Category Archives: Literature

The Awesome Power of Pillar Rock

First scaled by a shepherd and eulogised by Wordsworth, Pillar Rock is a mountain cathedral that lured a Victorian vicar to his demise. It holds an enduring allure for climbers, but Wainwright declares it out-of-bounds for walkers. I enlist the help of a mountaineering & climbing instructor to get me to the top.

Mariner’s Mourning

In his poem, The Brothers, William Wordsworth tells the tragic tale of a mariner named Leonard, who returns to his home in Ennerdale to discover his beloved brother, James has died after falling from the top of Pillar Rock. Flushed with the success of his ascent, James had stretched out on the summit heath and fallen asleep, but his tendency to sleepwalk—a habit developed many years before, while pining for his seafaring brother—proved his literal downfall.

The poem was published in 1800, in Vol II of the Lyrical Ballads. In his notes, Wordsworth claims his inspiration came from a story told to him in the valley. If true, it would be the first known ascent of Pillar Rock, the dramatic freestanding outcrop from which Pillar Mountain takes its name.  Sadly, Wordsworth’s ballad is the only written record. 

Shepherd’s Delight

 “An isolated crag on the breast of a mountain flanking one of the most desolate of our Lake District dales. The very remoteness of its surroundings, as well as the apparent inaccessibility of its summit, no doubt fascinated as well as awed the shepherds.” So wrote H. M. Kelly in the 1923 guide to Pillar Rock he produced for the Fell and Rock Climbing Club. The first verified ascent, in 1826, was indeed by a shepherd and cooper, named John Atkinson. Rock climbing had long been a technique used by mountaineers to reach a summit, but during the nineteenth century, it evolved into a sport in its own right. Kelly recognises Atkinson’s feat as “the first seed”.

Pillar Rock

And that seed bore fruit. The same year, three more shepherds, J. Colebank, W. Tyson, and J. Braithwaite followed in Atkinson’s footsteps, and in 1870, Miss A. Barker became the first woman to make the climb. The second was Mary Westmorland, who climbed the rock in 1873 with her brothers, Thomas and Edward (best known for building the Westmorland Cairn on Great Gable). But Thomas’s subsequent report in the Whitehaven News provoked a sniffy but anonymous rebuttal:

“(I read) With incredulous amazement, the rhythmical account of an alleged ascent of the Pillar by two gentlemen and a lady, that in all probability what the Westmorland party climbed was not the Pillar Rock but Pillar Mountain a route which did not involve rock climbing to the summit”.

The Westmorlands were incensed, but their claim was soon verified when their friend and accomplished climber, George Seatree performed his own ascent. Seatree found a bottle on the summit containing the names of those distinguished individuals who had reached the spot before him. Thomas, Edward, and Mary were on the list.

The Patriarch of The Pillarites

The anonymous correspondent consequently broke cover and retracted his remark. He was a retired clergyman and veteran of the Battle of Waterloo, named James Jackson. Jackson was an enthusiastic fellwalker with a talent was for self-aggrandisement. Some years before, while serving as Vicar of Rivington, he gained a level of local fame (or notoriety) when the weather cock blew off the church. Local steeple jacks refused to make the climb, so Jackson took it on himself to do so, successfully scaling the spire and repairing the weathervane. The act divided his congregation, some applauded his courage while others condemned it as foolhardy. Jackson of course subscribed to the former view and penned a short verse for the local paper:

“Who has not heard of Steeple Jack,
That lion-hearted Saxon,
Though I am not he, he was my sire,
For I am Steeple Jackson”

Jackson had set his heart on Pillar Rock but must have imagined it beyond his abilities. As an incorrigible chauvinist, he clearly took umbrage at being upstaged by Mary, but now saw an opportunity to distinguish himself as the eldest person to conquer the Pillar. He wrote to George Seatree asking him to be his guide, but Seatree refused. Undeterred, Jackson sought the guidance of a climber named John Hodgson, who took the seventy-nine-year-old to the summit via the Slab and Notch route. Jackson duly proclaimed himself, to anyone who would listen, The Patriarch of the Pillarites.

Pillar Rock from the path to Pillar summit
Pillar Rock from the path to Pillar summit
Hallowed Ground

By the late 1800’s, rock climbing had gained significant popularity, spearheaded by such notable pioneers as W P Haskett Smith, John Robinson, and Owen Glynne Jones. Jones’s book, Rock-Climbing in the English Lake District became a bestseller.  The book was published and illustrated by climbers and photographers, George and Ashley Abraham, who accompanied Jones on many of his exploits.  In the W. M. Crook memoir that prefaces the second edition, George Abraham recalls:

“Two climbs with Mr. Jones are most strongly impressed on our memories, and these two would probably rank as the two finest rock climbs made in our district. These are the Scawfell Pinnacle from the second pitch in Deep Ghyll in 1896, and the conquest of the well known Walker’s Gully on the Pillar Rock in January 1899. Both of these were generally considered impossible.”

Graham leads the way up on to Pisgah from Jordan Gap
Graham Uney climbing out of Pisgah (on Pillar) the hard way, from Jordan Gap

Scafell Pinnacle and Pillar Rock demand a similar reverence. Jones said of Pillar Rock, “It springs up vertically from the steep fellside like a cathedral-front 500 feet high”. Wainwright described Scafell Pinnacle and its surrounding crags as a great cathedral. Each is buttressed by an easily scrambled rock called Pisgah, which takes the aspiring climber to within spitting distance of the true prize, only to find they are separated from it by a sheer drop, called the Jordan Gap.  The common names for these distinct features are inspired by the book of Deuteronomy, where God leads Moses to the top of Mount Pisgah and points across the River Jordan to the Promised Land.

