Our use or not of the word ‘believe’ reveals much about our deepest opinions and concepts of meaning.
I can say that I believe that the awful weather we’re having will shortly change to something more appropriate to the month of May. I can’t say I ‘know’ this to be true, but I’d be willing to defend my opinion.
I can say I know how to ride a bicycle. Doing so has been one of the joys of my life. I couldn’t explain to another what that moment of letting go of the fear that I will crash to the ground, offset by my calmness and forward speed, feels like.
I can simply do it, and know with the fullness of involvement, that I can and will do it. In simple terms, riding a bike has become part of my known truth; it’s gone beyond hope, and even faith, to knowing. I know the experience of it, I no longer need the theory, I can just be it. And yet, to someone looking at a bicycle for the first time, the idea of balancing, let alone travelling, on it would seem impossible.
The Ancient Greek philosophers had a name for this kind of experience, related to the knowing of what started at spiritual knowledge and became something less theoretical: gnosis. Gnosis resulted from a depth of contemplation so purposeful that it propelled the participant beyond the emotion of having faith in something – a belief – and into the actuality of living it and therefore knowing it. Once achieved, the knowledge and presence of the known and lived experience rendered the other levels redundant.
The true state of what is known in this way is holy. That’s the effect it has on us…
The process of initiation was considered central to helping aspirants achieve gnosis. Initiation was designed to involve as many of the senses as possible in order to bring lived reality to the experience in a way that thought, alone, could never do.
Anyone can have the ‘knowing of gnosis’. It involves the living presence of the truth – the actuality – about a situation or state. That presence replaces the ‘idea’ – a thing or thought with which we’ve struggled towards a longed-for goal. Some situations lend themselves to a knowing of actuality, others not so readily.
Death is an interesting example. It would seem we cannot know death until we live it, and then no-one returns to talk about it… We live in an age where me must ‘conquer’ such nightmares, to make us sleep safely. Christ’s comments on this were interesting, He said that to ‘conquer death we had only to die…’
I suspect he was talking about a state where we enter death in a fully-conscious way, seeing it as the culmination of life, rather than its opposite.
When we get to our innermost thoughts and feelings – and opinions on such considerations as life and death, it becomes delicate…
No writer or philosopher wants to trample on the cherished beliefs of friends and companions on life’s shared journey; be they physically known or via the blogsphere. But there are certain approaches we can take to ‘test and mature’ our beliefs.
When we believe something, we are using it to cover up a ‘hole’ in ourselves. That hole is a non-belief, a fear. In the case of death, the fear is that our existence is going to end, that our molecules will dissipate back to nature and be recycled and that ‘we’ – really ‘me’ will cease to have a holistic continuity known to ‘me’.
Since we cannot know that this life subsists after death, we hold a small doubt in our minds about its existence. At the same time, we may fill our lives with small rituals of various kinds that act as an inner call to everything we hold dear, as we beseech this ‘inner state’ of life after death to reveal itself in some tangible way, so that we may age peacefully towards it.
In other words, we acknowledge doubt. And there is nothing healthier than doubt.
As children, we are full of doubt, but we know it as curiosity. Tommy Jones says the moon is made of shining cheese, but I think there’s more to it than that. In fact, I know that there’s more to it than that because I feel the two certainties: the doubt and the opening of alternatives.
Doubt has the magical property of bringing our personal truth into consideration. I might doubt that reincarnation exists as it is popularly described. I can’t prove it either way, but the doubt focusses me, intelligently, on the possible purposes of life and the natural methods of its continuation.
Eventually doubt will lead to the most meaningful questions and these will lead to trust … and a never-ending confidence in your own powers to decide what matters and what is right for you to enter the known.
Equipped with the truly known in ourselves, we will be ready to enter any gate that life – or death – offers. The only valid experience will be ours, and how we ‘see’ it.
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©Stephen Tanham 2024
All photos taken and processed on an iPhone 12 ProMax.
Stephen Tanham is a writer-photographer and mystical teacher. He is the founding Director of the Silent Eye, which offers a monthly Zoom-based gathering of companions, each one on their own, unique journey to the deeper states of them-selves.
