It first occurred to me to visit Shepherd’s Law last October, though it beats me why I never thought of it before. Something jogged my mind and I remembered that there was a hermit here, in Northumberland, on a hill not far away, and that I’d been curious about him since I was a child. So I bundled my husband and my small son into the car and took the A697 to Powburn. As we drove, I explained to my son whom we were looking for.
Brother Harold Palmer must be over 90, I told him, and he’s lived alone, praying on his hill for 50 years. My grandmother knew him, I said. She used to leave cakes for him in a box at the bottom of the road.
