Country diary: In this buffeting wind, we are light as lichen spores

Chapel fell, Weardale: Giddy from the gales, we lean against a stone wall. Something here is in its elementThe weather for today's walk, judged according to Sir Francis Beaufort's wind force scale, feels like force seven - a near gale. The relevant definitions seem to fit."Whole trees in motion"? Branches of a gnarled mountain ash on the fellside, hunched in its own wind shadow after decades of bending before prevailing south-westerlies, clatter together as we passed. Continue reading...