Castles Sunset
07/01/12
Leaving Holme the cloud crept lower down off the moors towards us.The Met Office had suggested it would be going the other way.We were wrapped in it's dark damp blanket on Issues Road and thoughts of just an afternoon out surfaced.These doubts were brief and slowly lifted with the cloud which seemed to back off with each footstep.By the Pennine Way my eye was caught by a scattering of white bog cotton like blooms on black peat.I was only a stride away when I recognised not bog cotton but plucked downy pigeon feathers blown on the wind from the bloody remains of a Falcon's meal.Unlucky.
The wind howled over Black Hill and into the peaty expanse of empty moorland beyond.Here shards of light began slashing black clouds. Shredding and tearing at the November gloom.Black wet moorland turned warm and red by this assault of low autumn sun.My mood lifted as this light filled in every clough and crag.
We reached the craggy knoll named "Castles" to bivy overnight. Pitching our tiny tent behind a contour and so out of the rattling wind.Brewing up a pot of tea with a few biscuits just before dusk the wind died and we were able to appreciate our surroundings in the grouse broken silence of evening.
Soon stars twinkled and Orion rose in the moonless wintry sky.We watched cloud form on the moorland edge and slip silently snakelike into steep black valleys below.Fingers of this cold white condensation pointed towards our bivy but could not quite reach us.
The little dog prefers to curl up in the sleeping back uninterested in my November muses but I sat outside studying sky and fog sunk valleys past midnight.
Dawn was a struggle.The sun wanting to skip a day.The nights cloud inversion washed away in a Westerly.Normal gloomy service resumed upon the moors.
Black Hill