BOOT boys 2009

2009 Outings

For the latest totals of the mileages, heights and Lakeland Fells Books Wainwrights see: Wainwrights.

Comitibus
or
Companions of the Boot

by Arthur Hugh Sidgwick

You who walked the ways with me
On hill and plain and hollow;
I ask your pardon, frank and free,
For all the things that follow.

Let me at least make one thing clear;
In these I know no name for them
These dreary talks on futile themes,
Dim visions from a dullard's dreams,
At least you take no blame for them.

You cheered my heart, made short the road,
And kept me philanthropic;
I only write this little ode
Which desecrates the topic.

You trode with me the mountain ridge
And clove the cloud wreaths over it;
I take the web of memories
We wove beneath the summer skies
And lo! The ink-spots cover it.

How vain my effort, how absurd.
Considered as a symbol.
How lame and dull the written word
To you the swift and nimble!

How alien to the walker's mind,
Earth-deep, heaven-high, unfillable,
These petty snarls and jests ill-laid
And all the profitless parade
Of pompous polysyllable !

But yet, I feel, though weak my phrase,
My rhetoric though rotten,
At least our tale of Walks and Days
Should not go unforgotten ;

At least some printed word should mark
The walker and his wanderings,
The strides which lay the miles behind
And lap the contemplative mind
In calm, unfathomed panderings.

And one rebuke I need not fear
From those of our profession,
That Walking Essays should appear
To be one long digression.

Let others take the hard high-road
And earn its gift, callosity;
For us the path that twists at will
Through wood and field, and up the hill
In easy tortuosity.

Therefore, companions of the boot,
Joint-heirs of wind and weather,
In kindness take this little fruit
Of all our walks together.

For aught it has of wit or truth
I reckon you my creditors;
Its dullness, errors, want of taste
Inconsequence, may all be placed
To my account, the editor's.

And haply as you skim the work
In skilled, eclectic hurry,
Some word may find the place where lurk
Your memories of Surrey;

Or, as you read and doze and droop
Well on the way to slumberland,
Before you some dim shapes will float,
Austere, magnificent, remote,
Their Majesties of Cumberland.

Dream but awhile and clouds will lift
To show the peaks at muster,
The driving shadows shape and shift
Before the hill-wind's bluster.

Below far down the earth lies spread
With all its care and fretfulness,
But here the crumpled soul unfolds,
And every rock-strewn gully holds
The waters of Forgetfulness.

So dream, and through your dreams shall roll
The rhythm of limbs free-striding,
Which moulds your being to a whole
And heals the world's dividing;

So dream, and you shall be a man
Free on the open road again;
So dream the long night through, and wake
With better heart to rise and take
The burden of your load again.

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BOOT boys

This pages describe
adventures of BOOTboys,
a loose group of friends
of mature years who enjoy defying the aging process
by getting out into the hills
as often as possible!

As most live in South Lakeland, it is no surprise that our focus is on the Lakeland fells and the Yorkshire Dales.

As for the name, BOOTboys, it does not primarily derive from an item of footwear but is in memory of Big Josie, the erstwhile landlady of the erstwhile Burnmoor Inn at Boot in Eskdale, who enlivened Saint Patrick's Day 1973 and other odd evenings many years ago!

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Wainwrights

To download a log of which Wainwrights have been done by which BOOTboy in the "modern" era, i.e. since the advent of BOOTboys click on Wainwrights. 

If anyone wants to claim other peaks, please let me know and I will submit them to the adjudication committee!