To Kiddam Hill

Hello

On Friday we walked up Kiddam Hill. Any way when we were coming down Mum stopped in a clearing (Kiddam Hill, like every where else near Mums old house, covered with pine trees). Mum built one slate house and then we all built one. I made a Darby (he died ten days before Christmas last year) memorial, so we named the town Darby, it is not open to 'fairy' public yet but will be opened along with two other new towns called Rasin (after Thiane and Chelsea's rabbit who only ate raisins and biscuits and Strange town (after the very strange tree that is near).

Mum and Dad went down the hill back to the caravan and Mum bought Thiane and Chelsea up to the town! We all made more houses and then went down to the house and played with their guinea pigs and then made a hut outside. We fed the hedgehog and it bit Thiane and would not let go it kept on tugging and tugging on her finger!

It was Chelsea's birthday party on Sunday and she had some friends over. Eda got the boat out and we paddled around the dam and two of the little girls went swimming (They were in for maybe five seconds before screaming and screaming until they got out!). We had cake and lots of sweets and James teased me about being a vego that eats fish! He must think its very funny to see me get frustrated. Abbey, Thiane, Chelsea, Stephanie, Daniel and I made a fort in the pine forest. It has walls as high as my waist made out of sticks from the pines around us, I collected hundreds of pine cones to peg at peeps we did not like!The next day Daniel, Abbey and I made the walls higher while Thiane and co made a mini one!

HAPPY BITHDAY TO YOU!

It's Camille's 21st birthday to day.

And sorry Esther who had the big 13th birthday a few weeks ago!!!

We are in Carlisle and have not accomplished very much over the course of the day.....

Write More Soon

Lov ya all

Frances

Scar Fell Pike

Scar Fell Pike was a climb and a half. We started out and the day was supposed to be pretty good. The way was steep and the track rocky and uneven, and there were no chai shops like on our climb of Triund. Halfway up we met one climber on the way down who said it was hailing at the top. Look out! By the time we got to the top, the weather cleared...for a while, and we started our trek down. The view was of course fantastic.

We heard one almighty crack of thunder on the way down, and lightning was striking, but not near us, fortunately. But the rain bucketed, and we had a dousing of light hail to accompany us. We were sodden by the time we reached base camp...the camper. The sirens were alive in the valley as we made a cuppa...Four people a little ways away from us on their climb were hit by lightning. One tossed 30 metres or so, and all hospitalised but Ok. Helicopters and ambulance involved in the rescue.

The girls found this climb a little tough, but they slogged it out to their credit, with the assistance of encouragement from Camille in the guise of planning their future riding stables!

Cheers Gerard

Our journey from the Lake District was fairly short but we stopped in Carlisle for a bit of shopping – cold weather clothes, the weather has changed since the lightning strike – then on to Lockerbie to see the old Laundry Cottage on the Castle Milk Estate where Grandad lived when he moved to Scotland.

Generally the Estate is falling down now but there are still remains of the walled in gardens and gardeners terraced cottages and the Laundry Cottage is still in good repair. There are a lot of keep out signs which made the kids very nervous even though we stopped by the main office to ask permission, so we pressed on, past my old high school and along the road to Kiddam Hill.

Mostly every thing was the same till we came through Eskdalemuir. Here one can see exactly how the forestry that we were so against way back then has come to be everything that we thought it may be. The last big sheep farm in Eskdalemuir that was owned by the Cartners was sold last year to forestry, old Mrs Cartner died shortly after at the ripe old age of 104... they say it was what finished her. The school has closed and the children who live in our house at Kiddam tell me there are only seven children in the valley now. The Tibetan centre, Sameling, has spread out now so that it owns most of the village houses nearby. The fences have gone so that the garden and temples extend way to and down the road as far as the village hall.

