Geograph - photograph every grid square

I've learnt a new word this week: coddiwomple, a verb meaning to travel purposefully toward an as-yet-unknown destination. That just about sums me up to a tee. Ninety per cent of the time the only plan I have is to get to the next decision point. That may be 100 yards or five miles away. And when I get there it'll be a random decision to turn left or right. En route I'm apt to go off piste to chase a shaft of sunlight or to investigate a feature I've spotted on the map (I invariably run with a map in my hand even if a know the area, a map gives you so much information.)

A duvet of cloud covered the moors this morning. Even Roseberry kept its head under the covers for most of the morning. So there would be no chasing of shafts of sunlight today. I crested the escarpment in deepening gloom and it was only then I remembered this birch tree in an old quarry overlooking Lonsdale. A tree I had thought would make a good subject. Decision made, I headed into the mist across Great Ayton Moor.

Birch is a graceful, resilient tree, equally at home on the Russian steppes as growing out of a vertical sandstone rock face. Its bark has been used as water resistant paper and in tanning and birch leaf tea is an antiseptic. In mythology it is believed to drive out evil. Perhaps that's why birching was a corporal punishment. More pleasant is the tradition of birch cradles to protect new-born babies from evil spirits and if a barren cow was herded with a birch stick the calf would be fertile; and she was pregnant herded the calf would be healthy.