shewhomust | Getting out more

I feel as if I'm emerging from hibernation. We've been taking every excuse to stay home, keep warm, not go out. Then this week we've had a couple of long-awaited outings, and I've had a great time and feel ready to emerge from my burrow into the sunlight. Could this be the first sign of spring?

Chris Stout at the Lit & Phil

Perhaps what set me thinking about spring is that we were at the Lit & Phil on Thursday evening for the launch of Red Bones, the third in Ann Cleeves' quartet of crime novels set in Shetland. With each book, we visit a new part of Shetland, and a new season, and Red Bones is the spring novel. Ann's launches are always fun. She's actually a very good reader of her own work - she's sharply (not to say wickedly) observant, and reads with a dry humour which really brings this out - but she doesn't enjoy reading, and does what she can to avoid it. Which would be disappointing, if she didn't find such good alternatives. So, as well as reading from various members of Ann's family, we had wonderful fiddle music from Shetland fiddler Chris Stout ("I was at his parents' wedding," says Ann), who played, and praised the acoustics of the Library, and told trowie stories, and was all for pushing back the chairs and having a few dances...

As if that weren't enough excitement for one week, we have spent the weekend with friends near Carlisle. A group of people who have known each other since university each prepared a course of the dinner, and converged on the home of the chosen victim. I made the casserole, and I admit that if I'd known that

durham_rambler was going to choose quite such a scenic route to drive there, with quite so many ups and downs and twists and turns and cattle grids, I might not have filled the pot quite so full! But it was a beautiful drive: there are so many lovely roads across the North Pennines, and we chose to go the long way round and make a day of it. So we drove through Swaledale over into Wensleydale, stopping for lunch at the Tan Hill Inn, the highest pub in - well, I know it as the highest pub in England, but I see that their web site says, in Britain; right on the Pennine Way, exposed, stone built, bustling and busy. Then down to Sedbergh, which persists in attempting to market itself as a "book town". It does have several bookshops (of which my favourite, and the one we visited yesterday, is Westwood Books, but it's nowhere near critical mass yet. Then on to Kendal, and then, as the sunset stained the clouds rose pink over Borrowdale, north to Carlisle.

The evening lived up to the pleasure of the journey. Despite being put together from the contributions of a group of cooks who had not consulted each other at all, the meal worked perfectly; the wine flowed like water, and the conversation flowed even faster. The only flaw was that the neighbour who had so generously volunteered to put up some of the overflow of guest retired early, feeling unwell, so we enjoyed her hospitality having barely met her. In the morning we reassembled for breakfast, and (most of us) for a Sunday morning walk around Talkin Tarn, a broad easy path around the tarn, with shifting views of the surrounding hills and plenty of waterfowl for entertainment.

Then it was time for the trip home, and another scenic route through the North Pennines - starting with an unscheduled tour back round the tarn, as a false turn took us on a spectacular loop of minor road back the way we had come but at a higher level. At the second attempt we found our road, and came by the back roads (including one precipitate descent) into Tynedale, and so, via Brocksbushes Farm Shop and the Roman road, home.