Bransdale

A refreshing day spent in Bransdale, making repairs to some of the field boundaries. Bransdale’s walls are quite distinctive. In other uplands, dry stone walls are constructed of two skins of stonework, usually dressed and tapering inwards towards the top, with the gap filled with small pieces. Bransdale’s walls are just a single skin, huge undressed sandstone boulders laid on top of each other. They look precarious, with more holes than a colander, yet they have remained standing over the decades. But occasionally they do collapse. Sheep might have attempted to scale or there has been some change in the ground conditions. Repairing a collapsed wall is hard work, I struggled to lift some of the stones on my own, but rewarding when finished. And on a gaudy afternoon when it is a mixture of rain showers and bright sunshine a rainbow is the icing on the cake.