Pisgah in front of Pillar Rock
Pisgah in front of Pillar Rock
Out of Bounds

Pillar Rock exerts an enduring allure for climbers and scramblers, but Wainwright declares it out-of-bounds for walkers—which presents a problem for anyone hoping to complete the Birketts. Bill Birkett’s guidebook, The Complete Lakeland Fells presents a list of Lakeland peaks over 1000 feet. They include 211 of the Wainwrights and 330 additional smaller summits. But there’s a sting in the tail. Birkett was a mountaineer who thought nothing of including Pillar Rock.

Fortunately, mountaineering & climbing instructors like Graham Uney offer roped and guided scrambles to fellwalkers who are ready to step out of their comfort zone. Last year, I climbed Pinnacle Ridge on St Sunday Crag with Graham, and this year, I signed up for Pillar Rock.

Plans seldom survive contact with the weather, and the persistent threat of thunderstorms has meant we have had to reschedule three times. Sadly, my friend Nikki Knappett, who accompanied us on Pinnacle Ridge, has had to drop out. Finally, with the first week of September heralding the return of warm sunshine, we are able to fix a date for the Wednesday.

Pillar Rock – The Mountain Cathedral

In the meantime, my friend, John Fleetwood gets in touch.  John is an accomplished scrambler, who has revised the Cicerone scrambling guides to the Lakes.  He is also a brilliant photographer who deeply understands the spiritual rapport we develop with wild places. He has just published a book called Beyond the View, in which he gives full expression to this sense of rapture. It contains a chapter which presents mountains as nature’s cathedrals. John knows I am due to climb Pillar Rock with Graham and asks if I would like to go and have a look at it in advance. To him, like Owen Glynne Jones, it is a mountain cathedral, but to fully appreciate its awe-inspiring countenance, we should approach it the way Jones and Wordsworth describe. From below. From Ennerdale.

John looking toward Ennerdale Water
John looking toward Ennerdale Water

We park at Gatesgarth and climb Scarth Gap in early sun, Buttermere a tranquil mirror reflecting the chiselled majesty of Goat Crag. As we start to descend into Ennerdale, we fork right on a well-maintained path to cross the River Liza at a footbridge. As we enter the trees to start our ascent, the upward slope is severe, and the countenance of the walk abruptly changes from an amiable summer ramble to unforgiving slog. Pillar Rock is over 1000 ft above us, and to reach its foot is itself a challenge.

Buttermere and Goat Crag

John is a natural mountain hare. His pace doesn’t slacken. I fall behind and the order of the day is established—the hare’s swift legs will carry him far ahead, only to pause periodically to let his tortoise companion catch up.

Beyond the trees are stiff slopes of scree and stone, but with necks craned, the Rock towers into view above, an intimidating and awesome spectacle. Nervous anticipation serves as fuel to twinging calves, and the demanding terrain begins to feel like a quest or a pilgrimage—a test of our commitment.

Eventually, we reach its foot. A low rampart hugs the foot of the sheer northern cliff. Kelly calls it The Green Ledge. Above the ledge, slender plates of jagged slate rise skyward in a vertical array of niches and jutting icons, abstract and organic, vast and awe-inspiring, reinforcing the impression of an immense savage cathedral. It is daunting and humbling, and I feel my pulse quicken. And we can’t even see the top! This is the muscular buttress of Low Man. High Man, the summit, is set further back and not visible from this angle.

North Face of Pillar Rock
North Face of Pillar Rock
Walker’s Gully

We track round to the left where dolorous cleft of Walker’s Gully splits Pillar Rock from Shamrock, so named as from the east it appears to be part of the Pillar but is divided from it from it by a hollowed amphitheatre, a wide funnel of scree dropping into this sheer, narrow, dark and dank gully. Walker’s Gully is a highly misleading moniker. Could anywhere be less walker-friendly? Indeed, it is named after an unfortunate young man who fell here in 1883. Jones made this ascent in 1899, deep in winter and after days of torrential rain. His party were obliged to stand under an icy waterfall, and Jones had to remove his boots to climb out of a cave through a narrow hole in the roof. Standing barefoot in the snow nearly gave him frostbite. Despite his immense achievement, Jones’s chief account of Pillar Rock is of seconding John Robinson on an assault of the formidable north face. The Walker’s Gully report is included as an appendix, penned by George Abraham. Jones never got the chance to write it himself. He died some months later in an accident on Dent Blanche in the Swiss Alps. The second edition of his book was published posthumously.

Walker's Gully
Walker’s Gully
The Old West Route (as a Spectator)

We track beneath the Green Ledge and climb the steep slopes on the western side on a sketchy sheep trod. John perches on a rock and gazes up at the west face, High Man now towering above us like a jagged pyramid.

“Are you going up?” I ask.

“Thinking about it,” he replies. “Do you want to give it a go?”

He points out the line of the Old West Route (the way Atkinson ascended nearly 200 years ago). It looks doable, but it disappears on to Low Man, and John tells me it gets trickier after that. We don’t have a rope, so I would have to be sure I could get down again. Eventually, I decide discretion is the better part of valour and decline. John picks his way up the diagonal rake, and I watch conflicted, my heart desperate to follow, but my legs relishing the rest. I watch climbers on the northern corner of the west face and soak up the astonishing power of this vast natural edifice. Eventually, I hear a shout and look up to see John waving from the top. His descent is more circumspect, and when he reaches the bottom, he tells me I made a good decision. The rock on this side has escaped the morning sun. It’s still very wet and much trickier than anticipated.

