Ribblehead. I was here yesterday, a mad man huddled in a mossy hole, in the dark, waiting to take a picture of a train
soaked, I took those pictures,
in a flurry of wind and driving moorland rain.
I’m tired. Sleep deprived after 3 days of early mornings and late nights… been busy chasing a steam train every day
I do not want to be here again
Exhausted.
Lost my iPod yesterday and this is why I’m back
I’ve been forced to come by the niggling thought it’s lying here in the grass.
did I drop it here in the dark?
Yesterday the day was clear but today – well – I cannot see the viaduct at all!
But arriving back in this surprise whiteout world I’m glad I came.
A surreal surprise.
I’ve never been here when it’s like this before.
… then… voices!
I thought I was alone, but there are people out here with me. A family exploring… children’s shouts.
but for the life of me I cannot see them.
and they cannot see me.
Each of us enclosed in a dome of mist.
Sounds like they’re enjoying it. And so am I. Visual bearings lost.
I retrace my steps… trying to find the hole I was sitting in… to see if my iPod’s here.
In the fog.
Only certain of one sure path I follow it close, constantly scanning the ground. It’s thick wet with sphagum moss and mist, and no sign so far, and I’m unable to get my bearings as I can’t see the viaduct at all.
Nor the comfortable hole I chose to sit in.
it was so obvious yesterday.
I sit and rest on a limestone outcrop and my eyes pull to the mosses beneath me. And to the encrusted stones. Tiny arthropods are wandering around. Going underneath me with ease.
moss forest
Then in a moment the thick mist lifts and the hundred high viaduct looms out from the white
…and I am not where I thought I was at all.
At all.
I am not where I thought I was at all.
For twenty minutes I have been looking into white distance thinking I will see the bridge at any moment, and suddenly it is here, but not there… and to the right of me, much larger than where I’d placed it in my mind’s eye.
Radar off.
Disorient.
Like a magic trick a twenty four arch span hundred foot high bridge appears beside me, and now I’m up and able to get my bearings. I double back.
Yes! I find my hole in the moor, still soaked after last night’s downpours and mosses here jewelled now with fog water.
My iPod’s not here.
I know now for sure that I lost it on the train.
It’s probably gone for good.
I hear more people out here and now I see them, approaching on a distant path, and curtains of mist are billowing by and the sun is just beginning to shine through.
A few more photos, I think. And then home.