The 'track' , the five mile dirt road to our house is wide and straightened, trafficked by several semi trailers each day hauling the logs from behind Garwald and Monkenshaw, Ashy Bank and all the way up the road to and beyond Kiddam and Thickside to the moors. What had, while we lived here, been left as wide open valleys for the purpose of creating wild life corridors between the lifeless, silent, mono-culture of sitka spruce forests have all but gone, planted down to the rivers edge after we left, probably around the time the Forestry Group running the forests then, under the guidence and good sense of the Head Gamekeeper Ronnie Rose, dissolved. The valley is consequently narrower and darker than it was when I roamed it as a child... except where they have felled and replanted, which is the typical mess we see in the Tassie replants.

Fortunately for Kiddam, the previous owners took them to court to prevent the trucks trundling passed the house, on the grounds it was shaking the foundations and so the trucking road by-passes the house creating a larger more private garden space. From the old sheep dip the road side has been planted out in more trees... of the deciduous kind, so that the house is invisible as you approach. The river has been diverted to feed a pond in the paddock where we kept the sheep when they were lambing. In the middle of the pond is an island and the rest of the paddock has been planted in more trees.... with a pagola. The pond flows over a weir that feeds a turbine that they are still struggling to make functional. Everything is smaller and shorter than I remember, not only because the trees are pressing in. Mom's vegie garden which stretched all the way down to the old barn (no longer there) at the junction of the two rivers is not much bigger than my own garden! I have a feeling of returning to Narnia and Cair Pavarel is all over grown, but as I arrive it becomes more familiar.

Edda and James and their two children Chelsea and Thiane are lovely. Edda is a vet in Carlisle, James breeds hybrid birds of prey which he sells to the Arabs for amazing amounts of money. It was Chelsea's seventh birthday so we shared her cake with them and they gave me a tour of the house. The girls sleep in my bedroom, Chelsea has her bed just where mine was. It was late when we went out to watch James feed the chicks. One hungry critter had just recovered from a intestinal operation, at only nine days old he is worth a staggering 8000 pounds!! We camped in their yard for the night.

Next day we set our 'pitch' down where the two rivers meet on the road to Thickside. This side of the valley is more open. Its only a toddle for the kids to go to play. Thiane is Abbey's age. They have had a lovely time feeding the recovering hedgehog, playing in the stream and building fairy houses from slate. The very cold rainy day the children played till they where drenched then went in to watch dvds – imagine tele at Kiddam (we only just got a generator before we left – it was all candles and paraffin lamps way back then!! We joined them after dinner for a cuppa and a movie.

Yesterday was Chelsea's birthday party. The girls went off playing with the bunch of kids up and down the stream, in the forests, generally doing what you do when you live at Kiddam!! Very strange really. Meanwhile Gerard and I took Skye,

 the would-be sheep dog, for a walk to the top of Ettrick Pen which I never did when I lived here, although its presence always beckoned. Compared to the last two peaks that we have mastered Ettrick was only a half the size, but the valley lies deep in 40 years worth of uneaten grass and gravel from an ever changing river bed. As the stream meanders from side to side the banks grow steep and eroded or soft and boggy so that crossing back and forth is the way up.

Near Pengrain cottage the clearfell was even harder to negotiate combining bog with bulldozer tracks, branches and stumps. From there the stream meets the many brooks which feed it and disappear up a variety of steep gullies overhung with well grown pines. We picked one we thought was heading in the right direction and clambered up to the moors. The tufts of grass were deep and uneven and the cold wind bitter but we battled to the top.

The view was fantastic. We could see all the way out to the Solway Firth, maybe even to Scar Fell and back up over the moors that lead past Ettrick to the Highlands. There the black wild weather brewing threatened to blast us off the top so we took refuge just below the brow sinking into the heather and breathing in the dank moss while we ate our lunch and Skye snoozed. On our way down we stumbled upon two tiny fawn stashed in the long grass soaking up the warm sun of the sheltered valley. Skye went right up without them moving, we called him off and I took photos. By the time we got back the party was over. Edda and James invited us for dinner and we spent an enjoyable evening showing pictures of the old Kiddam and comparing snow stories!!

Today the sun is sparkling and the skies are blue. I think we will take the kids for a wander. Cheers Camille