Climbers on the corner of the West Face
Climbers on the corner of the West Face
Slab and Notch

We work up the stiff scree beside Pisgah and make the comparatively easy scramble to its top. The top feels tantalisingly close to High Man, but a sheer drop to Jordan Gap and the formidable wall beyond bar progress. Down to the east, we watch climbers traversing a crack in a large sloping slab. John tells me this is the slab of the Slab and Notch route and points out the notch some way above it. This is the route I’ll be taking with Graham. It looks dry, and suddenly I can’t wait for Wednesday.

Pisgah with Pillar Rock behind
Looking down to the Slab and Notch route
Looking down to the Slab and Notch route
Climbers at the start of Slab and Notch
Climbers at the start of Slab and Notch
Mountain Memorials

When the day arrives, I meet Graham in the car park at Wasdale Head and we climb the path to Black Sail Pass, deep in conversation. The sky is clear, the sun is beating down, and it feels more like June than September. I’m parched by the time we reach Looking Stead, where we leave the main path to Pillar Summit and descend on to the High Level Traverse. This was the route popularised by John Robinson and his fellow Victorian climbers. Two thirds of the away along stands the Robinson Cairn, built in 1907 as a memorial to the great man by 100 of his comrades and friends.

Pillar Rock from the Robinson Cairn
Pillar Rock from the Robinson Cairn

At the eleventh hour, Jen Hellier has stepped in to take Nikki’s place, and she’s arranged to meet us here. She’s beaten us to it and is waiting when we arrive. After a brief chat, we set off for Great Doup (Pillar Cove on OS maps). Jen and Graham have both served with Mountain Rescue and are soon swapping anecdotes. I listen with deep interest and a burgeoning respect for the dedication involved. With the heat, our water bottles are already half depleted. Fortunately, Graham knows of a half-hidden spring. As he replenishes our supplies, I look around. Somewhere near here, there is an unobtrusive cross carved into the rock with the initials JJ. It was commissioned by John Robinson, Charles Baumgartner and one other in 1906. It commemorates James Jackson, who having succeeded in a second attempt to climb Pillar Rock, tragically fell to his death on a third. A cairn and iron cross erected on the spot where he was found were destroyed by storms, so the cross was conceived as an enduring memorial. The third commissioner was George Seatree, who, despite his initial misgivings, maintained a regular correspondence with Jackson and clearly warmed to him.

James Jackson's Memorial Cross (photo by Jen Hellier)
James Jackson’s Memorial Cross (photo by Jenny Hellier)
James Jackson's Memorial Cross (photo by Jen Hellier)
James Jackson’s Memorial Cross (photo by Jenny Hellier)
Hand to Rock

Ahead the cliffs of Shamrock rise like a wall, as yet indistinguishable from Pillar Rock itself. A broad sloping pavement cuts across, rising diagonally. This is the Shamrock Traverse. When we reach the far end, the sham is revealed. The broad sloping dish of the amphitheatre separates Shamrock from the much larger Pillar, which now looms above.

East Face of Pillar Rock from Shamrock

We stash our rucksacks at the base of Pisgah, refuel with a quick snack, and retrieve the rope, climbing racks and harnesses. It’s time to tackle Slab and Notch.

Scrambling up to the start of Slab & Notch

We descend into the amphitheatre. The way is steep and loose, and I accidentally dislodge a stone, prompting a tongue-in-cheek rebuke from Jen. When, to my shame, I do it again, she names me the Phantom Rock Slinger. We scramble up to the start of our climb. There are two ways on to the Slab. The first is easier, but then requires working down the Slab. Graham would find it hard to protect us with a rope this way, so he opts for climbing an 8 ft cleft in the wall. It’s somewhat daunting as to the right is a sheer drop, but we rope up and once on belay, we follow his lead, Jen going second and me last. As soon as we put hand to rock, the sense of exhilaration soars, and we’re already buzzing as we step out on to the Slab and start to traverse the crack, now performing the manoeuvre I watched from Pisgah, four days earlier.

Graham climbing up on to the Slab
Graham climbing up to the Slab
Jen and George on the Slab - photo by Graham
Jen and George on the Slab (photo by Graham Uney)

The Notch is high above us, and we watch Graham scale the rocky shoulder that leads up to it. Jen has a little climbing experience, which makes me the out-and-out novice. I relish the opportunity to learn and watch how Jen deftly tackles the same moves. Hand and foot holds are plentiful and soon, we are climbing through the gap to join Graham on the ledge beyond. We traverse around a corner to a smooth rock beneath a vertical wall. Graham walks straight over it, while Jen tracks below for better handholds—it takes her right out on the edge. Lacking Graham’s balance and Jen’s courage, I opt for walking over, my palms pressed against the wall in the hope of staying stable. The next pitch is a rocky ladder. We attach ourselves to the cam Graham has wedged in the rock and watch as he climbs and disappears from view.

Graham below the Notch
Graham below the Notch
Graham climbing towards the Notch
Graham climbing towards the Notch
Graham crossing the Notch
Graham crossing the Notch
Jen after being lowered into Jordan Gap
Jen in Jordan Gap towards the end of our adventure
Jen climbing a rocky ladder
Jen climbing a rocky ladder

A minute or two later, we hear him exclaim, “Oh no, oh no!”

We look at each other in alarm, but Jen is perceptive, and her expression changes to one of recognition.

“That’s not ‘oh no, there’s something wrong’”, she suggests. “It’s ‘oh no, there’s something unpleasant’”.

A minute later, we hear Graham’s voice, “Someone’s had a poo up here!”

