Little Salkeld Mill
Alex Saint
Here at Little Salkeld near Penrith you’ll find one of the country’s last water-powered corn mills, still grinding specialist flours with, naturally, a fantastic bakery and cafe attached, which doubles up as a little gallery. This is good food, done the old fashioned way, simple, wholesome and tasty. They run courses here too for adults and, in the school holidays, also for children.
Up the road there are stones of another kind, Long Meg and her Daughters, a massive 350ft Bronze Age stone circle guarded by ‘Long Meg’ herself , the tallest stone, standing 12 feet high. Legend has it that Meg and her daughters were a coven of witches, turned to stone for dancing on a Sunday. It’s an impressive site and it certainly fascinated Wordsworth, who declared it the greatest relic after Stonehenge and, in his poem The monument commonly called Long Meg, pleads with the Giant-mother to tell him how she got there. If only she could.