There is no charge to attend these meetings.
Guidance will be provided to each person joining the group in the form of conversation, questions and answers. In this way, understanding and companionship are deepened in a caring and sharing environment.
There is an optional extension of this work in the form of monthly studies into the nature and facets of our personalities, how to examine them and the finding of the keys of spiritual return in each of the jewel’s facets.
There are two blog streams:
(mystically-oriented writing)
and
(general interest, poetry, humour and travel)
Contact: STEVETEMEQ@gmail.com.
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No sooner bloomed than fallen
The soft and playful petals
Lie contrast, on the charcoal stone
Premature to human eye
A zenith passed too soon
For mind of man seeks solace
In what endures in form the most
But nature’s love can last a single
Beat of yellow heart upturned
Then, like the memory of fine wine
Enjoyed with friends of heart
And eyes kind full of love
Writes itself, unafraid, into eternity.
©Stephen Tanham 2024
All photos taken and processed on an iPhone 12 ProMax.
Stephen Tanham is a writer-photographer and mystical teacher. He is the founding Director of the Silent Eye, which offers a monthly Zoom-based gathering of companions, each one on their own, unique journey to the deeper states of them-selves.
There is no charge to attend these meetings.
Guidance will be provided to each person joining the group in the form of conversation, questions and answers. In this way, understanding and companionship are deepened in a caring and sharing environment.
There is an optional extension of this work in the form of monthly studies into the nature and facets of our personalities, how to examine them and the finding of the keys of spiritual return in each of the jewel’s facets.
There are two blog streams:
(mystically-oriented writing)
and
(general interest, poetry, humour and travel)
Contact: STEVETEMEQ@gmail.com.
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“We haven’t had a Sunday trip to Cartmel for a while…”
It was true, aside from a short and very wet mid-winter visit, we hadn’t been to Cartmel for some time.
There was a good chance that we’d find spring in full bloom, and feel that brightening of the late April light that so ‘warms the soul’, even if the temperature of the eternal polar wind doesn’t.
It would also get us away from the sinus-pounding stench of the ‘manure plus’ (a village name for it) that the local farmers spread on the fields several times a year in these parts. Rumour has it they dump gone off milk in the mix, as well. The crops love it, I’m sure…
The EU had put a stop to this kind of practice, but a Brexit benefit has been the removal of such controls and a return to airborne toxicity. Who wants a nanny-state, anyway…
Cartmel didn’t have the stench. It does offer several dog walks around the edges of its famous racecourse. Tess adores them, and happily picked one for us.
Despite the near-constant rain, the place had a definite spring feel to it. Bluebells are always a welcome sight – even if they are the non-native French varieties.
We duly trotted up the dog’s favourite hillock, then down the other side and along the course of the river Eea, returning through the forest and back along the final leg of the racecourse into the village square.
One of the joys of a visit to Cartmel is an abundance of tea-rooms and old-fashioned coffee shops. Not a Costa or Starbucks in sight; not that there’s anything wrong with their coffee, but it’s nice to have a change and return to individuality.
Our favourite tearoom is also a B&B. The ground floor is divided into two ‘salons’, and the timeless decor is gentle on the mind for the end of a stroll.
The village is the home of the celebrated ‘Cartmel Sticky Toffee Pudding’. Combined with a walk and a latté, it’s hard to beat, even if it is still late morning.
No trip to Cartmel is complete without a visit to the local priory, once a powerful religious centre governing a vast area of former Lancashire and Westmorland.
©Stephen Tanham 2024
All photos taken and processed on an iPhone 12 ProMax.
Stephen Tanham is a writer-photographer and mystical teacher. He is the founding Director of the Silent Eye, which offers an exciting journey of the soul guided by lessons, inner experience and outer companionship.
There are two blog streams:
(mystically-oriented writing)
and
(general interest, poetry, humour and travel)
Contact: STEVETEMEQ@gmail.com.
