Story
Better Together
The Lake District is scattered with quiet fragments of unsung farming history, and this is one of my favourites. I always enjoy crossing the old packhorse bridge over Mosedale Beck on my way up to Pillar. Set just behind Row Head Farm, it feels like a threshold—setting my mind for the climb ahead and stirring thoughts of the many shepherds and Herdwick hooves that have crossed it before me. Built in the mid-1700s, it likely replaced an even earlier crossing. A bridge of fundamental importance—without it, there’s no other way to the fells.
It’s November, and I’m out with tenant farmer Andrew Naylor Lopez as he tends to his ewes ahead of the breeding season. The photograph I loved most from our day’s work shows a group of Row Head Herdwick ewes cresting the bridge—each distinct in look and character. A momentary pause, a picture taken, and they were off again.
And behind them? The lower slopes of Yewbarrow, bracken in full autumn burnished, glow across the valley floor. One of those perfect mornings—light, land, and livestock in harmony. A reminder that some places, and some scenes, are simply better together.
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A National Trust Property | Photo Permissions kindly granted | Picture © Ian Lawson