June recipe: Lentil rissoles with garlic and herb sauce

These crisp lentil rissoles are easy to make, and the cold yoghurt and herb sauce is refreshing on a hot day.

You can vary the herbs and the amount of garlic in the sauce according to taste and availability. The rissoles go very well with rice and a green salad.

This quantity should serve two.

Lentil rissoles with garlic and herb sauce

For the rissoles:
4 oz (approx 100 g) split red lentils
8 fl oz (approx 200 ml) water
Half a small onion
1 teaspoon (1 x 5 ml spoon) ground coriander
0.5 teaspoon (1 x 2.5 ml spoon) ground cumin
Approximately 2 teaspoons (2 x 5 ml spoons plain flour for coating

For the sauce:
Approximately 5 fl oz (approx 140 ml) natural yoghurt
Approximately 2 Tablespoons (2 x 15 ml spoons) fresh herbs (oregano, mint, sage, basil, chives, or any mixture of your choice)
1 large clove garlic

To make the rissoles:
Put the lentils in a small saucepan with the water, bring to the boil, and simmer over a very low heat for 15-20 minutes until the lentils have absorbed all the water and formed a soft mass. Stir from time to time to stop the lentils sticking to the pan.

Chop the onion. Fry in cooking oil over a medium heat for a few minutes until soft and beginning to colour.

Stir the onion and spices into the cooked lentils and season with salt and pepper.

Divide the lentil mixture into four, and form between your hands into four roughly circular rissoles about 1 cm thick. Coat each rissole in the plain flour.

Fry the rissoles in cooking oil over a medium heat for 1-2 minutes. Turn the rissoles and fry the other side for 1-2 minutes. Lower the heat and continue to fry for another 3-5 minutes each side, turning once more, until the rissoles are golden brown.

To make the sauce:
Chop the herbs. Crush the garlic. Mix both into the yoghurt

Spoon the sauce over the rissoles to serve. Serve with rice or new potatoes and a green salad.

Post-Roman York: cremation cemeteries

York was an important military, ecclesiastical and political centre in Late Roman Britain. In the early seventh century it was under royal control of the Anglian (‘Anglo-Saxon’) kings of Deira, and later in the seventh century it developed into a major ecclesiastical centre and the seat of an archbishopric, a status it holds to this day.

In between, the historical record is a blank. There are no definite references to York between the fourth century and the seventh century, although there are one or two snippets whose meaning is less than clear (see earlier post on Post-Roman York: the documentary evidence) for a summary of the documentary records). Evidence from archaeology provides some clues that may help to fill in the gap. I discussed the headquarters building in an earlier post. This post discusses the Anglian cremation cemeteries at The Mount and Heworth in post-Roman York

Evidence

The Mount
The area around the modern streets of The Mount and Driffield Terrace, York, was the site of an important Roman cemetery.

Map link here
The arrow shows the location of The Mount. The scale is currently set to show the location of the cemetery in relation to the rest of the city. Zoom in for a detailed view showing the street names.

Roman law forbade the burial of dead in urban areas, and The Mount Roman cemetery was outside the south-western walls of the civilian city (the colonia) on the west bank of the River Ouse. It was a large cemetery along the main Roman road approaching York from the south-west, and the part of the cemetery around the junction with modern Albemarle Road (see map link above) was on a local high point. Prestigious memorials and monuments lined the main road, such as the tombstone of the wealthy lady Julia Velva, now in the Yorkshire Museum. Less elaborate Roman burials have been found in the lower-lying area around Trentholme Drive near Knavesmire Road (see map link above), suggesting that wealthy individuals had monuments in the prominent location on the high ground and that more ordinary people were buried in the less prestigious area lower down the hill (Ottaway 2004, p.122). A group of burials in coffins recently excavated at Driffield Terrace (see map link above) contained an unusually high proportion of decapitated adult males, leading to speculation that they may represent gladiators despatched in the arena after losing fights (Hunter-Mann 2006). Burials from the Roman cemetery have been dated to the mid-second century to the early fourth century (Ottaway 2004, p 121).

