I can reach the gate in eight minutes from my back door. It was the view from the gate that convinced us to to live here, a decade ago now. It is from here that I observe – attend to, regard, witness – this landscape.
Nestled in a confluence of cloughs, swaddled in valley side woodlands: Hebden Bridge.
A rising swell of dusk from the valley below laps at the field wall, but the mowing and the rowing up must go on.
Figures high on the Langfield Common skyline. Behind them, across the gulf of the valley of the Walsden Water, the blades of a Crook Hill wind turbine.
In the parish of Erringden this evening, the advice for what ought to be done while the sun shines is being followed to the letter.
Stoodley Pike and paraglider.
After a full day of sunshine, a rogue raincloud bears down on the parish church of Heptsonstall, St Thomas the Apostle. On the skyline to its left, the trig point at High Brown Knoll gleams defiantly just before it is extinguished.
Cruttonstall. Settled for at least a millennium, abandoned for the last century. George and Elizabeth Halstead farmed their 16 acres here for 40 years in the 1800s, raising six children.
The promise of rain from a pewter sky, only fitfully delivered upon.
