Today's flood warnings are turning my mind to rivers and their catchment areas. On a map, catchments don't usually appear as shapes but have to be traced. Yet they're real, physical things, just as much as seas and mountain ranges.
In 2019 I made a journey along the River Lune from the sea at Sunderland Point to what is regarded as its source, a spring high in the Howgill Fells. Having grown up in Lancaster, it was like coming home to my roots. I recorded the places I visited in a sketchbook as a series of pen and wash drawings, of which this is one.
A lot of rain-soaked hills feed the Lune, from Shap Fell to Ingleborough and the Bowland Fells. In 1967 the Lune's tributaries, the Roeburn and Hindburn, swept away two bridges and several houses at the village of Wray. When storm Desmond struck in December 2015, it was the Lune that carried the greatest volume of water.