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We are ‘head people’. By that I mean that our lives are driven by our heads; by thinking, by brains. We are born vividly experiencing, but our life in society and in ‘convention’ gradually numbs us into an existence based largely on the thinking brain…
We may choose to involve our bodies more with sports, walking or other very physical activities, but most of our lives will be spent thinking, worrying or being otherwise preoccupied rather than consciously experiencing.
And yet, our heads – more specifically our brains, sit on top of a vastly complex life-support system that ‘grows’ from the ground up; we might say grows from the ‘earth’ up. In a material sense, our bodies are ‘what we are’, but our sense of ‘being’ locates itself in the head by habit – though our being-ness extends through our bodies.
The general awareness of our bodies fades – except when there is pain; and then the association is anguish, not celebration.
We are made of the stuff of the earth. The material of our planet – some of it left over from the explosions of ancient, dying suns – makes up our bodies, There is no other source. The organic molecules that came to make up our form had a long evolutionary journey of their own.
Organic molecules evolved, pre-life, with an imperative to become more ‘organised’ and eventually formed self-replicating molecular structures. These were condtioned by ‘evolution’ to become larger and more sophisticated groupings whose primary ‘drive’ was and is to persist – to survive.
These persistent molecules are the basis of organic life on Earth, We know them as RNA and DNA. They form the blueprint for our inherited bodies, and they are the micro-level factories with which our bodies make the proteins that keep our cells alive and renewed.
Everything that we are has the instinct to survive at its basis. Survival is persistence of the creature. When our lives – our own persistence – is threatened, all the niceties and culture of the layers of brain that came later in evolution are dropped in favour of an overpowering’ need to continue to exist – to live.
Sadly, in societies that are heavily stressed, the elements of survival erupt through the thin layers of cooperation formed by society. Competition in business, for example, is ruthless and brutal, and its thinking resembles the behaviour of a reptile rather than that of a caring and sharing society.
Acts and movements of cooperation, where the common good is paramount, are the fruit of the neo-cortex layers of our brains and our associated civilisation. They are constantly beset by high-energy attacks from, say, populism; which feeds on the lower instincts of ‘me first’ and the deliberate pedalling of untruths to make people feel they were ‘right all along’.
This primary survival drive that conditions all future drives, such as those that govern sexual and social actions, is housed in the upper parts of our brain stem, at the top of our spine. Above this the other, more ‘social’ components of our brain structures live. The primary concern of the latter stages of our brain history is largely concerned with our need to cooperate, intelligently, with others – the Social Instinct.
We can consider ourselves to have ‘three floors’ in this corporate headquarters. The upper brain-stem is the ground floor, and as we have seen, is concerned primarily with ‘me’ and survival and other forms of continuation.
Above the brain stem is the Limbic Brain, also known as the reptilian brain. Cold-blooded and lacking in feelings, this provides us with the instantaneous reactions that keep us alive, but is not concerned beyond its own needs. Reptiles are solitary creatures. They even abandon their young – as eggs, once laid. The life of a reptile is one of constant reaction. From this, we get our ability to defend ourselves in a crisis, but that is normally on the basis of ‘me’.
The sexual drives as we know them also originate in the reptile (limbic) brain. Sex is ultimately concerned with union, but fuelled by powerful desire originating in our more primitive components.
The layers above the limbic are often called the ‘Mammalian Brain’. The young are suckled and lovingly assisted to maturity. There are feelings. Mammals live in communities, gaining strength from working together. Society forms in the mammalian kingdom.
Why is all this important to know? Surely it’s just ‘how we are’ and unchangeable?
A new vision is emerging that has the potential to dramatically modify our view of instincts and their ability to consciously advance mankind’s evolutionary journey.
Instead of being considered as ancient survivors from our distant past, we can see a new potential in the further development of these guardians of our physical lives, one that brings an ocean of creative energy to our conscious service.
Mysticism is essentially holistic. Its primary vision is that all LIFE is One. When our soul enters matter for life’s journey, it gradually loses its knowing of oneness as it gets lost in its life in the world. However, the instincts gifted to the body from the long history of planetary life are the primary ‘feed’ from the life-force into the daily life.