I don’t know whether I’m relieved or revulsed. Then I realise it’s both simultaneously. We climb the rocks above with an uneasy sense of anticipation and arrive at a natural alcove, big enough for the three of us to stand in a circle, only there is a tiny cairn in its midst—Graham’s commendable attempt to bury the unwelcome human offering—presumably an involuntary reaction to the significant exposure. I clamber onto a rocky shelf to give us all more room and look up. The contents of the cairn are forgotten instantly as I take in just where we are. Vaulting walls of rock reach skyward, a cavernous gully—the nave of the great savage cathedral.

Walls of rock vaulting skyward
Walls of rock vaulting skyward
Jen on the rocky staircase to the summit
Jen on the rocky staircase to the summit

Our onward route lies along a narrow ledge and up the final craggy staircase to the summit. As Jen seeks out holds for the final climb, she turns to me and says exactly what is going through my own mind, “I don’t want this to end”.

Approaching the summit - photo Graham
Approaching the summit (photo by Graham Uney)

The summit is unexpectedly broad and grassy, and the views are utterly edifying. Wispy strands of cirrus fleck a deep blue sky over the mottled green of High Stile and the darker distant peaks of Newlands and Coledale. While Graham secures a rope to lower us into Jordan Gap before our final scramble up and over Pisgah, Jen and I wander round enrapt, drinking it all in. It would take a lot of bottles to hold the names of all those who’ve made this ascent since Seatree’s time, but it still feels as if we’ve joined a select band; and the experience, though tame by the standards of Atkinson or Jones, or Fleetwood and Uney, is something that will stick with me forever.

The author on the summit
The author on the summit

Info / Sources / Further Reading

Find Graham Uney on Facebook at:

https://www.facebook.com/grahamuneymountaineering

… or through his website:

https://www.grahamuneymountaineering.co.uk/classic-scrambles

John Fleetwood’s book, Beyond the View is a beautiful and thought-provoking exploration of our spiritual rapport with wild places. It is available here:

https://payhip.com/b/ghKFq

H. M. Kelly’s guide to Pillar Rock and Neighbouring Climbs can be found in PDF form here:

Frank Grant on Footless Crow and Raymond Greenhow on Scafell Hike have both written fascinating and detailed pieces on the Reverend James Jackson. Both are well worth a read:

Footless Crow:

http://footlesscrow.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-pillarite-patriarch.html?m=1

Scafell Hike:

https://scafellhike.blogspot.com/2019/06/reverend-james-jackson-memorial-cross.html?m=1

Troubled Waters – The Unquiet Graves of Coniston

The ghosts of two ill-fated lovers haunt Yewdale Beck, the victims in a centuries-old tale of abduction, murder, and revenge. The spirit of a Victorian smuggler disturbs a young family in 1960’s Skelwith; and Dow Crag is home to an ancient raven, condemned by a Druid to live for millennia.

Under Yewdale Bridge the beck burbles over a bed of smooth stone, its waters glossed with the warm patina of antique pewter, like the dull sheen of old tankards in a tavern, and with just as many stories to tell.

Yewdale Beck from Yewdale Bridge
Yewdale Beck from Yewdale Bridge

A little way up the lane, The Cumbria Way leaves Shepherd’s Bridge to shyly handrail Yewdale Beck through Blackguards Wood to Low Yewdale, where it forks right to the dappled shade of Tarn Hows Wood, and beyond to the tarns themselves.

Broadleaf Tree on Cumbria Way
Broadleaf Tree on Cumbria Way

On the way, the outstretched limbs of broadleaf trees escape their leafy boas to point bony fingers earthward as if betraying unseen secrets. And over the lush green canopy and carpet of summer bracken, something more imposing looms. The vicious crags of the Yewdale fells rise like chiselled fangs of volcanic fury. Holme Fell is a mauve castle of rugged towers and ramparts, a primeval stronghold keeping eternal watch over the leafy pastures below.

Yewdale Fells
Yewdale Fells
Holme Fell from the Cumbria Way
Holme Fell from the Cumbria Way
Yewdale Fells
Yewdale Fells
Holme Fell
Holme Fell

A shower of summer rain softens the light, and as beams of sun slowly re-emerge to spotlight the higher crags of Wetherlam Edge, a rainbow forms over the  Tilberthwaite Fells, imparting an air of eerie mystery. And such a feeling is fitting, as the banks of Yewdale Beck are supposedly haunted by the victims of an old and murderous misdeed.

Rainbow over Tilberthwaite
Rainbow over Tilberthwaite

The Giant and the Bower Maiden

Writing in 1849, Dr Alexander Gibson recounts a tale told to him by a racy, terse and poetic “rustic informant”. By Gibson’s time, after a century of neglect, Coniston Hall with its “ivy clad turret-like chimneys” had been repurposed as a barn. Until around 1650, it was the family seat of the Le Fleming family, the Knights of Coniston. When occasion demanded, it was the knight’s duty to raise a small army of men-at-arms to repel marauding bands of Scots or Irish. According to the tale, one of the knights had his efforts galvanised by the arrival of incomer from Troutbeck. The new recruit was a giant of a man, who had recently built himself a hut and taken up residence in “the lonely dell of the tarns” (now Tarn Hows). Standing 9’6” in his stockinged feet, this robust fellow was known as Girt Will O’ The Tarns. When not employed as foot soldier, Will was prized locally as an agricultural labourer.

Tarn Hows
The Lonely Dell of the Tarns (Tarn Hows)

Now, Le Fleming had a daughter named, Eva who was greatly admired for “her beauty and gentleness, her high-bred dignity and her humble virtues”. Lady Eva, as she was known, had a romantic inclination and loved to row for hours on the lake or stroll through the woods surrounding it. On such excursions, she was invariably accompanied by her favourite bower maiden, Barbara. Eva loved Barbara like a sister, and Barbara herself was so fair, she was capable of turning as many heads as her mistress, but despite a string of local suitors, Barbara only had eyes for Le Fleming’s falconer, a man named (fittingly), Dick Hawksley.

