Preston to Windermere

Brief note here. This is the most beautiful part of the journey. Steep fallings away, water everywhere, louring sky, everything tinged with dark under high grey cloud. Aberdeen Anguses, caravans, dense green foliage, the bank rising then dropping to reveal hills and mounts.

On second leg of the journey a plump young blonde woman with a young son sits over the aisle. She is constantly barking at him though he is no trouble. 'Play your game! 'Shut up!''Just eat!'. She is reading a magazine. I wonder what expressions he will be using once he is bigger and stronger. But that's too quick a judgment. After forty minutes or so she becomes very tender, takes him on her knee. From fierceness to caresses. Capable of both in an instant.

Reading papers (riots, looting, faces, disgraces) and Richard Mabey's 'The Unofficial Countryside' which must be the predecessor to 'Edgelands' just with more nature. Mabey is a lovely writer and scholar. (Now passing sheep - this must be official countryside.) You can tell real feeling in writing. It is never general or full of high sentence/ It savours words and applies them, precisely.

Farms of grey stone. Great mammary hills. Enclosed spaces. Hedges snaking up and down, like lines drawn in chalk. Heather. It is darkening all the time, the clouds growing spongier. Now at Oxenholme. Enough for now - also keeping an eye on the cricket.