As our personality develops, it is deeply conditioned by the particular mix of instincts acting on us. Each human is unique in this respect. It may seem far-fetched to entertain the idea of being able to further evolve our own instinctual survival, sexual and social drives, under our own efforts. But this may be surmountable…
By bringing full consciousness to our instincts, and ‘watching them at work’ we can begin to reprogram much of their activity – particularly the negative and reactive side of it. The key to this seems to be making the process a ‘peak experience’ with enough power to ‘re-wire’ negative parts of how instinctual history.
Instead of being rejected as ‘wild and untamed’, the instincts, nurtured in this way, can release into our lives a vast reservoir of life-force for our conscious and creative use.
Ironically, such ideas were put forward by the philosopher Gurdjieff in the 1940s. Only today are we catching up with his vast understanding of how we are made and what potential lies before us.
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©Stephen Tanham 2024
All photos taken and processed on an iPhone 12 ProMax.
Stephen Tanham is a writer-photographer and mystical teacher. He is the founding Director of the Silent Eye, which offers a monthly Zoom, based gathering of companions, each one on their own, unique journey to deeper knowledge of self and Self.
There is no charge to attend these meetings.
Guidance will be provided to each person joining the group in the form of questions and answers. In this way, understanding and companionship are deepened in a caring and sharing environment.
There is an optional extension of this work in the form of monthly studies into the nature and facets of our personalities, how to examine them and the finding of the keys of return in each of the facets.
There are two blog streams:
(mystically-oriented writing)
and
(general interest, poetry, humour and travel)
Contact: STEVETEMEQ@gmail.com.
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I was pleased with the composition; looking south into the sunset near Almwch (pronounced ‘am-lock’) on the Isle of Anglesey.
Everything seemed harmonious until I noticed the faint silhouette of my wife, Bernie, somehow ‘bounced’ onto the white render of the hotel room’s garden wall.
A few adjustments with light and texture and the figure took on the ‘role’ of the artist inside the work.
An unexpected gift from the sunset! Thank you, Almwch.
©Stephen Tanham 2024
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All photos taken and processed on an iPhone 12 ProMax.
Stephen Tanham is a writer-photographer and mystical teacher. He is the founding Director of the Silent Eye, which offers an exciting journey of the soul guided by lessons, inner experience and outer companionship.
There are two blog streams:
(mystically-oriented writing)
and
http://www.suningemini.blog is the
(general interest, poetry, humour and travel)
Contact: stevetemeq@gmail.com
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She’s completely blind with cateracts which cannot be operated on: she’s too old to survive the recovery period.
Her name is Rosie: a thirteen year old black Labrador.
She’s not our dog. Her ‘mum and dad’ are currently in Australia, enjoying a six-week sojourn. We’ve been good friends for a long time. Bernie and Rosie’s mum, Siobhan, grew up together in Heysham, Morecambe’s twin resort. They’ve been best friends for most of their lives. It’s not likely to change….
We’re looking after Rosie while they’re away.
“It’s a big ask,” said Paul, her beloved dad as they got in the car and left for their adventure,. “Thank you!”
We’ve done it before; as they have for us. They come up to stay in our house while we go off on our own trips.. They have a mini-holiday in Kendal and look after our dog and cat.
But we’ve never before looked after Rosie for so long. It’s a challenge, but like any major undertaking, you develop a method of coping.
Siobhan told us that Rosie is at the end of her life, and they’re reconciled to her passing any month now. We’d prefer it not to be on our watch, but everyone is aware that it could be.
She’s a gentle and affectionate soul. Her physical and spiritual warmth are pervasive as she scans the room, locating us with sound and whatever’s left of her memory.
Two weeks in … four to go!
©Stephen Tanham 2024
All photos taken and processed on an iPhone 12 ProMax.
Stephen Tanham is a writer-photographer and mystical teacher. He is the founding Director of the Silent Eye, which offers an exciting journey of the soul guided by lessons, inner experience and outer companionship.
Contact: stevetemeq@gmail.com.
There are two blog streams:
(mystically-oriented writing)
and
(general interest, poetry, humour and travel)
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When Sue Vincent was with us, we used to share the admonition ‘Look up!’
