The High Road To The Far West
Our return from the Canny Toon on Sunday afternoon took us along the A69 - Britain's sexiest highway - and over the high moors of the Pennines a mile or so south of Hadrian's Wall. As I've blogged before, this is a wonderfully bleak, beautifully desolate landscape, a genuine Empty Quarter of Britain. On this occasion our return to the west was made unutterably spectacular by the weather. It had been an unseasonably hot, balmy day back in Cumbria and as we drove west we saw the sun directly before us, hanging low above the road, a perfect red disc, enormously pendant, gloriously ablaze through the hazy air, as if it was the sole destination and object of our travelling.
posted by Nick at 12:16 am
4 Comments:
took me a momment to get the 'britains sexiest highway' reference there. a bit slow today, or maybe just a sheltered upbringing
haven't been up around the wall for a while. just recalling traipsing back along the road that runs paralell after walking a bit too far from houseteads for the amount of daylight left one january and the most spectacular sunset over the snow covered moors, not another soul for miles
Arthur - a few years ago a famously obtuse neo-conservative US senator campaigned to have Interstate-69 renamed on the grounds that its number was 'lewd & obscene'. I still hope that a Cumbrian MP or local councillor can be found who is vain and stupid enough to be persuaded to mount a similar campaign against the A69 . . .
Yes, indeed, that's I-69 in my home state of Michigan. It is the principal occupation of college students throughout the state to get drunk and steal these interstate signs and many can be found amongst the squalor of fraternity houses statewide. There's also a booming market for exits signs to Climax, Colon and Hell -- all three towns in the state.
Hmm . . 'Last Exit To Colon' sounds like a fundamentally unpleasant sort of book about life at the bottom of the pile . .
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