Thrang Burial Ground

It’s been a day for giving ourselves permission to rest and relax after all the busyness of the weekend. 

The Traveller left our lodge this morning just after 6.00 am to go home, but his journey took him via Heathrow, where he dropped off two wedding guests, one who was flying back to Australia and one to the US, and then via Winchester, where he left our eldest granddaughter with her mother. He finally arrived back at our home 8½ hours later, having clocked up clocked up 444 miles.  What a star he is. 

Smithers and I walked up the road to Brambles café in Chapel Stile for lunch and then while Smithers returned to our lodge I walked on a short way to try and find the Langdale cemetery, which I had recently seen on Google maps. In all the years we have been coming here we’ve never seen it, and didn’t know it existed, despite having walked in the area many times. I used my iPhone’s location system to work out where it was, and discovered that it was through an unmarked gate and down a path which looks as though it leads to a farm. I then saw some ornamental gates at the end of the path, and knew I had found it.

Naturally, as we’d gone out for lunch, I had just brought one camera with me, and not my two gun holster. The 70-200 lens I had was totally unsuitable for a landscape shot so I had to make do with using my iPhone to take a shot of the scene, and then a shot of a particular gravestone that I wanted to see.

It’s the grave of the internationally famous sculptor, the late Josefina de Vasconcellos, who lived in Little Langdale for most of her long life. She has works on display in St. Paul’s Cathedral, Liverpool, Coventry and Gloucester cathedrals, and also locally at Cartmel Priory and in Ambleside, Keswick and Kendal. I’ve added a photo of her grave in extras.