Fraternity

I prefer to have an objective for a walk. I read maps like books; I suppose that includes several reasons, not least that our OS maps are works of art in their own right. I am also on the look-out for unusual features that cannot be fully explained by the map's graphics or  text, so these can provide potential targets for on the ground exploration.

A few years ago, before I was fully tuned into GPS,  I had spotted "Three Brothers" at SD 494 734. Memory is distant now but I recall investigating unsuccessfully on two occasions. Unfortunately I was relying on my less than precise skills, and also, I think on those occasions the Three had only been a secondary objective, and the terrain was challenging: quite thick old deciduous woodland, mini hills, dense bracken and no paths (marked on the map) and I was running out of time.

I can't remember now if I set off from home before, but it is six miles out (and six miles back), and today, as I am still not driving I had no option, so this would be my record distance walk since the accident. I experimentally tried on my daysack-rucksack and pleasingly found it was no problem, and a welcome improvement on the satchel I have been using.

Previously I had used the 1:50 map, but today, with the 1:25 I saw that there was a lane leading off the Tarmac road in the appropriate direction to within two hundred yards of the Three. That may not sound much, but it was pathless, up and down hills, and wading through thigh high bracken whilst consulting the GPS on Memory Map on my iPhone, and using my compass. Those two hundred yards from the lane took me fifteen minutes or so. GPS was telling me I was there, but stood in the bracken I was looking up to my right at a twenty foot high banking covered in brambles and shrubbery, and I was on the point of concluding the Three Brothers, whatever they were, had succumbed beneath that lot, but a few yards further a well defined path lead round the back of that banking, and there was number one, a limestone rock,  roughly cuboid and the size of a small car - not all that spectacular, and then twenty yards further another similar one. The third was smaller and another twenty yards further, but the alignment made it impossible to get them all in one photo together. All in all,  some may say, a pretty disappointing result for a twelve mile round walk, no pot of gold, but I was well satisfied. There were paths all over and I bashed on with my circular route.

Wolf House Gallery, teashop and painting gallery (RR once bought a painting there!), completed my pleasures with a thirst quenching pot of tea on this hot day along and a unique pecan nut flavoured sponge.

Hawes Water (Arnside/Silverdale AONB)

Leighton Hall

Two of Three Brothers (the third was behind the camera)

Clockwise. Red star indicates Wolf House Gallery