[W]e have a generous friend who owns a cosy house in Melmerby in the Eden Valley – just under Cross Fell in the North Pennines.
The village is notable in that, apart from being lovely, it has the only named wind in the UK – the Helm. The Helm is a north easterly that in the right conditions barrels down the fell, scouring the hillside before hitting the valley floor and the village below and rolling into a standing wave of cloud creating a phenomenon called the Helm Bar. The Helm is the stuff of legend, said to blow with the roar of a freight train for days at a time. There are stories of it blowing sheep off the hillside.
I’d treated these stories with some scepticism – it’s hard to imagine a wind so strong that it would blow away sheep. Growing up in West Yorkshire then living in both the Lake District and North Wales, and even raising a sheep or two myself, I have a healthy respect for their capacity to survive extremes of weather. I’d often seen them hunkered down, arse to the wind and covered in snow, as apparently immovable as the rocks around them. The idea of a wind so strong it could blow them over seemed farfetched. Needless to say I had also carefully harboured a wish to be at the house while the Helm wind blew.
We were due to spend some time at the house at about the same time that the ‘Beast from the ‘East’ hit the UK. This gift from Russia was causing disruption around the country and the continent with its deep snow, extreme cold and high winds. In fact we just managed to get to Melmerby before it hit, thanks to snow tyres and Mark’s skilful driving. Ritual dictated that we stopped at Cranston’s in Penrith on the way – knowing that power cuts were likely, as well as the usual Cumberland sausage we bought food that did not need to be cooked, as well as plenty of fuel for the stove.
Once we’d arrived the weather set in with true ferocity, and in the late afternoon we went out with excitement to walk the nearby track that led to the fell, expecting wind and snow but wholly unprepared for the reality. It was impossible even to turn in the direction of the fell, such was the cold and the brutality of the shards of snow blown into our unprotected faces. We resorted to struggling along the lane into the village which even though sheltered was hard enough – there was more snow than I’ve ever seen. Houses were plastered with it, drifts covered doors, icicles a meter long hung from gutters, the stream was immobile, frozen – and the wind! Beyond exhilarating, the Helm was truly terrifying, the force justifying warnings of danger to life, perfectly capable of blowing an unwary adult off their feet in the village never mind sheep higher up the fell.
All through the night the freight train roared overhead, making sleep difficult and setting each door in the house clicking and banging as it found every crack and blasted through. In the morning the power had been cut, and along with it most of the trappings of modern life – central heating, hot water, TV, radio, internet, mobile phone coverage. We sat huddled around the stove, boiling water, heating soup and cooking flat bread on its top, and reading by the light reflecting off the snow outside. In the afternoon when the weather was clearer though no more settled we ventured out again to find a new hazard – glassed ice hidden under compacted snow. When the brutal gusts of wind hit, boots simply could not find grip.
To me crampons are imbued with a super power, turning an ordinary flat footed human into a clawed force of nature, like a cat, capable of climbing waterfalls. Chronic fatigue means I’m no longer able to get into the mountains and it’s rare that there are conditions that warrant crampons from the door, but this was one of them. We set out up the lane, able now to turn our faces to the fell.
Sheep had been blown off the fell side – not literally but the dreadful conditions on the upper slopes had forced even those hardy mountaineers to find shelter between the high walls of the lane where they pawed for grass in the lighter snow. We passed one woolly corpse, stiff and cold, snow clotting its fleece. The wind had carved snow into corridors, curves and blades and, blowing through each hole and crack, had created Swiss cheese from drifts against dry stone walls. In places the metalled track was shiny with ice, snow scoured off and then abandoned elsewhere in drifts feet high. The fell ahead of us was capped with dense grey cloud, its sides mottled; piebald with wind scoured grass and deep drifted gullies. Once a little way above the village we turned.
And there was the Helm Bar. A great, fat roll of boiling grey, turning and turning in the widening gyre while the Helm itself loosed anarchy beneath. The lenticular clouds above and scalloped edge seemed incongruous, too delicate for the sheer size and force of it. It was magnificent, awesome, and touching the cap of cloud on the fell, created a storm eye of blue sky and sunlight that we stood in, speechless.
We watched until we became too cold and then returned to the cosy house. When the power came back on I had a familiar sense of disappointment. In a comfortable middle class home with no imperatives like work or family, once the shock of the minor, first world, temporary implications of life without electricity have worn off there is romance, novelty, fun. Normal life is on hold, there are new and more primitive challenges to be faced and their associated achievements and satisfactions – staying warm, preparing food, entertainment. Help is never too far away so we can play at privation. With electricity normal service is resumed, and with it comes modern life and all its pressures and imperatives and tedious convenience.
A number of people from the village checked that we visitors were OK. Farmers cleared roads and lanes, people stopped to talk – extreme weather brings about camaraderie and this was extreme. Those who had lived for 20 or 30 years in the village said that while they had seen deep snow, and had experienced the Helm, they had not had both together before. They talked of the Helm with pride and respect – ‘it’s the only named wind in the UK you know’, and now I understood why. I felt privileged to have been part of it.
Once warm and snug and under the electric lights, drinking tea, safe, we talked about the people out there working; mending cables, rescuing those stranded and helping the vulnerable. We talked about how when communities are strong – as in Melmerby it seems – people speak to their neighbours and know where the old and vulnerable live and go to help – and how so many are left, in this kind of weather, whether homed or homeless, without support because no one knows and no one cares. And we talked about the refugees and asylum seekers, the displaced and dispossessed around the world, who through various, complex circumstances do not have warm homes, close relationships, or money to stock up on food and fuel, and the part our comfortable western lives play in their discomfort. And those who don’t have generous friends who call and check that everything is ok, who are happy to share their own good fortune.
