Pendle Hill!

Visited Clitheroe which is a small town in Lancashire. The most notable building in the town is a Norman keep. The place has been claimed to be the most (geographically) central town in Britain, by virtue of its proximity to the village of Dunsop Bridge

Whilst there we went up Pendle Hill. It is an isolated hill, separated from the Pennines to the east and the Forest of Bowland to the northwest. It lies to the southwest of the Yorkshire Dales National Park. Thats me up there scaling the rocks like a one of them barbary apes that you see in Gibraltar (or 'Gib' as we matelots refer to it as)

Of course the climb was no problem for me -if you have ever had to scale the main mast to reef in the top gallant during a force 9 gale in the driving rain a little bit of rock climbing is nothing!

The naming of Pendle Hill is unusual in that it says the same thing in three different languages. In the thirteenth century it was mentioned as Pennul or Penhul, apparently from Cumbric pen and Old English hyll, both meaning "hill"; the meaning having become opaque, the modern English word Hill was again appended.

Perhaps these Northerners wanted to make sure that everyone knew that it was a hill!

The hill famous due to the 'Pendle Witches' --see Wikipedia for loads on the story.

I have come across many a witch in my travels -some good and some bad. We sailors are a superstitious lot and you never know when someone may try! I have often had to make signs to ward them off.

When in India, I found that the evil eye, called "drishti" (literally view), is removed through "Aarthi". The actual removal involves different means as per the subject involved. In case of removing human evil eye, a traditional Hindu ritual of holy flame (on a plate) is rotated around the person's face so as to absorb the evil effects. Sometimes people will also be asked to spit into a handful of chillies kept in that plate, which are then thrown into fire. For vehicles too, this process is followed with limes or lemons being used instead of chillies. These lemons are crushed by the vehicle and another new lemon is hung with chillies in a bead to ward off any future evil eyes. But I have yet to see how they did this with a full sized schooner! Maybe that's why some tea clippers never made it back to good old blighty!

See ya all soon shipmates!