In the mid-nineteenth century, an unknown number of Anglian cremation urns were found during building work on the north-east side of Dalton Terrace (see map link above) (Tweddle 1999, p 169-170). Six survive, and fragments of a further eight were found in the fill of a nineteenth-century culvert excavated in the 1950s in the same area. A pair of iron shears, a fragment of bone comb and a coin of the Empress Julia Domna (wife of the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus, who died at York in 211) survive from one of the urns. Another bone comb fragment was found with the other urn fragments in the 1950s excavation. The urns are approximately dated to the late fifth to sixth century (Tweddle 1999, p 170), and indicate an Anglian (‘Anglo-Saxon’) cremation cemetery either in the same area as or adjoining the earlier Roman cemetery (Tweddle 1999, p 167, 170).

Heworth
Another Anglian cremation cemetery of broadly similar date was identified during railway construction work in the late nineteenth century on the west side of Dodsworth Avenue, north-east of the Roman military fortress site at York.

Map link here
The arrow shows the location of Dodsworth Avenue. The scale is currently set to show the location of the cemetery in relation to the rest of the city. Zoom in for a detailed view showing the street names.

About 80 to 90 urns were identified, of which 40 were taken to the Yorkshire Museum, apparently laid out in rows about two feet apart and aligned at right-angles to the ridge and furrow of a ploughed surface (Tweddle 1999, p 235). More had been destroyed before the Yorkshire Museum was notified. Several urns contained glass beads fused by heat , another contained some gaming pieces, and one contained a pair of copper-alloy tweezers. A further ten urns were discovered in a second excavation in 1880. The urns are dated to the late fifth and sixth centuries (Tweddle 1999, p 235). Later excavations in 1965 confirmed that the whole cemetery appeared to have been destroyed in the construction work (Tweddle 1999, p 170).

A Roman cemetery is known nearby, but it was located further south along Dodsworth Avenue near the junction with Heworth Green, which follows the line of the Roman road running north-east towards Malton (Tweddle 1999, p 170). There is nothing to show whether the Anglian cemetery was positioned in relation to the earlier Roman cemetery. However, an enigmatic note from 1879 mentions ‘a Saxon urn found at the side of the tumulus in the garden at Heworth’ and a drawing from 1920 shows a mound near the bend in the River Foss between the Roman and Anglian cemetery sites at Heworth (Tweddle 1999, p 173-5) (roughly at the site of St John’s Walk in the map link above). This may indicate a second Anglian cemetery in the area.

Interpretation

Clearly, the cremation burials at The Mount and Heworth indicate the presence of a group of people who liked to cremate their dead and bury the ashes, sometimes with grave goods, in pottery urns of ‘Anglo-Saxon’ design. The cremations are dated approximately to the late fifth and sixth century. Unfortunately, as the cemeteries were identified during nineteenth-century building work and the original number of burials is not known, it is not possible to estimate the size of the associated population.

It seems reasonable to infer that the people who buried their dead in the cremation cemeteries lived somewhere nearby. This may have been within the area of the Roman city or in the surrounding countryside, or both.

The cremation cemetery at The Mount was either adjoining the Roman cemetery or on part of the same site, and that at Heworth was only a few hundred yards from a Roman cemetery. This could indicate some form of continuity of use. It is interesting that similar continuity of use has been recorded at the Roman fort of Burgh Castle in Norfolk, where the Roman military cemetery outside the fort was also the site of an early ‘Anglo-Saxon’ cremation cemetery (discussed in my earlier post Burgh Castle: Cnobheresburg?).

Such continuity could be official, if there was a governing authority in fifth- and sixth-century York that designated and enforced certain sites as recognised places of burial.

It could be religious or spiritual, if an established burial ground was recognised as sacred in some way and therefore suitable as a last resting place, or if an established burial ground was considered likely to be haunted by spirits and therefore a place unsuitable for occupation or use by the living.

It could reflect a desire for some sort of connection with previous inhabitants, perhaps claiming inheritance or a shared heritage. This could even reflect a tradition (real or imagined) of direct familial descent. The Roman Army recruited Germanic soldiers and traded goods and supplies across the North Sea. It is possible that families established by Germanic soldiers or traders who settled in or near York may have retained sufficient of their Germanic heritage to choose to use a Germanic burial rite, perhaps to signal a change of status, identity or religion, for a burial in an established Roman cemetery where previous members of the family had been interred. Alternatively, if the legend of Vortigern recruiting Hengest and Horsa as mercenary soldiers reflects a genuine situation in which a post-Roman political authority in Britain recruited Germanic mercenaries, perhaps from families or areas with a tradition of supplying recruits to the Late Roman Army, some may have had ancestors (real or imagined) who had previously served in the Roman Army and been buried in the Roman cemetery at York. The coin of Julia Domna, wife of Septimius Severus, in one of the cremation urns from The Mount may represent such a perceived Roman heritage (“We came over with Emperor Severus, you know”). It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that it was a family heirloom, handed down through generations from an ancestor who really had served in Severus’ army during his campaign in Caledonia until it was interred, perhaps with the last of the line on the family burial plot. I need hardly add that this is speculation.