For her, it was about finding the most interesting and, often, secret clues to a church’s past. She had taught herself to scan a building very quickly, then to home in on the details that had been revealed.
For me, it was all about the sky. The most fantastic forms and textures glide over our heads throughout the day, but how many of us regularly look up at their splendour?
The rapid development of the mobile phone means we always have the ability to capture images in our pockets. This is not true of the professional, who still has to carry a bulky camera (or two) to get the best results.
The Pro is working towards a use of the image that requires high definition, whereas we amateurs usually post our images on social media, where we get away with having a lower resolution as long as the composition works.
Clouds fascinate me. The infinite variety of light and colour can completely change the landscape below, in seconds.
Sometimes, there is drama too…
In the opening shot, I was walking the collie on one of the beaches at Morecambe when I noticed that the light was changing rapidly. I looked up to see a vertical wall of dark mist, looking for all the world as though it was growing out of the Midland Hotel,
So, with Tess in hot pursuit, and knowing that these things can last only for seconds, I ran down the beach towards the retreating sea to get a wider angle shot that would reveal what was going on.
When I saw the vast cloud system unfolding in the sky above, I knew we had something dramatic. A few minutes later, we also had a storm so violent that it was turning sand grains into bullets.
Sometimes we have to suffer for our art!
©Stephen Tanham 2024
All photos taken and processed on an iPhone 12 ProMax.
Stephen Tanham is a writer-photographer and mystical teacher. He is the founding Director of the Silent Eye, which offers an exciting journey of the soul guided by lessons, inner experience and outer companionship.
There are two blog streams:
(mystically-oriented writing)
and
(general interest, poetry, humour and travel)
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(📩 Poetry, irony, 18 words, a ten-second read)
Perhaps, and while
We slept
The world turned upside down
And missing spring
Lies far below
Reluctant winter’s crown.
——-/——-/——-
©Stephen Tanham 2024
All photos taken and processed on an iPhone 12 ProMax.
Stephen Tanham is a writer-photographer and mystical teacher. He is the founding Director of the Silent Eye, which offers an exciting journey of the soul guided by lessons, inner experience and outer companionship.
There are two blog streams:
(mystically-oriented writing)
and
(general interest, poetry, humour and travel)
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Waterhead to Ambleside; it’s a walk we do often. We park the car near the ferry point in Waterhead and do the thirty-minute stroll into the town.
Leaving Waterhead, we hug the coast of Lake Windermere by cutting through Borran’s Park – a place unseen by many visitors, who hike by on the road, not realising that one of the best views of Windermere is only 100 metres away…
As Waterhead falls behind us, the views through the fields on the outskirts of Ambleside reveal the High Fells.
It’s worth seeing how vast that landscape is from the air. This is a map of the whole of the Fairfield Horseshoe. Diagonally, it connects Rydal and Helvellyn–right across the centre of the Lake District.
Soon after that, we’re in Ambleside. The photos are not all from the same day. The shot below is typical of the relentless wet and windy weather of the past two months.
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©Stephen Tanham 2024
All photos taken and processed on an iPhone 12 ProMax.
Stephen Tanham is a writer-photographer and mystical teacher. He is the founding Director of the Silent Eye, which offers an exciting journey of the soul guided by lessons, inner experience and outer companionship.
There are two blog streams:
(mystically-oriented writing)
and
(general interest, poetry, humour and travel)
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There is a mysterious fire within the human being. All of us have it, and it’s waiting to serve us … but in most, it is left dormant.
The Alchemists named it ‘fire’, thereby hiding and describing it in the same definition. We don’t have to believe in anything mystical to experience it. It’s simply a part of what we are, and can be felt by anyone who approaches it with the openness of discovery.
It belongs both to the body and to something else…
It’s part of us, biologically and experientially…and it’s intelligent. We might say it’s always present, as long as we’re alive, and hence its more modern name: presence.
Analogies help… If you’ve ever been outside in the snow, perhaps making snowballs to throw – without gloves – you will know the lovely feeling of active warmth that follows the intense cold of the melting ice crystals on your skin.
