Navigation

North of Minions, crossing the Moor, there were no waymarked paths.

I think that I enjoyed the navigation there more than anything I'd done before, since the landscape is so old. We followed the stones of some ancient boundary, and as we ascended or descended the curves of the hill, another stone would miraculously become visible. The traces led to a six-thousand year-old stone circle where each stone was surrounded by a pool of water where cattle had rubbed themselves against the rock.




The next day, we navigated along an invisible bridleway over plains that looked as if they were Wyoming, using a combination of mapwork, compass, the sun and tiny pimply mounds and irregularities of the hillsides, which led us to the right spot some miles onward. We were following tracks of our ancestors, thousands of years old, using the same markers that they had laid down; and it felt so close to nature.

We passed hut circles of the same age, relics of the old transhumance or summer huts when the moors were only occupied in fair weather and wondered at how the world had changed.



Walking is wonderful.


:o)