It could reflect practical convenience. The memorials, tombstones, sarcophagi and mausolea of the Roman cemetery would still have been visible in the fifth and sixth centuries. It is possible that they made the area impractical for cultivation and therefore suitable for use as a burial ground by default, even if the people concerned felt no connection with the people buried there during Roman times.

It could reflect nothing more than geography (the one thing about history that never changes, as the saying goes). The Mount is on high ground next to a major routeway, and therefore a good place to locate a prominent grave.

Conclusion

The cremation cemeteries at The Mount and Heworth indicate the presence of a population somewhere in the vicinity of York in the fifth and sixth centuries who chose to cremate their dead and bury the ashes, sometimes with grave goods, in ‘Anglo-Saxon’ pottery urns in or near Roman cemeteries. Since over a hundred urns have been recorded, it seems likely that the population using this funeral rite was substantial rather than tiny, but its size and longevity cannot be determined. It also seems likely that the population using the cemeteries lived in or near York, but whether they lived within the Roman settlement or in the surrounding countryside, or a mixture of both, is unknown.

The apparent mixture of a characteristically pagan Anglian funeral rite (cremation and burial of the ashes with grave goods) in use at Roman locations (established Roman cemeteries) is interesting. As noted above, it is not unique as a similar combination occurs at the Roman military site of Burgh Castle Roman Fort (and those are just two that I happen to know about, not an exhaustive sample). The significance of this is unknown, and largely open to speculation. It could indicate some sort of mixed culture with Anglian and Roman elements, a new culture trying to claim a link with the past, pure coincidence reflecting geography or practical land use, or any number of other variations. As so often in this period, many interpretations are possible.

References
Hunter-Mann, K. Romans lose their heads: an unusual cemetery at The Mount, York. York Archaeological Trust, 2006, Archaeology of York Web Series No. 6, available online
Ottaway P. Roman York. Tempus, 2004. ISBN 0-7524-2916-7.
Tweddle D, Moulden J, Logan E. Anglian York: a survey of the evidence. Council for British Archaeology/York Archaeological Trust, 1999. ISBN 1-902771-06-0.

Map links
York

Helvellyn and Grisedale

Helvellyn is one of the four Lake District fells standing over 3000 feet above sea level. Helvellyn itself is the highest point on a long mountain ridge that runs almost due north-south in the centre of the Lake District in Cumbria. The ridge extends for around 10 kilometres (6 miles) from Clough Head in the north to Dollywaggon Pike in the south, separating the valleys holding the lakes of Thirlmere and Ullswater.

Map link here
You can zoom in to see more detail and move around using the arrow keys.

Its central position means the views from the ridge on a clear day encompass the Pennines to the east, Morecambe Bay to the south, the Solway Firth and the hill of Criffel in Scotland to the north, and the Scafell mountain range to the west. The full traverse of the Helvellyn range from north to south – like walking the ridge-pole on the roof of Cumbria – is a magnificent walk for a long day.

Many shorter routes to Helvellyn summit and/or other parts of the range can be done from either the west (Thirlmere) side or the east (Ullswater) side of the ridge. The most famous is to climb Striding Edge from Glenridding in the east, an airy arete left by two glaciers in the corries on either side eating back towards each other during the last Ice Age. However, Striding Edge is quite a short route, and lands you directly on Helvellyn summit without seeing much of the rest of the ridge. My favourite route to Helvellyn is a longer route, starting from Patterdale or Glenridding and following the quiet valley of Grisedale to Grisedale Tarn, then climbing onto the southern end of the ridge at Dollywaggon Pike and following the ridge over Nethermost Pike to Helvellyn summit, with splendid views of Striding Edge close at hand and most of the rest of Cumbria in the distance.

Map link here
The map is centred on Grisedale; if you use the arrows to move south and west you can follow the valley to Grisedale Tarn and then north onto Dollywaggon Pike, Nethermost Pike and then Helvellyn.
Click on the photographs to enlarge.


