Another day, another well

St Patrick's Well, Patterdale

I would quite understand if well's were beginning to get that stalked feeling ...
Today's was more accidental. I did manage to quell (there's a few pun's to be had in this well game ...) the well hunt in favour of lots of jobs to get done today but, what's a girl to do whilst the bread's rising? I had planned to get some fresh air at some point so decided to head down to Keldas for a quick walk (extra) and, knowing it was there, I thought I'd sneak this one in. It's not one to hang around. You are very likely to be run over (and I'm not that convinced that its healing waters would do the trick then) - it is next to the main road along Ullswater which was pretty busy today ... I think half term has started for many.

As has been the case since the onset of the holy well quest ... I have discovered allsorts of things I didn't know about places I have previously passed by without a thought. I didn't know that Patterdale is so called because it was St.Patrick's Dale or Patricdale, and that some believe he was born here (or, more likely south-west Scotland or Ravenglass), and that after being kidnapped into slavery by Irish raiders, he escaped and returned, coming ashore (or some say, shipwrecked) in the Duddon estuary and then walking to Patterdale where he baptised the locals with the water from the well. Although I've also read that he was baptised here in 432.

As I headed home I was listening to the moving story of Lucy Kalanithi who completed the book that was started by her late husband, Paul, and so I include here the poem that inspired the title ....

Caelica 83: You that seek what life is in death - Baron Brooke Fulke Greville

You that seek what life is in death,
Now find it air that once was breath.
New names unknown, old names gone:
Till time end bodies, but souls none.
            Reader! then make time, while you be,
            But steps to your eternity.

Source: Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles, edited by Martha Foote Crow