A useful starter exercise is to hold your hands in the ‘prayer position’, then begin taking a few deeper breaths and directing your attention to the space between the palms. After a short time, you will feel a gentle warm glow, which, at first you will mistake for simple body heat.
It’s worth pointing out that this gesture of the hands has come down to us as one of prayer. Could this be more significant than we ever thought?
Can we use the hands to spread this healing warmth? Sit quietly in a straight chair and place your ‘charged’ hands onto your thighs. At first you’ll feel the ordinary warmth. If you continue to energise it with breathing, you’ll feel something more powerful that spreads, gently.
I’ve thrown in a few comments from friends discussing this over the years.
When I began to do this, the feeling was like ‘coming home’ to myself…
See if you can direct it to your knees and then on down to your feet. Use the intelligent warmth to explore your feet. Can you use it to feel your toes; then each toe in turn? This may take a little practice…
When we know what the intelligent warmth feels like, we can choose where to begin the ‘fire’ of its presence. Our whole body is there to ‘ignite’ in this way. The effect will be to make us feel more ‘alive’ and settled.
Taking it very slowly, next week we’ll consider the inner nature of this fire … and how it might be related to other aspects of our inner and outer lives.
“Gentle,
alive,
loving
Very much me!”
©Stephen Tanham 2024
All photos taken and processed on an iPhone 12 ProMax.
Stephen Tanham is a writer-photographer and mystical teacher. He is the founding Director of the Silent Eye, which offers an exciting journey of the soul guided by lessons, inner experience and outer companionship.
There are two blog streams:
(mystically-oriented writing)
and
(general interest, poetry, humour and travel)
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I’ve been watching, with interest and a degree of admiration, the fruits of the new generation of AI products that allow you to create images from literal descriptions like:
‘A young boy chases a red balloon through narrow dark streets in Paris.
The result is a good quality glossy image that is royalty-free and allows us writers to create a tailored image for our wordage.
But I have noticed that they all have a similar ‘artificial’ look, in that they have a painted style that is similarly ‘over-perfect’ – a chocolate box, as I have come to think of them.
It may simply be that I’ve not seen enough of them to appreciate what can be done. In any event, I have no issue with their generation or use, simply their ‘sameness’
I set out to explore this sameness by contrasting my AI image with one I created based on a ‘look’ that had a lot of artistic integrity.
Above is an image I spotted in my Instagram feed. I liked it, followed the author, and began to examine how the creator had achieved this far more real look, despite it being heavily manipulated.
To continue the experiment, I set out to take a simple photograph of a natural scene and then manually use a variety of favourite techniques to both distort and enhance it.
I’m also interested in how and why these and the AI images look different. I have a sense that the ‘original’ content of the actual photograph is more ‘vital to our minds and emotions than the ‘wholly fabricated’ AI image,which is drawn from a ‘mechanical’ past.
Here are the stages, dead ends, and another look at the finished result:.
There are no rights or wrongs here. It would be very difficult to match the power of AI to create a highly specific picture, such as the Red Balloon image.
But, as a writer, it would be much easier to wrap my emotions around the natural image above … and possibly pen an appropriate poem or similar.
What do you think?
For reference: The Red Balloon, 1956.
“The story follows Pascal, a young boy, through Paris streets where he sees a red balloon atop a lamppost, chases it, catches it and discovers that it has a wonderful magic power.”
———— ———-
©Stephen Tanham 2024
All photos taken and processed on an iPhone 12 ProMax.
AI Generated by NightStudio Cafe
Stephen Tanham is a writer-photographer and mystical teacher. He is the founding Director of the Silent Eye, which offers an exciting journey of the soul guided by lessons, inner experience and outer companionship.
There are two blog streams:
(mystically-oriented writing)
and
(general interest, poetry, humour and travel)
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I’ve written before about Ulverston and its surroundings, but mainly about the town rather than the walks around it.
Ulverston, like Kendal, now has a new identity, so we decided to re-visit and see how much it had changed. ‘We’ being a small group of dedicated dog-walkers characterised by a liking for fish chowder and taking photographs of Lakeland’s Southern Fells – views enhanced by their rapid morphing into the associated southern estuaries.
