Simon English
England Revisited

On a bolder in a cairn built on Easington Fell above Fell Side Farm 6 miles north of Clitheroe.

On a rock boulder by the footpath on Easington Fell, probably not the same rock as used in 1971 as in the intervening years the footpath has been widened to a vehicle track. This has involved a certain amount of levelling and moving of rock. Now tractors, quad bikes and 4WD vehicles can get onto the rocky Fell to look after the sheep, grouse and heather when once this had to be done by foot.

In my youth, walking off the fell in the drizzly gloaming, I met the farmer here and having far to go he invited me to stay the night. I remember the house as been virtually unchanged for a century. Like many remote hill farms, he lived, by necessity, a life of virtual self sufficiency. I am not sure that there was electricity as I remember the warm glow of lamps. My most vivid memory was being fed home cured ham carved from one of the legs that hung in the great chimney slowly curing in the wood smoke from the open fire. It was an act of other age hospitality.

The farm house, if it is the same one, has been modernised. From here the care of the grouse moors on the fells above is run. This is not just about the birds but about care of the heather on which they feed. This year, I gather, the spring had a two month drought although one would not know it by the summer. A long term effort to try to control the encroaching bracken by spraying is conducted. On this moor the farmers have been bought off to keep their sheep off the heather. In my youth having a sheep lumber out of a rill and bound away was a feature of walking up for grouse.

I gather that care of the fell has paid dividends in other ways with an increase in other wild bird species seen over and beyond the partridge being introduced. The footpath passes over what is now called 'Access Land' but on this section - no dogs allowed. The public is encouraged to take litter home and not to light fires. On this visit the land was wet and green but this spring the danger to ground nesting birds from fire would have been acute and especially vulnerable to a careless hiker.
Points 23 & 21