12-07-2025
A summer sunrise on Helvellyn
From The Times, July 12, 1925
The church clock struck one as we gently closed the door behind us and stepped out into dim deep-blue stillness, wondering whether enough light would be vouchsafed to make our way clear. A corncrake called at the bridge, but the beck was silent, and the quiet brooding over the dale was so complete that it gave us a curious sense of possession. The night was ours.
No one seemed to be sharing the soft breeze that gently swept over the fields standing high in hay-grass, or the scents it brought. As we passed up the rough path with Tongue Ghyll murmuring below us, though a black wall of fell rose ahead we had the feeling we were walking towards the light. Now and again we seemed to be moving through pockets of warmer air, charged with scented fern and the indescribable sweetness that rises when dew has fallen on sun-baked sheep-nibbled turf. We crossed the beck that divides Seat Sandal from the Tongue, the stepping stones shining whitely, and began to climb up the long grassy slope. Two green glow-worm lights, almost startling in their beauty, shone at our feet, then another, and another, till we realized the ground beyond the beck on our left was dotted with scores of these tiny, stedfastly-glowing lamps.
We crossed the rocky knoll that for so long had loomed up before us, dropped down to the hollow, and climbed up to the Hause Gap. Every moment the light increased, and even gave us sight of the saxifrages starring the bog near the rock where the Wordsworth brothers had their memorable parting.
There was a hint of coming beauty in the roseate glow that was stealing over the sky to north-east. The top of Helvellyn, now only a few hundred yards distant, looked miles away. The black, jagged outline of Striding Edge appeared and disappeared. We waited, and there was a brilliant radiance behind a bank of clouds: then arrows of flaming rose, molten edges, dim forms and gleams, veiled pinnacles of fire, the whole panoply of world mystery shimmering as the great giant came forth from the uttermost part of the heaven. Imperceptibly colour came all round us. An hour later, just as we ended our walk, the sun appeared above the eastern rampart of fell and flooded the dale with glory.
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