‘We’ also have strong views about representation or the lack of it in modern politics, so we have decided to become a ‘Sons of the Desert’ group. The idea for these was created by fans in memory of Stan Laurel, a son of Ulverston. One of his early films had the same name and was filmed in the sand dunes of a nearby stretch of coastline. Anyone can form such a society, but apart from drinking, it needs to have stated objectives. We had work to do…
We duly inaugurated our Sons of the Desert group in a local pub with a swift half, then set off to discuss and define our purpose!
We had already decided that, this year, we would begin our get-together with a walk up The Hoad, or ‘up t’oad’ to paraphrase the excellent local dialect of this former part of Lancashire, recently Cumbria, but now administratively governed as part of ‘Westmorland and Furness’, a diagonal slice of Cumbria linking the likes of Barrow, Ulverston, Kendal and Penrith … obvious really.
And there it was. No sooner had the fate of this part of old Lancashire left our lips when it became obvious that we should dedicate our Sons of the Desert efforts to publicising the nonsense that had overtaken its former geographic glory.
The fate of our beloved part of old Lancashire is best summed up by its current gerrymongering – a word we coined as we climbed up the steep path of the Hoad.
Fascinating.. here, in this rather anemic orange line, it is on the map…
If you’re confused, it’s quite understandable. Everyone who lives in ‘Westmorland and Furness’ is, too. It’s the latest product of the Boundary Commission, that beacon of logic and legalised re-grouping of local populations., whether they want it or not. Cumbria – all of it not just this part of Old Lancashire – did not, but that didn’t stop anything.
I can’t think who benefits …. Actually, I can, but hopefully it’s a temporary problem.
Early April offered this hardy group the brighter light ushered in by the clock-change, combined with dramatic, high-contrast skies and the glorious and rather unusual mixture of sky, fell and the unique landscape of the plentiful southern estuaries.
The climb from Ulverston begins at Ford Park, where we parked the cars, put on boots and waterproofs, paid for parking via the honesty box, gave the dogs a mad frishbee chuck on the large grassed area (right hand side only, the kids have the left), before hardening our resolve with a delicious latté at the renamed ‘Base Cafe’, which has wisely adopted the image of The Hoad as its logo.
Soon, and sweatier – for we are not youfs, anymore, we arrived at the approach track to the mightly Hoad.
While we got our breath back, we considered the fine structure before us.
Despite being based on the third of the Eddystone lighthouses, the Hoad is singularly a monument to a celebrated local figure: Sir John Barrow, First Baronet, geographer, mathematician, diplomat and linguist.
His story is worthy of a post in its own right, but that is for another time. Suffice to say that he was a man of the people and sacrificed his early career to found a school for disadvantaged children in his hometown of Ulverston.
Sir John Barrow rose to become a founding member of the Royal Geographical Society. As a senior diplomat at the forefront of the British Empire, he travelled to China and South Aftrica, and held the positions of First Baronet and that of Second Secretary to the Admiralty from 1804 to 1845.
Somewhat restored by oxygen. We took in the views that never disappoint, and paused to imagine that the great man would have smiled on our small, democratic efforts…
Here in Cumbria, sorry – Westmorland and Furness – despite months of rain, we are finally seeing the odd sunny day. The landscape of lakes and mountains is very green – courtesy of all that rain, but due south from the well documented beauty of the central Lakes, in an area known as the ‘Peninsulas’, the region offers another feature, that of a south-facing sandy coastline full of inlets and estuaries.
We considered further discussions, but chowder was calling. We were due at the beloved Fourpence Cafe in the middle of Ulverston. There was a gentler route down, so we took it. Soon, Sam and Jane were welcoming us and the divine fish stew was arriving.
We will be back…
©Stephen Tanham 2024
All photos taken and processed on an iPhone 12 ProMax.
Stephen Tanham is a writer-photographer and mystical teacher. He is the founding Director of the Silent Eye, which offers an exciting journey of the soul guided by lessons, inner experience and outer companionship.
There are two blog streams:
(mystically-oriented writing)
and
(general interest, poetry, humour and travel)
Sun in Gemini 
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