May 26th 2025
Introduction
After a summery spring it’s now cool, grey, and rainy. The sun might return. It might not. You never know in Britain, especially in recent years.
For this Footnotes I begin, and conclude, with weather and the British psyche. You will see a video moment from a Pyrenees hike. There are books, walking ideas, a topical subject, and a landscape music video. “Run for those hills” it says in the song, which is not bad advice.
Island Outlook
Am I the only one who likes the Shipping Forecast? I hear it rarely but whenever I do it has the same soothing effect. Moderate or good, occasionally very poor later, is a reasonable description of life. Whatever happens with the weather keep calm, and carry on.
I dislike the weather of Britain, like the hills, although they are better in France, Spain, and Switzerland. I like foreign films as a genre never mind masterpieces like Pan’s Labyrinth and In the Mood for Love. One of my favourite books is The Elegance of the Hedgehog and at some point I’ll be reading Just a Little Dinner.
I like the effortless style of Pau, or Toulouse, and a village in Spain where I spent a few hours before resuming a Pyrenees walk. Who would choose cloudy old Blighty if this were an option? Keep calm and carry on certainly, but that’s for adverse conditions. What about get out in the sun and celebrate, as they do here. I forget where this was but visited and enjoyed the fun on a rest day.
In Richard Mabey’s book Turned Out Nice Again you find these lines:
| Meanwhile we will doubtless continue with our tragicomic street theatre of daily coping. Parishioners will rope themselves to favourite trees to try and keep them upright in gales. Policemen will improvise giant snowballs to stop off slip-roads on iced-up motorways. Crowds at sporting events will sing to frighten away increasingly torrential downpours. And all the while, waving and drowning, we will say to each other ‘It’s turned out nice again.’ |
I saw that happen in a remote and hilly area.
Devoke Water is a quiet place near Eskdale in the Lake District. You can see the Scafells in the distance. You can’t identify them as such, they’re too small for that, but know them geographically.
On a sunless grey day I walked around the lake and when I arrived back at the starting point there was a man quietly fishing. What did he say as we greeted each other? Well it wasn’t raining so obviously, “turned out nice again.”
Books
There are many writers known for their landscape. It’s a feature of Thomas Hardy, with his fictional Wessex, which in reality was the rural south of England. Daphne du Maurier’s books were based in Cornwall and Rebecca is one of my favourites. It’s famously evident in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, which I tried reading but couldn’t digest. Too much Gothic pathological passion. Get a grip you think. Certainly I did.
Here’s a suggestion for a lighter read. Short story writer David Constantine uses landscape in his work, in which separation from nature is sometimes a theme. We live in cities, not on windswept moors, so that’s an accurate beginning not a romanticised escape.
A few years ago I became interested in an MA degree in Gothic Studies. It’s the sort of thing I would do for a leisure interest as I wondered about the teenage fashion, Jungian Shadow, the meaning of Dracula and what these things say about society. Are there Gothic themed video games? Probably, because it seems to be part of the psyche.
Les Petits Bonheur De La Vie
There are two areas in the Lake District and Snowdonia I enjoy as beautiful countryside not big hills. The hills are in the distance. From sand dunes at a coastal area called Drigg, which might be sunny while the Scafells are in cloud. Peacefully surveyed from Capel Garmon, you see Moel Siabod full of four season memories.
It’s a different feeling. Not a space into which mind and imagination expand, but a place of summery repose. One of my earliest memories is lying on my back on a school sports field gazing into the sky, avoiding the cricket.
I don’t know who Tom Rosenthal is but like this blend of music, landscape, freedom, and child. It’s possibly the South Downs although pleasant low hills are a feature of many parts of Britain.
Tales from the Pyrenees
I walked in the Pyrenees for six successive years, which meant visiting a few refuges two or three times. My best walk was a combination of the HRP and Spanish GR11, achieved with French-side access. I flew to Lourdes once or twice but it was mostly Toulouse then connections to Cauterets, then hitch hike and walk up a valley to Oulettes de Gaube.
