Stone walling

Given my remarkable range of abilities you will be surprised to learn that, after university, I found some trouble persuading any employer to give me a job. At one point I was placed on a job creation scheme where, among other things, I was interviewed for Woman's Hour on the BBC Radio 4 (or was it still the Home Service?). Anyway, one of the skills I learned, as well as how to hack down Rhododendrons with a billhook or build steps on Great Langdale, was how to piece together one sort of dry stone wall. Should you ever be on the road from Newby Bridge to Graythwaite the wall just by the entrance to YMCA Lakeside is mine. It was still solid the last time I passed.

Dry stone walling involves building in stone without mortar or any other materials except maybe a bit of soil. UNESCO has classified it as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Croatia, Cyprus, France, Greece, Italy, Slovenia, Spain and Switzerland feature on the UNESCO list of places that have examples. The UK, of course, doesn't get involved in World Heritage listings, ploughing our own lonely furrow and all that, but if I think of Derbyshire I think of limestone walls striding across the hills and in my birthplace, West Yorkshire, the sandstone walls are an integral part of the landscape.

This last weekend Pinoso hosted the "La X Trobada Pedra Seca" which is probably translates as something like the Tenth Dry Stone Congress. I might have been interested in attending but the publicity was generally presented in Valenciano and I got the distinct impression that outsiders were not very welcome. Over the weekend there were several pictures of dry stone constructions in the local area that I didn't know.

Now one of our party pieces for visitors who like, metaphorically, to wear Rohan trousers, is to take them to see a couple of Cucos and some the Bronze Age stone carvings on La Centenera Hill. Cucos are just stone huts, built from the local field stone, and originally used as shelter by shepherds, herders and other field workers. Nowadays, in bad weather, the farmers generally sit inside their tractor cab, with the climate control and the music on, as they eat their sandwiches but I suppose the idea is the same.

Not knowing the cucos in the press photos sent me out on a hunt and I was amazed - amazed that I'd passed them so many times without noticing them and amazed how easily I found them. As soon as I got to the first one, which I saw from the road, I could see two more. From the third I could see at least one more and so on. Some of them were much more elaborate than the igloo or hut shaped buildings I'd seen before. In fact there were cucos everywhere, I soon got very bored with cucos but that didn't stop me taking a lot of snaps which are in the October 2019 album listed towards the top of this page should you be interested.