One fine evening, following days of heavy rain, Eva summoned Barbara for a moonlit stroll along the lake shore. As they made their way through the coppiced woods at the head of the lake, Barbara recounted how, on several recent occasions, she had been accosted by Girt Will as she rode to Skelwith to visit her family. Indeed, the last time, he had gone so far as to try and snatch her horse’s rein and might have pulled her from her mount had she not reacted quickly and spurred her steed into a canter. Just as Lady Eva was expressing her shock and indignation at such impertinence, a rustle in bushes cut her short, and in an instant Girt Will appeared. He straightaway snatched up Barbara with the ease that any ordinary man might lift a child, then set off at full tilt into the trees. Barbara’s screams quickly roused Eva from her momentary stupefaction, and she rushed back to the hall to summon help. Dick Hawksley and a few others gave chase on foot, while Eva’s brothers fetched their swords and called for their horses to be saddled.

The pursuers cornered their quarry where Yewdale Beck forms a small pool, known as Cauldron Dub, near Far End cottages on the outskirts of Coniston. With Barbara now a burden and an impediment to fight or flight, Girt Will perpetrated an act of barbaric callousness and hurled his helpless victim into the beck. The beck was in spate after days of heavy rain, and the raging torrent swiftly swallowed Barbara. Dick Hawksley wasted no time in diving in after her. Fleetingly, he reappeared pulling Barbara towards the shore, but the current was too strong, and the entwined lovers were swept headlong downstream. The stunned onlookers quickly divided into two parties, some running along the bank in the hope of affecting a rescue, while the others set off in pursuit of a Girt Will, who had taken advantage of their distraction to hot foot it toward Yewdale.

Any hopes of dragging the lovers from the swollen beck were dashed when they reached Yewdale bridge. The constriction of the channel under the stone arch forced the turbulent waters into a much faster surge, and Dick and Barbara were quickly swept from view.

Meanwhile, their avengers caught up with Girt Will between Low and High Yewdale. Wielding their swords, they succeeded in dodging his swinging club long enough to inflict a myriad of mortal cuts upon his person. Indeed, it was said there was not sufficient skin left on his body to fashion a tobacco pouch. A twelve-foot mound near the path from High Yewdale to Tarn Hows Wood has ever since been known as the Giant’s Grave.

Barbara and Dick remained lost for several days until their drowned bodies washed up on the shore of the lake, still entwined in a lovers’ clinch. The tragic violence of their deaths did not afford a quiet passage to the grave, however, and their spirits are said to haunt the stretch of Yewdale Beck between Cauldron Dub and the bridge.

The Spirit of a Smuggler

Today, below a shifting procession of pregnant cloud and shafts of sun, the waters of Tarn Hows glisten with the steely polish of armour plate, feathered with pinnate patterns of over-hanging rowan leaves and dotted with bunches of blood-red berries.

Rowan Tree Tarn Hows
Rowan Tree Tarn Hows
Tarn Hows
Tarn Hows

Beyond the tarns, I leave the Cumbria Way to climb to one of the finest viewpoints in the region, the low summit of Black Crag. Windermere and Coniston Water stretch out towards the Irish Sea like languid slivers of fallen sky, but as clouds gather in the west, Wetherlam and Langdale Pikes fade to grey, the spectral impressions of fells. They mark the bounds of bootlegger country, and it is the ghost of a bootlegger that hijacks my thoughts now.

In 1853, local papers excitedly reported the arrest of local smuggler and illicit whiskey distiller, Lanty Slee. Lanty remains something of a Robin Hood figure in the popular imagination, famous for robbing the excise men of their liquor duties by selling cheap moonshine (known as Mountain Dew) to the poor. In 1853, the excise men uncovered one of Slee’s stills in a purpose-dug cave in a field border to the west of Black Crag.

While the newspapers reported Lanty as resident at High Arnside Farm at the time of this arrest, contemporary historians like H S Cowper placed him at neighbouring Low Arnside. It is possible, he rented both properties at different times, or even together. One person with a special reason for believing Lanty lived at Low Arnside is Gordon Fox. Gordon and his wife, Barbara moved into the Low Arnside Farm in the early sixties, and they would soon come to associate Lanty with a different kind of spirit.

Ladder Stile, Black Crag Summit
Ladder Stile, Black Crag Summit
Windermere from Black Crag
Windermere from Black Crag
Black Crag Trig Point and Coniston Water
Black Crag Trig Point and Coniston Water

When I posted an article about Lanty, earlier this year, Gordon got in touch to share his story. Here it is in his own words.

Low Arnside Farm
Low Arnside Farm

“As you know Low Arnside is a most beautiful but remote lakeland farmhouse on the high fells above the Coniston road and was featured in the film, “Miss Potter”.

“In November 1961, my eldest son was almost born in the house due to his early arrival, but we did just make it to Kendal in time.

In order to ‘modernise’ the house ‘slightly’ electricity had been installed and whilst channelling the walls for the wiring the workmen discovered a dagger and a couple of lead bullets which had been buried under the plaster.

“Because of odd happenings in the house, we decided to have a Ouija board session one night and raised a spirit which gave us some very interesting information. The séance comprised my wife Barbara, myself, our friends, Stephen Darbishire, the painter and his wife the poet, Kerry Darbishire. During the course of this session, we raised the spirit of someone called Lanty Slee who told us the house was his and ‘always would be’.

“After a few more answers, he suddenly said that he could say no more. We asked why and his final remark spelt out that it was because of the presence of a ‘pure being’! Naturally we all wondered if he meant one of us. But we named all four of us and each time our question was met with, ‘no’. Then Barbara asked if it was the two months old Matthew peacefully sleeping upstairs and he answered at once, ‘yes’!..at which point all contact ceased.

