Read by Paula Chalker

It’s pouring rain and the soil is so soaked with humidity, that the line between lakes and meadows blurs. Dark clouds cover the top of the mountains that surround me. Welcome to the Lake District. Here high up north you feel the striking distance to Scotland. Nature simply is rougher here than in Southern England. Fern climbs up almost every hill. Paula Chalker is the owner of an art gallery called Thornthwaite Gallery in the Lake District. There’s a repetitive motive in most of the exhibited artwork - lakes, fog, mystic. Small wander this area is tied to a large number of tales. „The Crier of Claife“ is one of them and can be seen as a spinner-chiller. Paula moved from Manchester to the Lake District five years ago. She loves the how you are closer to nature here and how everything is a little slower and more quiet.

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Transcript

On stormy nights centuries ago, the ferrymen at Ferry Nab would often hear strange calls for the boat to come across the water but were too afraid to go. One night a young ferryman scoffed at their fears and rowed across. On his return whatever he had seen had terrified him so much that he couldn't speak, and the next day he died. The local people asked a monk who lived on one of the islands in Windermere to exorcise the ghost. On Christmas Day he took a bell and bible across the lake, and confined the ghost to the quarry and woods "until men should walk dryshod across the lake". To this day there are stories of walkers being followed by a hooded figure at dusk on the heights of Claife.