Touchstone

After overdoing it a bit yesterday, I barely slept so I decided to have a change of scene and went down the road to find one of Andy Goldsworthy’s ‘Touchstone’ sheepfolds near Brough. I was thinking of walking a bit but it was horsefly central so I took the wiser option of ice cream and a look at Brough Castle (extra), which, ridiculously, I’ve never visited before and yet I’ve gazed at it over all the years that I’ve been back and forth to Norfolk. I’ve tried to locate the holy well near here but it seems long lost (the Castle didn’t have a well but had a roof rainwater catchment arrangement).

http://www.sheepfoldscumbria.co.uk/html/info/info6.htm

Extract from Wordsworth’s poem ‘Michael’

There is a comfort in the strength of love;
’Twill make a thing endurable, which else
Would overset the brain, or break the heart:
I have conversed with more than one who well
Remember the old Man, and what he was
Years after he had heard this heavy news.
His bodily frame had been from youth to age
Of an unusual strength. Among the rocks
He went, and still looked up to sun and cloud,
And listened to the wind; and, as before,
Performed all kinds of labour for his sheep,
And for the land, his small inheritance.
And to that hollow dell from time to time
Did he repair, to build the Fold of which
His flock had need. ’Tis not forgotten yet
The pity which was then in every heart
For the old Man—and ’tis believed by all
That many and many a day he thither went,
And never lifted up a single stone.