Moving mountains

I give thanks for the rare delight of going out in the really dark of the morning - no street lights, no stars and the sliver of crescent moon obscured by low cloud... And for seeing fields full of sheep asleep in the dawn.

I'm grateful for getting here with some day left despite several delays for signal failure...but nothing so drastic as to stop me going 'the long way round' which is the way I intended to come earlier in the year when the delays were very drastic and did. It takes longer because instead of arriving at the edge of the mountains and seeing them tantalisingly further on you get more in a bus or train window full than you can shake a Zimmer frame at! It's not just the mountains I love here... it's the lakes and streams and dry stone walls, the changing light and the winding paths the rocky outcrops and the glorious grass and trees. And I give thanks for it all and I really should wear a hat with a chin strap to stop my mouth dropping open with awe, but it's the mountains that make me cry, mostly in a good way... It's so hard for me to get to see them these days, and they move me even more when I make the effort and do.

But of course, having got here, I wanted to be somewhere else - not far but far enough away from all the other folk enjoying a mild September Saturday in scenic surroundings and I executed a cunning though painful plan and climbed little way up a steep wooded hill where I was sure there ought to be a seat with a view somewhere and there was! I give thanks for the extra angle of mountainsides seen, worth every creak and groan of joints and muscles and tendons. And after a few abortive attempts at capturing what I saw and felt in a snap I gave thanks for realising I could actually take one particular picture better than anyone else could right there right then - a selfie of me in the woods alone and happy! It took forever to upload it to my tablet and it won't let me rotate it. Never mind... I could do with a lie down!