It was late on an autumn afternoon when I first stood on the flank of Easington Fell to gaze in the direction of Slaidburn. The sky was overcast and in the valley pricks of light were starting to appear. I looked at the ground that lay before me, then again at the map. The way forward did not appear obvious to the eye (no convenient signpost here) and, at least according to the Ordnance Surveyors, the drop was steep. Moreover, there were stiles to find and a river to cross before I could approach the road to my next meal and bed. These observations merely compounded the gathering gloom and sense of foreboding. The bard may have considered that discretion is the better part of valour but I suspect in Falstaff’s case and know in mine that any pusillanimity was due more to decrepitude of body and spirit than measured judgement. I looked on the possibility of the tripwired tussock as Sir John had looked on the Gunpowder Percy.

Beside me there was a road covered in tarmac that I knew ran smoothly towards the hotel bar. Although, being two sides of a triangle, the distance was further, the time would probably be shorter and to wile away that time I could amuse myself with memories of how less discreet decisions had once almost caused benightment on Ben Hope and had prompted me in a white-out to slither down a six-foot drop that turned out nearer to sixty. It was only when I reached the hotel that I began to realise the downside of my triumph. If I were to prospect fully the right and proper way of my route, I must return to the top of the hill. If I took the car, I would have to walk back up again. If I left the car at the hotel, there would be a tedious slog before the day’s real exploration began. Fortunately, the thing about the North is that strangers talk to each other and it wasn’t long before I had arranged a lift for the morning.

My good samaritan had a car-that-whizzed, but before he smalled into the middle distance he got out of his vehicle to demonstrate the view, accompanying the scene with a suitably enthusiastic commentary. I had never heard the returning native wax as lyrical since I had been in the company of a man enhancing the bar profits of Caledonian MacBrayne on his way home to the island of Barra from the Scottish mainland. Today’s annunciation might have been more succinctly delivered but the sentiment was the same. There he was born and there he would die. It was there he belonged.