Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ

A lone bell tolls a doleful note into the grey spring sky above Carlisle Cathedral.

Hunched figures scuttle through the close as if to beat a curfew.

And in the fields smoulder orange pyres, tiger-striped by the black, charred legs of upturned animals.

A medieval atmosphere hangs over north Cumbria, the area most affected by the worst foot-and-mouth outbreak in living memory.

A disused airfield is being used to bury dead animals

A siege mentality exists, reinforced by the feeling that the vast urban majority neither understands nor cares about the destruction of a way of life 300 miles from London.

Already, more animals have been slaughtered than the half million culled nationally in the 60s.

Smoke billows across the fields of the Debatable Lands, the corner of the country between Hadrian's Wall and the Scottish border.

It was here, in Longtown, that the UK's biggest site for sheep sales became the export point for a wasting disease which, while not directly killing beasts, leaves them worthless to the farmers whose livelihoods they provide.

Yes, there will be compensation for the physical loss of stock - if not for its earning potential or the generations of work which have gone into producing it.

But for the hundreds of farmers who have seen their animals quite literally go up in smoke, there is no looking ahead - simply an emptiness in the heart, in the budget and in the fields.

One condemned dairyman told me: "It's spring, we should be bringing life into the world."

Instead, the land stands silent. The air should be alive with the bleating of new-born lambs.

Yet the fields are forlorn, forsaken and free of the very thing that gives them their existence - life.

Instead, there are fires, a smoking, stench-ridden scourge ... better, though, than the piles of bodies littering the landscape, an eyesore for the motorist and a haven for crows and rats.

The disease is rife, as are the rumours surrounding it.

The men from the ministry deny they knew it was coming.

Other fingers point at a plot by animal rights activists, the IRA, Saddam Hussein even.

An industry and its dependent communities are keen to find a scapegoat. The witch-hunt adds to the oppressive, dark-age air.

Bar-room conversation covers little else, even in those pubs which still have more than a fistful of customers.

At night, the roads and farmsteads are quiet, the countryside unlit but for the deep orange glow of the pyres, the talk of the town muted as the bell tolls out its monotonous, medieval song for a land in the thrall of disease and death.

Meanwhile, Cumbria watches, waits and wonders if the world really is coming to an end.