"You dragged me up here for this?" My girlfriend was not impressed. "This isn't art. This is a rock in a field."
We were trudging along a green lane near Casterton in Cumbria. To be fair, the rock was actually a drove stone, though I wasn't quite sure what a drove stone was. And it wasn't in a field. It was in a sheepfold that was in a field. But I didn't pursue the point as the rain was battering down around us. You don't get this weather in an indoor art gallery, except perhaps at Tate Modern.
To the British sculptor Andy Goldsworthy, who recently created a piece for the roof garden of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, a rock is more than a rock and a sheepfold is more than just a roofless house of four stone walls where sheep can find shelter. "A stone is a living witness to the place in which it sits," he says.
Goldsworthy started work on his Sheepfolds in 1996 as a Millennium Project, and in producing 100 Sheepfolds across Cumbria by the year 2000, he aimed to create the largest outdoor art project in the world. Eight years on there are over 200 of them, and he's still going. He finds sheepfolds that have been crumbling away, no longer much used, restores them, and also places a sculpture of some kind into most of them.
We'd booked into the Pheasant Inn in Casterton, from where there's a four-mile round walk that takes in the 16 Sheepfolds that stretch out either side of Fell Foot Road. This is the largest number clustered together in one easily accessible place, and they were among the first Sheepfolds to be completed. They also happen to be set in a beautifully rural and overlooked corner of England, on the Lancashire-Cumbria border. It's north of the Forest of Bowland, west of the Yorkshire Dales, south of the Lake District and only six miles off the M6.
You should print a map of the walk in advance from the Casterton website (see box), because the Sheepfolds aren't marked - which is one of their charms, and one of Goldsworthy's intentions.
"The audience for the Sheepfolds are people who pass and use the place all the time or those who come into the place by accident," he says. "I never mark my works on maps. People have to hear about them through word of mouth."
Goldsworthy's work draws our attention to the landscape and to the qualities of natural and man-made objects, while creating something new and beautiful. In the nearby Grizedale Forest Park, for instance, his "Taking a wall for a walk" has a dry-stone wall slithering around trees like a snake.
At Casterton, once the rain cleared, we walked further along the dead straight Fell Foot Road, with bright yellow primroses lining the hedgerows like miniature suns. Every so often, some footholds in the wall tempted us to climb up and look in. In one Sheepfold we startled a sheep, and in another the huge wet rock stared at us like something primeval.
We drove to the next village, Barbon, where another Sheepfold could be found on the back road towards Dent. As the woods petered out, we saw it, off to the left, perfectly placed at the foot of Postern Hill, which rose up in shadow behind it. Called Jack's Fold, it is one of the few without a sculpture inside. The work of art is the structure itself.
The sun had been behind a cloud, and we watched its shadow come rolling down the hill towards us, moving down over the treetops until it reached Jack's Fold and bathed it in sunshine, as if the lights had been turned on in an art gallery. Goldsworthy has made the world his gallery, and admission is free.
Way to go
Getting there: Leave the M6 at junction 34 and follow the A683 to Kirkby Lonsdale. Turn left on to the main A65 for a short distance and then turn right to rejoin the A683 sign-posted Sedbergh. Drive for a mile to Casterton. The Pheasant Inn is in the centre of the village.
Where to stay: Pheasant Inn, Casterton (015242 71230, pheasantinn.co.uk). Double rooms £35-£40pp B&B.
Further information: Directions and a map for the Casterton Sheepfolds walk can be found at pinfold.com/ casterton/sheepfolds.htm. Full details of the Sheepfolds project and the locations of many other sheepfolds at sheepfolds.org. Other major works by Andy Goldsworthy can be seen at Grizedale Forest Park (01229 860010, cumbrialakedistrict.com/grizedale.htm). Cumbria Tourist Board (015394 44444, cumbriatourism.info).
