Day Five

This is Bet. I don’t think I’ve introduced you to her properly yet. She’s a four year old Border Collie (at least she will be four very soon on her birthday which she shares with me). She likes sticks. That’s about it really. She also likes cheese and paying games with small children. Stick games. If she likes you she’ll give you a stick. You’re meant to throw it for her. If you do then you and she have become lasting friends. If she meets you again she’ll be delighted to see you and then she’ll give you a stick. This afternoon she and I walked to Hardcastle Crags.

This morning I watched the sky getting light from my bed. It was raining. I stayed in bed long enough to read for twenty minutes by daylight. Bet came to see what I was doing and stuck her nose into the pages, but I sent her downstairs again. I didn’t have to go to work today. I got up at half past seven and took her for a twenty minute circuit of the woods.

It wasn’t the Walk and Ride Festival walk along the Packhorse Trails of Hardcastle Crags that kept me from my desk, though that would have been lovely. I was meeting the other writers and artists in residence from the three year Watershed programme, along with Robin and Anna from Pennine Prospects. We met at the Town Hall and had lunch and chatted about what we’d all been up to and looked out at the pouring rain. They’re all lovely people, brimming with enthusiasm and creativity. We had cake and I was given a button badge with the word Writer on it.

When I got home it was still raining. I’d said I’d walk the dog, but first I had a cup of tea and read my book. Johnny went to get some shopping and I waited for him and Wilf to get home.  Bet looked impatient, but I opened the door and showed her the rain. ‘See’ I said, ‘You don’t want to go out in that.’ She looked up at me unconvinced.

At three thirty it stopped raining and the sun came out and we went for a walk. I suppose we could have gone in the rain. After all, walking to Hardcastle Crags in the rain is part of what living in Hebden Bridge is all about. But this was better. The streams were gushing and water dripped from the trees, but sunlight shone through in shafts and reflected off the water and the woods were dappled with shade and sunshine.

I walked along trying to think about what I’d write in my blog, but my mind kept wandering. It’s to do with the time of day. I’m more focused in the morning because nothing else has happened yet. By late afternoon there’s been too much input and everything keeps churning around and getting in the way. I’ve written a collection of stories for the Watershed project which they’re publishing in a booklet and it needs a title. I was thinking about that, and wondering if Poppy’s flight from Barcelona had landed in Liverpool yet, and wondering if I needed a wee. Then I started thinking about the woman we saw on the Coast to Coast Walk earlier this year as we topped the brow of a hill and she was having a wee by the side of the path. She was a conventional looking middle-aged walker, not the sort of person you expect to find with their trousers down in the countryside. But she was completely unembarrassed, if apologetic. But then, what do you do if you’re walking all day over open moorland and there’s no bush to hide behind?

Bet loves the Crags, partly because she loves swimming and also because it’s full of sticks. Because that’s the best thing, chasing sticks into water. 

But unlike her, I can get bored of sticks. Johnny is a soft touch and will throw them for her indefinitely, but there are times when enough is enough and I stop, and then she just carries the stick in her mouth. We didn’t see many people in the Crags. There were a couple of people drinking outside the Blue Pig when we passed, but no one else until we were walking back along the main track and met a family – parents and grandparents of a toddler who was being carried on her father's shoulders. Bet ran towards them ears folded against her head and tail wagging as though they were her best friends. Small child! Stick! She dropped her stick at the father’s feet and he bent to pick it up, almost, but not quite, dropping the child in the process.

In the car park there were five or six cars with doors and boots open and people changing next to them. Aha! These may be the Packhorse Trail walkers who set off this morning at 10am in the rain. I thought about going and asking them how the walk had been. But when I say they were changing, I don’t just mean their coats or their boots. One woman was changing her trousers and a couple of the men were stripped down to the waist. I wasn’t sure about accosting people in a state of undress in a National Trust car park, and anyway I know what the answer would have been. Wet. But very beautiful. Because that’s what the Crags always is. Even if it’s not raining it probably didn’t stop long ago and it will be soon again. That’s why it’s so green and gorgeous and why the river never stops rushing.

We left them to get into their dry things undisturbed and carried on our way.