Pandemic Peregrinations: Kendal, Cumbria, Winter
Welp, despite Storm Christoph’s best attempts, snow and ice have returned.
The rain finally left Britain, with parts of North England and the Midlands getting flooded. It filled us with trepidation, having experienced our home being flooded during December 2015’s Storm Desmond. Thankfully, though the River Kent did get high, no serious flooding was reported in Cumbria this time.
Today we saw temperatures plunge once again, bringing overnight snow and frost into the county. As we’re still in a National Lockdown due to the global COVID-19 Pandemic, we retraced a familiar local favourite of ours: from the front to door to Old Sedbergh Road and up the fellside onto Paddy’s Lane. Then you follow the lane and exit back down to Kendal Jenkin’s Cragg Farm. You get a solid 10,000 steps doing it.
The going was dry and ice-free underfoot and the cloud base level was very low; it didn’t take us long stomping up Old Sedbergh Road to get into the cloud base and have our views completely washed out in fog. Never mind. Still got some lovely photos, I reckon.
All photos taken on my Fujifilm X-T2 using a Samyang 35mm f/1.2 lens. Developed using one of RNI’s Kodachrome film profiles.
The water level at the River Kent has dropped rather rapidly after Storm Christoph departed.
Kendal looks rather magical with a covering of frost.
We briefly came off Castle Street to explore the grounds of Castle Street Cemetery. It was like stepping back in time. The cemetery opened in 1843. The burial ground is now full and the chapel is disused.
Further up Sedbergh Road, near the allotments, our favourite local horses were having a proper feast on some sweet-smelling hay.
Up Old Sedbergh Road we go, as the road gets steeper each step.
The higher we climbed, the more the views disappeared into the winter fog.
A little spider web hammock.
This is the approach to the junction of Old Sedbergh Road and Paddy Lane, where Greyhound Farm sits. Really fogging up now.
With these kinds of conditions, you can snap some rather minimalist compositions.
Up on Paddy Lane. Trees and flora covered in corns of ice and frost.
High Jenkincrag Farm. Don’t know if it’s inhabited or not.
The route back to Kendal means you have to follow the Public Bridleway through Jenkin Crag Farm. And that means… cows!
All well fed and keeping warm, by the look of things.
The Castle Dairy. This is Kendal’s oldest inhabited building, built in the early 14th century and with some of those original features still in place. One might have assumptions based on the property’s name, but it seems it’s actually a corruption of Castle Dowery, a dower house for widows of the Barony.
The Bridge pub. Not sure what’s happening with this place; it’d been disused and on the market for years before news got out that it had been acquired in 2018. Still not open. Not sure it ever will be again.
Back up into Kendal town centre via Finkle Street. The name comes from the Old Norse word vinkle or vinkel, meaning “elbow” or “angle”. Accurate.
Heading past the New Shambles lane. Please do not feed the pigeons (people do, anyway).
New Shambles lane follows the route of an ancient path, Watt Lane; this went through property owned by the Trustees of the Market Place Chapel, back in the 18th century. It was redeveloped as the New Shambles in 1804 as 12 butchers’ shops. This lane became known as Stinking Lane as there weren’t any drains from the slaughter houses here (even though the owners paid “2/6”—two shillings and sixpence—a week to have the lane cleaned).