POOLEY BRIDGE TO PATTERDALE

I woke up this morning to the news of the tragedy in Manchester. Ninety five miles from where we’re staying tonight, 22 people were murdered and dozens injured last night by a suicide bomber. Prayers for the victims, their families, and all the people whose lives touched theirs.

I thought surely our day would be affected by the tragedy. I’m not sure exactly what I expected, but I thought we’d see signs of grieving, actual signage of support for Birmingham, discussions in the pubs and among people we passed on the trail, even anger.

We heard or saw none of that. Absolutely nothing.  Marty said the little TV coverage he saw was wall to wall. But among the people we had contact with, it’s like the tragedy less than two hours down the M6 didn’t happen.

Granted, the beauty and remoteness of the Lake District is a world away from the city that Birmingham is, and I’ve heard virtually no news from English media, but still.

This bothers me. I want to attribute this to English “stiff-upper-lip-edness”, and I hope that’s the case.

What I fear is that the murders of 22 people by terrorists have become so commonplace that we’re numbed. In addition to prayers for the victims, lets also pray that’s not the case.

……

Today’s walk started at Pooley Bridge, at the northern end of Lake Ullsmere, down the ridge of mountains on the east side of the lake, to the village of Patterdale at the southern end, 10 miles away. As is typical, we started with a long, steady, uphill out of the village getting up onto the ridge and shoulders of the mountains. This stretch lasted over an hour, starting on a village lane, and changing to a trail going up the open mountain side to the top.

There was a group of three hikers a couple hundred yards ahead of us, and we could see their Australian sheep dog racing across the moors. Every so often, he would turn and run off in another direction. When we got closer we could see that the dog was playing with a bird. The bird, maybe a swallow. Would swoop down close to the dog, fly past him close to the ground, and the dog would follow. The bird would soar up, swoop down, buzz the Aussie, and the dog would chase him the other way. This lasted maybe 5 minutes until the dog’s people disappeared over the crest. The dog broke off the game,  and raced up the trail past us, tongue out, smiling, and disappeared over the crest himself, anxious to catch up with his people.  Really neat to watch these two playing together. And it sure looked like it was a regular activity for both of them.

The weather today couldn’t have been better. Sun, broken clouds, nice breeze, and temps in the mid 60’s. The walk was basically along the lower slopes of the mountains lining the lake, and the lake was in view most all the way.

We got in to Patterdale in the middle of the afternoon, and followed our routine of cold one, shower, nap, cold one, dinner, walk the village, nightcap, write the blog, turn out the lights.

Life is good. Really, really good.