View up Grisedale. The grey rocky peaks in the background (about 3 miles away) are Dollywaggon Pike and Nethermost Pike. ‘Grisedale’ is a Norse name meaning ‘valley of the pigs’. Presumably the valley was suitable for raising pigs, perhaps in woodland. The origin of the name ‘Dollywaggon Pike’ is not known – ‘Pike’ is a local Cumbrian word meaning a rocky or pointed peak, but ‘Dollywaggon’ is open to speculation.

The route goes up Grisedale to the head of the valley at Grisedale Tarn, tucked away in a hollow between the mountains of Dollywaggon Pike, Fairfield and Seat Sandal. From the tarn, an old pack-horse track zig-zags up the green shoulder of Dollywaggon Pike.

Looking down on Grisedale Tarn from the path up Dollywaggon Pike.

Legend has it that King Dunmail of Cumbria, after being defeated in battle at the Pass of Dunmail Raise just to the west, threw his crown into Grisedale Tarn as he fled. Or that the mortally wounded king gave the crown to a loyal retainer, who threw it into the tarn for him. There was at least one historical king Dunmail associated with Cumbria in the middle of the tenth century (see Diane McIlmoyle’s article on King Dunmail and the associated legends), who may be connected with, or the same individual as, King Dyfnwal of Strathclyde (see Tim Clarkson’s post on Dyfnwal of Strathclyde). So there may be a grain of truth in the stories.

From the summit of Dollywaggon Pike, a magnificent view opens up back down Grisedale, with a glimpse of Ullswater and the Pennine range spread out along the eastern horizon. The Pennines are about 25 miles away.

View down Grisedale from Dollywaggon Pike

From here, it’s a matter of following the ridge north. At the next summit, Nethermost Pike, the rocky arete of Striding Edge comes into view, jutting out from the east face of Helvellyn.

Striding Edge from Nethermost Pike


Close-up of Striding Edge, with a party of walkers traversing the arete.

From Helvellyn, most of Ullswater is visible, still with the Pennines in the distance

View east to Ullswater and the Pennines from Helvellyn

To the north, the Solway Firth is just visible in the distance (zoom in), and the distant hills on the far horizon are in Scotland – around 45-50 miles away.


View north to Skiddaw and Bassenthwaite Lake, with the Solway Firth and Scotland in the distance

The route continues north along the ridge to Sticks Pass, where an old pack-horse route crosses the range and provides a relatively easy descent back to Glenridding. The grey patches in the middle distance are old spoil heaps from lead mining.


Track descending from Sticks Pass to Glenridding

The track was built to carry lead ore by pack horse from the mine at Greenside above Glenridding to the smelter at Keswick. Greenside Mine closed in the 1960s, and the old mine buildings are now a youth hostel and bunkhouse.


Birds’-eye view of Greenside Mine from the path to Sticks Pass.

From Greenside Mine a track and then a road lead back to Glenridding.

The Prow Beast, by Robert Low. Book review

Fourth in the Oathsworn series, following The Whale Road (reviewed here earlier), The Wolf Sea (reviewed here earlier) and The White Raven (reviewed here earlier), The Prow Beast is set in Scandinavia and what is now Poland in 975-976. Olaf Tryggvason (Crowbone), later King of Norway, Queen Sigrith of Sweden and Styrbjorn, nephew of King Erik of Sweden, are historical (or at least, saga) figures. All the main characters are fictional.

After their quest for the cursed treasure of Attila’s tomb (recounted in the first three books, particularly The Whale Road and The White Raven), Orm and the Oathsworn have achieved fame across the Norse world. Orm has married and is now a man of consequence, presiding over his jarl’s hall and lands at Hestreng in newly unified Sweden. Orm is entrusted with fostering Koll, the young son of Jarl Brand, and also with escorting Queen Sigrith, wife of King Erik the Victorious of Sweden, home to Uppsala. But although fame is the dream of every Norse warrior, it is the gift of Odin and carries a characteristically bitter price. When old enemies come to Hestreng with fire and sword, Orm and the Oathsworn must take ship again, following the ‘prow beast’ to revenge, violence and heartbreak.