For another Footnotes, I’ll describe what happened in another year and how it was a horrendous night. This time it was pleasant. Le Vignemale is for climbing not walking although there’s a secondary summit, Le Petit Vignemale, attained in about two hours. The views are good, and I’ve walked there twice.
Free Speech and Maps
This is a subject I’ve thought about deeply. For me it connects with Socrates, saying the world was round when people insisted otherwise, the Victorian era when Darwin undermined Christianity; the book or film The Name of the Rose, Thomas Kuhn’s analysis and the problem with misunderstood, subtle ideas.
Pursuing the philosophy, you might consider Hegel’s dialectic as a description of alternating views synthesising and advancing. He saw it as historical necessity, but it requires a culture where free speech is allowed. That’s true for some but not others.
The way it’s currently debated is somewhat different. Connected to online behaviour, which is ultimately tedious but with repercussions. Firstly, the difference between “free” and “abusive” like it’s a school playground in need of a teacher. Now children, disagreeing is fine but that doesn’t mean you can express it however you like.
Secondly, anything you tweet is in the public domain and subject to the laws of libel. People do occasionally sue but when there is no proof of reputational damage because you’re not a public figure, it’s the daily fare of X if you stray into politics. It’s a healthy reaction if you recoil immediately and not stray there again.
This problem is also about context, and context collapse, which cannot be resolved. You might be thinking of Hegel or Kant for example, the other person hasn’t read them then wilfully misunderstands, so at the very beginning communication is impossible.
It can happen with any subject. Consider for example outdoors navigation. I saw this unfold. Man S was showing people how to use Komoot for the Peak District. Man D questioned him, saying he was giving people a false sense of security. He was a mountain guide in Scotland and said you must know how to use a map and compass. D was correct, but inapplicable, when S clarified. His Zoom presentation was about how to use route planning software, which is fine, not safety and other people’s experience.
The result is an unhealthy disconnect between thinking sensibly and an arena which won’t allow it. It was a disagreement about context, which you can’t resolve if you assemble 30 people thinking 30 different things, determined to express them. That’s not “free speech.” It’s deranging speech, because the arena is insane, like approaching a stranger in the street and randomly opining about A Room With a View or Amelie. Everyone knows, you only do that with a discerning few.
Epictetus advised “take great care with the inside and not what’s outside, which is to say, stand with the philosopher or else with the mob.” Quite remarkable, as relevant advice from nearly 2000 years ago.
Featured Walks
For several years the Ullswater valley was my favourite place. I know the Bed and Breakfast venues, pubs, camp sites, walks and seasons of the area. For another Footnotes I will describe a close to dying experience climbing nearby Swirral Edge in snowy conditions, and the conversation the night before. I was at the Youth Hostel for food, not a bed, and inevitably you start talking about walks.
It’s a lovely area and this walk is a good route. For bigger hills you need to go north and west of Ullswater for Helvellyn and Red Screes respectively. The attractions here are lower although Place Fell is a reasonable climb.
My habitual place tends to be Snowdonia because it is quieter and you can find walks where you probably see no one. They can be routes you don’t find in any book but plan yourself with a map and knowledge. I know one of those in the Moelwyns, where I have walked and camped many times. This looks interesting. Some of it I recognise, some I don’t, on another of Geoff’s walks.
Conclusion
My opening photograph is of the Scafells in the Lake District. It was a sun one moment, cloud the next day along Crinkle Crags. Look carefully and you see a small pool of water where I once camped in winter.
I’ll conclude with another Richard Mabey quotation, which is a hidden feature of “nice” weather thinking. You can understand it, find it amusing, and it’s sad, but there’s also this:
| I find it heartening that we use these coded phrases as a kind of acknowledgement that we’re all in the weather together. Of course we should be preoccupied. It’s the one circumstance of life which we share in common. It affects our bodies, our moods, our behaviour. |