Part two

Beautiful sunny day with blue skies, up to Mirk Mire Moor, there was ice on the lanes so we took it carefully.  The rowan trees were all bereft of berries, as we drove along the razor straight road over the moor, was this also part of the Roman road that can be found further on? I don't know.  The holed stones, two at the fork of the two lanes meeting were measured by LS, still no answer, it did seem to me  that the 4" x 8" approx.  holes are made to a required specific, that these old stones have received another job to do in their lifetime.  The Wheeldale stones that occur every half mile or so are of course way markers for when the moor becomes covered in snow.

Red grouse around, and when we stopped, that beautiful silence broken by the grouses chirruping and that lovely burbling sound of another bird which must be the curlew... Down to the beck, snow caught against the bank as the water rushed bubbling and cascading over the stones. There were a couple of cars there, and as we walked up the forestry path, a man and his wife came down.  The man was in a wheelchair, and had difficulty in getting under the barred pole, which was padlocked.  He stopped to talk, from Edinburgh they had been coming down for 30 years, cycling the area all those years, a fit man once he still loved this place and was very amiable. 

We wandered up the path, to the left there must have been an old steading, all that remained was two crooked gate stones, and a wall, a flat platform with a cluster of stones may have been the 'house'.  The trees are gnarled and grey barked here, twisted into strange shapes, true witch trees.......