A Terrible Beauty

A Terrible Beauty

A Terrible Beauty

Every now and then one comes across something so unexpected and so poignant that it stops you in your tracks. This literally happened to me recently when descending from dense fog on the summit of Scafell. I had left the main path and struck out on a compass bearing to find an alternative way back to the valley. After a short while the fog lifted to reveal a wondrous scene of the sun beginning to set over the Irish Sea, the far Western fells lit up and then, just a dozen or so metres below, I spotted a cross- clearly no ordinary way marker- a couple of twisted metal structures lashed together by wire.

To my surprise I had happened across the crash site of two Hurricanes during WW11. Two Polish pilots crashed and died here in 1941. Two brave young men: Stanislaw Karubin and Zygmund Hohne, veterans of the Battle of Britain. Some of the debris is still there, high and remote on a Cumbria Fell, far from home. I just felt I had to sit beside it and be still for a moment.

I thought of WB Yeat’s phrase, “a terrible beauty” to capture the contradictory and conflicting feelings one has on such occasions…and after a while I left feeling blessed.