Climbing out of the shelter of Mill Brook, we found ourselves exposed to a strengthening wind, each gust pushing harder against us than the last. Plodding up the old packhorse track for a few steps, the next blast would arrive to shove us sideways and we’d lurch off to leeward to regain our balance. Anyone watching from a distance might have assumed an overindulgence of Christmas spirit. Still, we persevered, the hard-won gain in altitude broadening our perspective of the surrounding moorland and its gunmetal lid of thick cloud. Although this also meant we could now view each pulse of silver rain, like shoals of fish, swimming up the valley towards us.
Thanks to all that weather, the object of our struggles remained obdurately out of sight. So much so that I began to wonder if we’d staggered past it, despite its location at the very top of Pike Low. I knew its reputation; the shy way Pike Low’s ancient barrow waits until the last moment to reveal itself. Then at last it was there, an even bump on the skyline now only a hundred feet away. At little more than a metre high and around 15 in circumference, this ancient tomb melts into the landscape from most angles, despite its position on top of a hill more than 1,300ft high. It is a place to see from, not to be seen.
The centre of the barrow was long ago hollowed out, so dating the site has been loosely bracketed at between 4,500 and 3,500 years ago. Yet while physical evidence is thin, you can safely assume the people who buried their ancestors here had a profound sense of place. Pike Low sits like a ship’s prow above two deep valleys. Looking south, under the lowering clouds, inky lines of moorland and hillside flowed downhill to meet in the soft valley bed of the Derwent. Even in a storm the geomantic harmony was obvious. Much has changed in the millennia since, but not this, prompting questions about our innate human feeling for landscape.
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