"I sit with my back against a dark, coarse-grained boulder of gritstone which is patterned with lichens resembling huge rose flowers, each one pressed flat and seemingly made of grey cheese. The boulder juts from the thick heather smothering the steep mountainside of Stone Cloude. Between my boots and far below is a saucer-shaped peat bog or 'moss' a couple of miles wide. An isolated cottage grows out of a small, dry spot in the middle of the Moss, between the curves of two fast-moving streams. Smaller than a 'Monopoly' house from here, I can barely make out the thick walls of the cottage, though I know it is built of huge hand-hewn blocks of the same stone as the mountain on which I sit. Even the roof is tiled with slabs of the same stone. The cottage is half-hidden in a miniature nest of tree-scrub that is the only growth of any height on the plain of boggy heather surrounding it. Beyond the group of trees a herd of Shetland ponies graze between low clumps of bilberry, and pause to drink from the network of streams.

Through my binoculars I can see Christine, my wife, walking amongst the ponies. A timid foal has come to her and she gently scratches its neck. No bigger than our collie dog, the foal 'grooms' Christine in return, gently chewing her sleeve as if it were another pony's fur. Beyond the scene the hills ripple away in a series of rock-tipped peaks that hide secret caves and narrow gorges in their folds. Only the long, eerie calls of curlews and the occasional barking cry of a grouse break the silence.

What am I doing up here, looking down on things like this?"

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