Maize Beck: III

The beck reaches its most southerly point at the confluence with the Swarth Beck, which drains the northern slopes of Arnside Rake. Confluences are special places, places of joinings and powers merged. These waters are hallowed to Condatis, the god of the confluences, a God known only to the northern Brigantia people who lived in the valleys between the Greta and the Tyne. At this southern point of the beck there are a series of wide rapids and beautiful water falls, water rippling and singing as it drops over the plucked, bare rocks. This is a place to sit and linger. A place to be, even on a day as cold and grey as today, with the snows not yet melted on the tops of the hills and the wind sniffing round gaps in clothing like a hunting dog.