Kilnshaw Chimney is a scramble up a narrow stream bed from the Kirkstone Pass. It featured in Trail magazine recently. This was our second attempt. We got up because it has been so dry recently but the pitches are more tricky than we'd been led to believe. There was a dead sheep in there. It was there when we climbed half way at Easter. Rather a lot more of it has been recycled by nature since then. Only wool is left now. The carbohydrates will have been digested as fuel for respiration by saprophytes and redistributed into the environment as carbon dioxide and water. It's odd to think that the carbon atoms in the food that we eat have probably been through other living organisms, perhaps several times. There used to be a famous question asking how many molecules of air that were in Julius Caesar's last breath end up in one inhaled lungful of air now. It should also be possible to calculate the number of times a carbon atom in my food has been through the carbon cycle previously.
