Stow Kirk.

With only a week and a half to go until my annual cycle race, I felt the need for some serious training today. The club run was fairly short and did include a few hills but I decided to do my own thing. I did bump into the mob mid afternoon as they were slogging up a hill known locally as “The Granites” while I was free-wheeling down at somewhere near thirty-five m.p.h. It must be a sign of age that I find such speeds exhilarating  and only achievable with tail winds and steep descents. In my youth, such speeds were mundane and much more easily attained.

The weather was cool and changeable throughout the day with regular stops to add or remove waterproof layers but, for a few brief moments, the sun came out to play as I went through the village of Stow.

The kirk, its full title being “Stow Saint Mary of Wedale and Heriot Church“, was opened for public prayer in 1876 and is the last in a line of “Saint Mary in Wedale” churches dating back to King Arthur who founded the first of them and endowed it with a fragment of the True Cross. He  also donated a boulder bearing a footprint of the Virgin which was unaccountably mislaid in 1818 during the construction of the A7 road from Edinburgh to Carlisle in the north-west corner of England. It would be sacrilegious of me to suggest what may (or may not) have happened to it but it just goes to show that you can’t trust anybody with anything.