Our public launch in Millom

It was a beautiful day in Millom yesterday. Blue skies, bright sunshine, and wonderfully clear air which seemed to portray everything in a sharper light than usual. Scafell Pike and the Old Man were covered in snow and Black Combe was at his grizzled best, streaks of thinning snow scraped across his forehead as if his flat cap had just been blown off. Inside St George's Church it was warm and welcoming, as we launched our project to an audience of individual members of the public, Society members, and representatives of Millom Council, Copeland Council, the NW Evening Mail and Cumbria Libraries. We also had two published poets in attendance - Martyn Halsall, former Poet in residence at Carlisle Cathedral (and once a trainee reporter on the same weekly paper as your blogger), and Philip Houghton, one of our project's patrons. Phil made a wonderful contribution by reading his own poem 'Echoes' which neatly turns on its head Nicholson's famous poem 'Scafell Pike', looking back from Scafell to Millom instead of the other way about, neatly rearranging Nicholson's own imagery and phraseology. The object of the exercise was to get out the word about our ambitions for the house and our progress thus far. I think we did that, while at the same time we made some useful contacts for the future. Away from the church, we had terrific coverage on BBC Radio Cumbria on the breakfast show, news bulletins and social media, plus news coverage on The Bay so our project team is very happy with how the event worked out.