“All activity in the house also ceased after that, which had recently comprised of him being so delighted with the arrival of electricity that “he” would switch the lights on and off in the middle of the night, to our already tired annoyance as new parents. So, when that all stopped it was a blessing.

“I would add that up until that time none of us had ever heard the name Lanty Slee.”

The Druid and the Immortal Raven of Dow Crag

From Black Crag and Low Arnside, I return by the eastern shores of Tarn  Hows, and the high Coniston Fells command my attention once more. Wetherlam and the Old Man each dominate their own portion of the skyline but contrive to hide the majestic rock face of Dow Crag that lies beyond. Writing in 1908, W T Palmer recounts an old legend which claims Dow Crag is home to an immortal raven. Its immortality is a curse rather than a blessing, however, condemned as it is to grow ever older, frailer, and more and more world-weary, while perpetually denied the release of death.

Dow Crag
Dow Crag

The curse was a punishment, metered out by a Druid, for the raven’s catastrophic dereliction of duty. The bird was the Druid’s familiar. He was charged with watching over Torver as a sentinel. His job was to croak a warning when he saw the Roman army advancing. But the Druid awoke to find the Britons’ camp in flames and legionaries marching forward victorious, the raven perched atop their standard. On returning to his master, the bird faced and angry rebuke for his treachery. But he pleaded that it was not treachery but a terrible mistake. He had swooped down to attack and kill the yellow bird the Romans held proudly before them, but as his talons locked in on their target, he realised it was not a bird at all but an effigy of burnished bronze. Only then did he realise to his horror, he was too late to return and sound the alarm.

“Venerable bird,” said the Druid. “Venerable as myself and as old, I had it in mind to condemn these to die, but instead that shalt live, live on the topmost crag of Dow, till another army sweep away the Roman, and the yellow bird is carried southward over sands”.

The Romans did eventually leave southward over the sands, but to the raven’s eternal woe, the last legion became mired in a swamp on Torver Moor, where the standard bearer and his yellow bird were swallowed up. It is said they lie there still. And unless they are ever exhumed and the bird carried south over Morecambe Bay, Dow Crag will ever echo with the hoarse croaks of its ancient raven.

Dow Crag
Dow Crag


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    The Savage Temple at the Heart of Scafell

    Wainwright compared Scafell Crag to a great cathedral where a man may lose all his conceit. I set off for Lord’s Rake and the West Wall Traverse with Wainwright archivist, Chris Butterfield and Lakeland Routes author, Richard Jennings to rediscover a sense of awe, experience the spiritual power of savage places and ponder whether we all need to reconnect with the sublime.

    Cults of Nature

    Norman Nicholson called it a cult of nature. Even at this early hour, a long line of pilgrims snakes up the grassy zig zags to Lingmell Col, above which the boulder field awaits: the desolate rocky desert at the summit of England’s highest mountain—Scafell Pike.

    The author looking up at Mickledore Pikes Crag, Great Gable and the Lingmell Col path in the background - photo by Chris Butterfield
    The author looking up at Mickledore; Pikes Crag, Great Gable & the Lingmell Col path in the background – photo by Chris Butterfield

    All this began with a book. Until the late 1700’s, no-one visited Lakeland for pleasure. It was seen as a savage wilderness. Then in 1756, Edmund Burke published A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, in which he ascribed aesthetic taste to two fundamental instincts: self-propagation and self-preservation. All objects perceived by the senses appealed in some degree to one or other of these. Objects that were pleasing and gentle, suggesting comfort and safety, appealed to the instinct of self-propagation, those that were great and vast, suggesting fear and wonder aroused the instinct of self-preservation. The category of things that appealed significantly to the instinct of self-propagation, he called the Beautiful; the category that aroused the instinct of self-preservation, he called The Sublime.

    The Sublime inspired the Picturesque movement in art. Suddenly, gentle pastoral scenes and sylvan idylls were out of fashion and savage wildernesses were in vogue. Apostles of the Picturesque like William Gilpin and Thomas Gray visited Lakeland and published accounts of their travels, exaggerating the height of the mountains and peppering their prose with heady hyperbole—the crags were terrible (in the literal sense of terror-inducing), and the towering heights were awful. They had found a sublime landscape—one that could shock and awe, and their early guidebooks fanned flames of interest.

    Then came the Romantics. For the Lake Poet, William Wordsworth, the rugged integrity of the dalesmen and their close harmony with nature offered a panacea for all the ills industrialisation and urban living had inflicted on society. Gray never ventured much further than the Jaws of Borrowdale and thought the idea of climbing Skiddaw comically impossible, but Coleridge narrowly escaped death descending Scafell’s hazardous Broad Stand and experienced a religious-like rapture at having survived. William Hutchinson had described Wasdale as a valley infested by wildcats, foxes, martins, and eagles, but for Wordsworth, “no part of the country is more distinguished by sublimity”.

    As the Victorians flocked to Lakeland so their relationship with the fells became more physical. Climbing Skiddaw became a must, and the more adventurous embraced rock-climbing. Owen Glynne Jones published a hugely popular book, Rock Climbing in the English Lake District, which remains a vibrant distillation of the dashing spirit of the age.

    For Nicholson, these cults of nature are “symptoms of a diseased society, a consumptive gasp for fresh air”. They have arisen “because modern man has locked himself off from the natural life of the land, because he has tried to break away from the life-bringing, life-supporting rhythms of nature, to remove himself from the element that sustains him, in fact, he has become a fish out of nature.” But this is not only a sign of disease, “it is also a sign of health—a sign, at least, that man guesses where the remedy might be found.”

