The Shadow of Black Combe / Cumbria Reading Detectives

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The Shadow of Black Combe Find!

Black Combe is the fell that sits in splendid isolation at the mouth of the Duddon estuary and towers over the town of Millom where Norman Nicholson lived all his life. It played a large part in the poet's life and in fact one of his poetry collections is called "The Shadow of Black Combe". It is described on the Lake District Outdoors website as: 'Situated between sea and mountains, the modest peak of Black Combe has some of the best long distance views in the country. Its detached position and moderate height give it a full 360° panorama which, on a clear day, includes part of Scotland and Wales, the Isle of Man, north Lancashire, the western Pennines and of course most of the Lakeland Peaks. Once height is gained the walking is wonderfully easy over rolling grassy fells allowing you to take in the views and to soak up the exposure of the steep crag-ringed eastern corries'.

And in his book "The Outlying Fells of Lakeland" Alfred Wainwright describes Black Combe as appearing 'aloof, rising on the southern seaboard and overtopping all else like a huge whale stranded on a beach, a landmark visible over far distances and always unmistakable...... Black Combe was made to be climbed, and climbed it should be. It is considerate to the old and infirm: the grass bridleway to its summit from Whicham is amongst the most delectable of Lakeland fell paths. Which other can be ascended in carpet slippers?'

So this is a homage to a single mountain which was not only a favourite of Norman Nicholson and Alfred Wainwright but also one of mine! And there is no one better than the great Millom poet to describe the various moods of this splendid hill which stands between sea and mountain so here are two of my favourite poems by one of my favourite poets.

Cloud on Black Combe

The air clarifies. Rain

Has clocked off for the day.

The wind scolds in from Sligo,

Ripping the calico-grey from a pale sky.

Black Combe holds tight

To its tuft of cloud, but over the three-legged island

All the west is shining.

An hour goes by,

And now the starched collars of the eastern pikes

Streak up into a rinse of blue. Every

Inland fell is glinting;

Black Combe alone still hides

Its bald, bleak forehead, balaclava'd out of sight.

Slick fingers of wind

Tease and fidget at wool-end and wisp,

Picking the mist to bits.

Strings and whiskers

Fray off from the cleft hill's

Bilberried brow, disintegrate, dissolve

Into blue liquidity -

Only a matter of time

Before the white is wholely worried away

And Black Combe starts to earn its name again.

But where, in the west, a tide

Of moist and clear-as-a-vacuum air is piling

High on the corried slopes, a light

Fret and haar of hazy whiteness

Sweats off the cold rock: in a cloudless sky

A cloud emulsifies,

Junkets on sill and dyke.

Wool-end and wisp materialise

Like ectoplasm, are twined

And crocheted to an off-white,

Over-the-lug-hole hug-me-tight;

And Black Combe's ram's-head, butting at the bright

Turfed and brackenny brine,

Gathers its own wool, plucks shadow out of shine.

What the wind blows away

The wind blows back again.

Black Combe White

Sixty mile drive to a reading - arriving by dark,

The audience sparse, the room unsuitable,

And bed in a cold hotel. At 8 a.m.

I draw the curtains, and there, beyond the roof-tops,

Bulging from the flat ledge of the horizon

Like a blister on the white paint of a window-sill,

Black Combe - its unmistakable cleft forehead,

No bigger than a thimble now, outlined in chalk

On the blue distemper of the sky. I turn from the cold

To a room now grown more welcoming than before:

'It's been snowing at home.' I say.

Sixty mile back

Edging the ooze of the estuary mosses - sheep

One side on fire from the level sun; hedges

Clinkering ginger; every dyke and mole-hill

Casting an acre of shadow. And soon

From each rise in the road, each break in the hills' barrier,

Comes glimpse after glimpse of the nearing Combe, first white,

Then patchy, and then streaked white on black,

Darkening and sharpening every minute and every mile.

Home at last to the known tight streets,

The hunched chapels, the long canals of smoke -

And now, from my own doorway, between gable and chimney,

That harsh, scarred brow, entirely stripped of snow,

Impending over yard and attic sky-light,

A dark, parental prescence. And when the neighbours tell me:

'The Combe was white last night!' - I don't believe them.

It's always black from here.

Pictures of Black Combe which I took last week - now that it has finally stopped raining!

www.lakedistrictoutdoors.co.uk/walkingroutedetails

19 September 2009 from Mary Rossall

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