Cowslip uncertainty

A long and different day working out in the wild west at Workington today. When I finished I went in search of the sea before returning home and walked up near the docks to a great view of St. Bees, the Isle of Man and across the Solway to south-west Scotland. On the summit, was a rather striking cross (extra) I met Pat (I still haven't got the courage to do portrait shots) who was an elderly lady who says she has walked up there every day since her husband died 6 years ago 'come rain or shine, summer and winter'. She told me we were stood on a grassed area on top of a slag heap that was the by-product of the steel works.

I hope this blip captures some layers. The beauty of the day, the collapsed Tata steel works and industry and its associated deprivation; the new proliferating wind farms which feel rather Don Quixote-like 'tilting at windmills', with Sellafield looming in the horizon behind; the changing times that someone like Pat has seen living here all her life; the transience of the traveller site and scrow below us in a scrubby area of redundant dock; the migration of the cowslips - Pat said, 'they used to be over there, now they are here and fewer, they might move again, flourish here, or die out, who knows?'

It's a change of scene for me and although a beautiful day it certainly has the feel of an area that falls within the 10% of the most deprived areas of England which feels incongruous  against the backdrop of the natural splendour of the sea views in one direction and the grandeur of the Lakeland fells in the other.