy season

Sometimes, the best laid plans just aren't meant to happen, and as Rabbie Burns aptly pointed out, go 'agley' (whatever that means). Often, as Rabbie said, you're left with naught but grief and pain, but sometimes, maybe, a sense of peace and stillness can break out where you least expect it.

It went fairly 'agley' for me recently on a run round the back of Blencathra. I'd carefully planned an elegant but simple loop for the day, ending on the mighty track of the Cumbria Way. It didn't take long to realise it wasn't going to be straightforward, as the wind picked up and repeated storms flashed over and over. I was, in defiance of the weather, wearing too little. Breaking in some new fell shoes was another distraction from the real point of the run. And most irritating of all, the fells seemed to be coated ankle deep in moving sheets of achingly cold water.

To cut a long story short, I never made it even half the distance to my intended destination. Relief at reaching the river Caldew and the lovely Cumbria Way path just beyond it was dashed as I saw what the river had become. It was huge, and erupting rhythmically into big, brown standing waves like the backs of roaring bears. Dangling a leg in to see what it was like, I knew I had only one choice. Run round, or be mangled trying to cross it.

It turned out to be quite a long way round. The going was tough without real paths and with all that sheeting water. This was clearly the road less travelled as I eyed the alluringly- smooth track just a few metres away, beyond the Zambezi in full spate. But I did come across a beautiful badger's sett on this unpeopled side of the river, and felt little clouds of stillness rise up from the reeds.

After a few miles I was able to cross the torrent at a bridge, and ended up at the beautiful Lakeland hamlet of Mosedale. The day might have gone a bit 'agley', but having been forced to follow the Caldew all the way to its resting place on the flatlands, I had been tipped out of the fells at the Quaker Meeting House. Open for tea and cake, it said. Muddy, scratched and not a little bit damp, I sat on a pew and drank in the sense of immense, timeless peace.

Over a pot of tea and slice of cake, I listened as the lady at the urn recounted tales of entire trees being swept downstream, and once, her hen house. And in between conversations, the walls oozed stillness. Four hundred years of thoughtful meditation. I walked out of there a little different from when I went in.

Would I have felt this if my day's journey had been an easy run, predictable, planned, and executed to the letter? The answer is, I just wouldn't have got there at all.

Brass rubbings inside the Quaker Meeting House, Mosedale