    Krampus

    It’s nearly 50 years since Nicholson published The Lakers, his insightful history of those early Lakeland writers, yet hordes still flock to these hills. Scafell Pike has become a bucket list must for YouTubers, Instagram photo op’ers, and charity-eventers, all faithfully following the crowd, checking social media as they go, some streaming Spotify, some carrying beers and disposable BBQ’s for summit parties… and amid this hubbub, I can’t help wondering whether we’ve forgotten what it is we came here for.

    Deep Gill Buttress
    Deep Gill Buttress/Symonds Knott

    My misgivings run deeper than the litter and the wildfire risk, although these are increasingly alarming. In On Sacred Ground, the second of two beautifully written books documenting a genuinely awe-inspiring walk of 7000 miles through from the southern tip of Italy to Norway’s northern cape, Andrew Terrill describes how, in Salzburg, he stumbles on Krampusnacht, a gruesome Halloween-like parade of horned monsters roaming the streets, striking delighted terror into the crowds of wide-eyed children.

    “Krampus has inhabited Austrian folklore for centuries. The creature originated thousands of years ago in pagan rituals as a horned wilderness god. In medieval times, Christianity appropriated them, inserting them into religious plays as servants of the Devil. By the seventeenth century, Krampusse found themselves paired inextricably with Saint Nicholas, and celebrations on Saint Nicholas Day soon featured saint and monster side by side, the evil Krampus a useful tool for convincing doubters to follow a righteous path.”

    “I found myself wondering what effect Krampus would have had on my own childhood. I hadn’t thought much about wild nature while growing up in suburban London. I’d barely known it existed…

    “The culture I’d been raised within insisted that I was separate from nature and above it; that it existed for my use. But the threat of Krampus might have helped me question that, might have hinted at my true place in the natural order of things. It might have reminded me that nature could never be controlled. That it deserved great respect. Perhaps it was something the human race needed too, and desperately; a critical reminder that wild nature would run rampage and devour us all if we stepped too far out of line.”

    The Roaring Silence

    The sublime is all about escaping the trappings of civilisation and facing the savage grandeur of the wilderness, reminding ourselves we are a tiny grain of sand on a vast shore with towering cliffs and pounding waves; it means feeling humbled and insignificant in the face of something so ancient and immense. And yet, here we are venturing into it brandishing all the trappings of the modern world like shields to keep Krampus at bay.

    As John Pepper writes in Cockley Beck, one of the keys to fully engaging with the exhilarating wonders of nature is to shut off the noise of everyday living, and yet (even in 1984) we’d come to think of such a roaring silence as an existential threat.

    ‘”Anything for a quiet life,’ we sighed, and filled it with noise. The racket we engineered to escape from ourselves was more too than the relentless product of transistors, hi-fis, TVs, videos, one-arm bandits, space invaders, pubs, parties, theatres, musical events, football matches and all the other forms of popular entertainment. It was the shrieking of newspaper headlines and advertisement hoardings, high fashion, low fashion, modern architecture, paperback jackets and political panaceas.

    “It was the ‘buzz’ we got from alcohol, drugs, coffee, tea and flattery; from gurus and meditation. The excitement of screaming at one’s wife, of gossip, and watching our cities in flames. The sound of our wheels and wings speeding us from nowhere to nowhere but sparing us the exigencies of having to be somewhere. It was the garbled silences administered by Valium. The graffiti over our walls, the two fingers everywhere thrust in the air… A man on the top of Scafell, plugged into ‘The Archers’”.

    Wainwright: an Apostle of the Sublime

    Yet awe is all around on the path to the Roof of England. We just need to put our phones in airplane mode, leave our earbuds at home, step away from the crowd, fall silent, and drink it all in. And if you really want spiritual transcendence, take a detour off the beaten path where it veers left for Lingmell Col…

    “By going forward, a profound hollow is entered amongst a litter of boulders and scree fallen from the enclosing crags. The surroundings are awesome. Pikes Crag soars into the sky on the left, ahead is the gap of Mickledore, topping long fans of scree and rocky debris, and towering on the right the tilted cliffs of Scafell Crag dominate the scene and seem to threaten collapse. This grim fastness is Hollow Stones, and its deep confinement between high and near-vertical walls of rock will make sufferers from claustrophobia and others of timid disposition decidedly uncomfortable.”

    Scafell Crag and Shamrock from across the scree of Hollow Stones
    Scafell Crag and Shamrock from across the scree of Hollow Stones

    The words are those of Alfred Wainwright, whose Pictorial Guides continue to inspire legions of fellwalkers. Of Hollow Stones, Wainwright penned perhaps the perfect expression of the Sublime…

    “A man may stand on the lofty ridge of Mickledore, or in the green hollow beneath the precipice amidst the littered debris and boulders fallen from it, and witness the sublime architecture of buttresses and pinnacles soaring into the sky, silhouetted against racing clouds or, often, tormented by writhing mists, and, as in a great cathedral, lose all his conceit. It does a man good to realise his own insignificance in the general scheme of things, and that is his experience here.”

    The Pinnacle and Pisgah Buttress from the top of Deep Gill
    Scafell Crag: The Pinnacle and Pisgah Buttress from the top of Deep Gill

    At the conclusion to his final Pictorial Guides, AW lists his six best Lakeland mountains. Number one is Scafell Pike; curiously, its sibling, Scafell doesn’t make the list. And yet for all the magnificence of Pikes Crag and Pulpit Rock, Wainwright wasn’t looking at the Pike when he wrote than beatific paragraph, he was facing Scafell.