Like its three predecessors, The Prow Beast is a larger-than-life tale, “a saga to be told around the fire against the closing dark”, as the author puts it. Like the others, it captures some of the grim grandeur of the Norse sagas (not an easy feat), with men who recognise their harsh fate and go out to meet it with courage and black humour. The series has been getting steadily darker in tone since the first book, no doubt reflecting Orm’s development from youth to battle-hardened jarl, and The Prow Beast is darker yet. The Oathsworn have always been hard and ruthless men; in The Prow Beast their savagery reaches a new depth. Orm himself has become a doom-laden, brooding figure, reminiscent of the fearsome Einar the Black in The Whale Road (and reminding me of Skarp-Hedin as his fate closes around him in Njal’s Saga). There is a tremendous sense of authenticity about the pagan Norse culture, not just the gods and rituals but also the world-view of inescapable fate and ‘fair fame’, that gives the Oathsworn series a feeling of depth underlying the adventures. The writing style reinforces this, with some of the laconic style of the sagas and liberally sprinkled with vivid imagery reminiscent of Norse kennings.

Characterisation is as vivid as ever, and readers will be pleased to see the return of old friends from the previous books, such as Finn Horsehead from Skane who fears nothing (in The Prow Beast the reader finds out why), giant Botolf who can be alternately genial and ferocious, Red Njal with his granny’s endless store of proverbial wisdom (I can’t help thinking that Red Njal’s granny could have written most of the Havamal [‘Sayings of the High One’]), and young Olaf Crowbone with his uncanny insights and fund of sharp stories. Not everyone will make it to the end (though any reader familiar with the previous three books will already have guessed this). The ending itself has a satisfying bleakness that fits well with what has gone before. Whether this really is the end or whether there is scope for further adventures for the remaining Oathsworn is hard to tell – certainly Olaf Crowbone’s story has much further to run to catch up with his historical career.

A useful map at the front helps readers unfamiliar with the geography of the Baltic and eastern Europe to follow the Oathsworn’s journey, and a historical note at the back sets out some of the underlying history. I have a nagging feeling that I have read something very similar to the episode of Queen Sigrith and Botolf somewhere before, so maybe that also occurs in one of the sagas, although it isn’t explicitly identified as such in the historical note.

Dark, gripping adventure with a strong sense of pagan Norse culture, following the adventures of a Norse warrior band in the tenth century.

May recipe: Victoria sandwich cake

This classic sponge cake is simple to make and ideal for sunny spring days. You can fill it with any jam of your choice, together with whipped cream or buttercream if liked. This variant uses jam and vanilla buttercream.

Victoria sandwich cake

For the sponge cake:
4 oz (approx 100 g) butter
4 oz (approx 100 g) light brown soft sugar
2 eggs
4 oz (approx 100 g) self-raising flour

For the vanilla buttercream:
1.5 oz (approx 40 g) butter
3 oz (approx 80 g) icing sugar
1 teaspoon (1 x 5 ml spoon) vanilla essence


To make the sponge cakes:
Grease two sandwich cake tins about 7” (approx 18 cm) diameter and line with greaseproof paper.
Cream the butter and sugar for the sponge cake until light and fluffy.
Beat in the eggs.
Stir in the self-raising flour and mix until smooth.
Divide the mixture between the two sandwich cake tins and level the surface.
Bake at about 180 C for about 20 minutes. The cakes are done when they are light golden brown, shrinking away from the sides of the tins, and spring back when pressed lightly with a finger.
Turn out and cool on a wire rack.

To make the buttercream:
Sieve the icing sugar into a mixing bowl.
Cream the icing sugar and butter together until smooth.
Beat in the vanilla essence.

To assemble the cake:
Spread one sponge cake with the vanilla buttercream.
Spread the other with 3-4 large spoonfuls of jam of your choice.
Sandwich the cakes together with the buttercream and jam as filling.
Serve cut in slices. I expect to get about 12 slices out of this quantity, but it depends how big a slice you like.

The finished cake will keep in an airtight tin for about a week. The plain sponge cakes can be frozen; when you want to use them, thaw them out and sandwich together with jam and/or buttercream as above. I’ve never tried freezing the finished cake.

Dissolution, by CJ Sansom. Book review

Pan, 2007. ISBN 978-0-330-45079-9. 443 pages.

Dissolution is a murder mystery set in London and the fictional monastery of Scarnsea on the south coast of England in 1537-1538, against the background of the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII. Thomas Cromwell is an important secondary character, and historical figures including Anne Boleyn and her supposed lover Mark Smeaton are important in the background. All the main characters are fictional.

