Above: the small wooden footbridge was destroyed by a fallen tree.

It was last year (2011) that a falling tree destroyed the small wooden bridge on the woodland walk above Fernillee Reservoir. It was due to be replaced in March, but it now looks like it’s been postponed until August this year.

The circular walk around Fernillee is one of my favourites, and the higher path through the woods is particularly attractive. So I’m hoping they’ll finish it soon.

As I was reading the notices about the bridge I noticed a commemorative plate on a wooden seat beside the path. I only learnt Latin for a year at school, and most of it went completely over my head, so I was intrigued to find a translation. It reads;

Progredere aequo animo per concursationem ut cogitas quantam sit inter selenium tranquilliatem

I found an online translation service, but the results weren’t very promising: ‘To go forth sea breath very concursationem when thorough consideration if he is among silence tranquilliatem’.

Google’s translation service didn’t fare much better: ‘Method would be content to think in the rush to be among the seleniums tranquilliatem’.

If anyone can provide a more accurate translation, I’d be very grateful. Simply use the contact page to get in touch.

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Gail has emailed this translation: ‘Go forth content to think in the rush that is the calm silence’. I like that!

And here’s another – this one from Julian, a keen walker, and John, his classics friend: ‘Go forth with a patient mind through the chaos as you think just how much tranquility may exist amongst the silence.’

John explains: “It’s a funny sentence grammatically and took me a while to figure out. The word ‘concursatio’ (that’s its nominative form) usually appears, albeit very rarely, in military narratives, where it usually means a skirmish, or two masses of people smashing into each other. I have, therefore, rendered it as ‘chaos’.

James has cracked it! See his comment below…

Topic tags (click for similar posts): Bridges | Fernilee Reservoir