Quarries & crags
We park-up in the grey gravel lay-by in Tilberthwaite, tossing a few coins into the Lake District National Park donation box before wandering across the road to admire Touchstone Fold, the ornate sheep pen constructed by artist and environmentalist Andy Goldsworthy. Then it’s back over the road and up the stone-stepped path beside the moss-covered spoil of Tilberthwaite’s slate quarrying past. Shortly, a gap opens up to the left, a passage leading into hidden hillside. A vast open-roofed hollow is another remnant of the quarrying. Rust stained rock faces, almost featureless save for the coloured swirls and lichen patterning, tower over a green, damp floor. Metal bolts glint on the vertical walls, whose use has been given over to climbing. But nature hasn’t finished digging even if the quarriers have. On one side, the upper wall has collapsed, spilling angular boulders across the ground and leaving rock, earth and tree hanging expectantly over the edge like the teetering coins of a 2p arcade machine.
We head back onto open hillside. Down to the right, some 50m below, Yewdale Beck tumbles through a gorge lined by birch and skeletal larch, its white froth ribbons more like the torrent of a north American canyon than a Lakeland beck. Above, dark green groves of juniper sprout from the hillside, twisted trunks springing forth from rock outcrops. We drift away from the river, and the roar of the beck fades, replaced by a lighter, less fearsome sound as we pass through a small gully, decorated to perfection with moss, fern and a delicate trickle of water.
As we swing right, passing the angle of the river where Tilberthwaite Gill becomes Yewdale Beck, Wetherlam comes into view. The solid greens of the juniper, yew and holly stand proud against the burnt reds of the feathery bracken on the mountain’s flanks, itself a stark contrast to the painted green fields of Tilberthwaite below. Somewhere, unseen, a mistle thrush rattles.