Matthew Shardlake is a lawyer who occasionally undertakes commissions for Thomas Cromwell, the powerful and ruthless chief minister of Henry VIII. A keen reformer, Shardlake believes the monasteries are corrupt and supports Cromwell’s attempts to force the large monasteries into ‘voluntary’ surrender. When one of Cromwell’s commissioners, a brutal thug called Robin Singleton, is violently murdered while investigating the monastery of Scarnsea on the Sussex coast, Cromwell sends Shardlake to investigate. Snowbound in the isolated monastery, Shardlake finds that nothing is what it seems, and the threads of murder extend far beyond the monastery to encompass some of the highest in the land.

Dissolution is both a clever murder mystery and a vivid portrayal of the upheavals of the English Reformation. Inevitably, a murder set in an enclosed monastery is going to evoke The Name of the Rose – and unless I am much mistaken there’s a sly Name of the Rose joke in the text – but Dissolution is much more of a classic whodunit. Clues and red herrings abound to keep the reader guessing, and the solution is not obvious in advance, or at least it was not to me.

As well as the mystery puzzle, the sequence of subsequent events combine to produce a steadily building sense of menace, echoed by Shardlake’s increasing disquiet about the worth of the cause he is serving. This for me was one of the best features of the novel, its strong period sense. The upheavals in English society resulting from Henry VIII’s break with Rome and his marital entanglements are more than just a dramatic background, they are intrinsic to solving the mystery. Furthermore, the intellectual and social background is more than just atmosphere. Conflicts arise between the reformers’ view of the Catholic church as corrupt and the role of the Church as an international institution, a custodian of knowledge, a provider of education, a route of social mobility for intelligent men from modest backgrounds, and a social institution providing a degree of help for the destitute. Class conflicts also play a part, as far-reaching changes in the social order resulting in part from the Reformation bring a new type of opportunist to the fore. The overall tone is dark, derived not just from the violent events inherent in a murder mystery but also from a pervasive sense of fear and insecurity. If Cromwell and the King are ruthless enough and powerful enough to bring down the monasteries, with hundreds of years of accumulated tradition and wealth behind them, what hope for anyone?

Shardlake is a fully realised character, a very human mix of good and bad, attractive and unattractive qualities. He is intelligent and humane, a rational thinker, a follower of Erasmus and a keen reformer, believing that religious reform will improve the human condition. Yet he also unquestioningly accepts the class distinctions of his time and defends the resulting injustices, he is quick to take offence at any real or imagined reference to his disability (Shardlake has a hunchback), and it seems his zeal for reforming the monasteries may owe something to unpleasant childhood experiences in a cathedral school as well as to Erasmus’ ideals. Nevertheless, Shardlake is driven mainly by a search for truth and justice, and his disillusion as he is forced to recognise that many ‘reformers’ are more concerned with ego, greed, vanity and abuse of power, is both convincing and poignant. The other characters are clearly portrayed as individuals, though none has the depth of Shardlake. I will be interested to see how (if?) Shardlake and his principles manage to navigate the rest of Henry VIII’s increasingly tyrannical reign as it unfolds.

The novel is narrated throughout in first person by Shardlake, in straightforward modern prose (with a refreshing absence of expletives). It has something of a lawyer’s measured tones, and the pace is best described as stately. The tale is more of an intellectual puzzle against a menacing background than an action-packed thriller, and indeed Shardlake’s disability rather limits his opportunity to play the action hero (though I have to admire the author’s nerve for the Quasimodo scene!).

A map at the front of the book explains the layout of the monastery at Scarnsea, and will be helpful for readers who like to work out how the buildings connect to each other and who could have got to where. The senior monks are also listed at the front of the book, which may help readers keep track of the names as they are introduced, although I found I did not need to refer to it. A short and helpful Historical Note at the back summarises some of the underlying history.

Intelligent, dark murder mystery set against the well-realised historical background of Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries.

Red deer stags

Never let anyone tell you a mountain is ‘dull’ or ‘boring’. The big south-east corrie of Slioch may not be the most photogenic of areas, being short on dramatic crags and long on tussocks and bog. But as we were crossing the corrie on the way down from Slioch and Sgurr an Tuill Bhan on an early evening in spring, a red deer stag trotted up over the lip of the corrie...

... soon followed by a friend...

They took a good look at us ...

... then evidently decided we were harmless, and settled down in a sheltered hollow among the rocks and heather to chew cud and admire the view.

I’ve seen deer come quite close like this before, having obviously seen us and presumably decided there was no need to be alarmed. Either deer know the shooting season doesn’t extend to the spring, or they can tell that certain sorts of humans are unlikely to be dangerous.