    “The most formidable of these natural bastions is Scafell Crag which towers in supreme majesty above a stony hollow in the fellside: a vertical wall of clean rock some 500 ft high, divided by gullies into five buttresses, the whole appearing to be totally unassailable…

    “The aspect of the Crag from below is intimidating, even frightening, and it is so palpably impossible for common or garden mortals to scale that none dares venture up the rocks from the safe ground at the foot, readily acknowledging that those who do so are a superior breed. But Nature has provided a breach in the defences of the Crag by which active walkers may gain access to its innermost secrets, make intimate acquaintance with magnificent and spectacular rock scenery, and emerge unscathed at the top: an achievement earned only by arduous effort and much expenditure of energy. This is the only route on Scafell Crag where walkers can tread safely without encountering serious climbing and without danger to life and limb. Lord’s Rake and the West Wall Traverse are special privileges of the fellwalker and make him feel that perhaps he is not too inferior after all.” (Fellwalking with Wainwright).

    Whatever his head counselled, Wainwright’s heart belonged to Scafell Crag. I’m here with Chris Butterfield, a Wainwright archivist who has amassed a vast collection of the author’s books, letters, sketches, and printing materials, and our friend Richard Jennings, who runs the brilliant Lakeland Routes website. Chris has climbed Scafell before, but never by Lord’s Rake and the West Wall Traverse, and he has come here today in search of awe.

    A Pagan Place: Lord’s Rake and the West Wall Traverse

    Chris looks puzzled as Richard leaves the rough path to Mickledore and starts up a stiff fan of scree, heading for what looks like an impenetrable wall of crag. Wainwright’s breach in the defences is concealed from view, making the act of striking out for Shamrock a fitting leap of faith. The gradient is steeper than it first appears, and the scree is loose and shifts easily underfoot. Ahead the soaring wall appears to grow taller with every step. At its centre is the Scafell Pinnacle. In 1898, O. G. Jones and G. T. Walker broke climbing convention by shunning cracks and gullies and heading straight up its rock face. Five years later, an attempt to do something similar lead to the deaths of R. W. Broadrick, A. E. W. Garrett, H. L. Jupp, and S. Ridsdale. As we climb beside the foot of Shamrock, an unobtrusive cross carved into the rock comes into focus. It is a humble memorial to these four men, a cenotaph, standing not in a mossy graveyard but on the mountain where they fell—the ground they considered hallowed.

    The cross at the foot of Lord's Rake
    The cross at the foot of Lord’s Rake

    As we near the cross at the base of the Pinnacle, the sham dissolves. Proximity reveals what the angle of approach had kept concealed— like the parting of the Red Sea, a navigable channel appears between these tidal waves of rock—a steep scree and boulder strewn gully separating Scafell Crag from its illusory shoulder, Shamrock. Here is Wainwright’s breach in the defences—this is Lord’s Rake.

    Chris and Richard ascending Lord's Rake
    Chris and Richard ascending Lord’s Rake

    We start up this wild craggy corridor, clinging to its jagged walls in forlorn hope of solid footing. Halfway up, a striking feature appears on the left—a chockstone blocks the entrance to Deep Gill creating a cave, vivid green with moss, flanked with scales of slate, like a gaping reptilian mouth. Deep Gill is the inner sanctum of Wainwright’s great cathedral, and this is its gatehouse, but the way in is a rock climb above the chockstone, mere mortals like us must settle for a side entrance, albeit one of immense grandeur.

    The cave at the bottom of Deep Gill
    The cave at the bottom of Deep Gill
    The cave in Deep Gill above the chockstone of the first
    A second cave lies above the first in Deep Gill. Its first two pitches are rock climbs

    The top of the first section of the Rake is littered with large boulders, the remains of a larger chockstone that fell and shattered in 2016. If you scramble the boulders, you can follow the Rake through four more distinct sections, two descents and two more ascents (all striking though none as dramatic as this first). However, to do so would be to enter the nave of the great cathedral and walk straight out into the cloisters. To approach the altar, means climbing out of the nave into the chancel. A faint trod forms a natural staircase up the left wall. Richard leads the way up on to the West Wall Traverse—a footpath along a slender shelf above Deep Gill, which rises to meet the Traverse.

    Chris and Richard pause for breath by the boulders at the top of the 1st section of Lord's Rake
    Chris and Richard pause for breath by the boulders at the top of the 1st section of Lord’s Rake
    Richard leads the way onto the West Wall Traverse below the towering Pinnacle
    Richard leads the way onto the West Wall Traverse below the towering Pinnacle – photo by Chris Butterfield

    Here, eyes are compelled upward to the imperious tower of the Pinnacle. Wainwright’s simile of a great cathedral captures the sudden soaring rush of awe and wonder it instils; but to me this is a pagan place—a colossal savage temple. The Pinnacle looks like a vast hooded hawk—an immense stone idol, humbling the beholder. As you steal along the Traverse in hushed reverence, it only appears to grow in stature, until eventually you see how the cleft of Jordon Gap separates it from the muscular mass of Pisgah Buttress.

    The Pinnacle and Pisgah Buttress from the top of Deep Gill
    The Pinnacle and Pisgah Buttress from the top of Deep Gill

    The last pitch of Deep Gill is an easy scramble. In trying to maintain three points of contact, I’m given a stinging reminder of why this volcanic rock was highly prized for Stone-Age axe heads. I slice my finger on a razor-sharp stone. It’s a paper cut but enough for Chris to spot my trail of blood on the scree. I hope Krampus will be placated with this offering and not demand a greater sacrifice.

    Awe inspiring rock scenery in Deep Gill
    Awe inspiring rock scenery in Deep Gill

    The wall at the end of gill is not high but looks green and slippery, only when you’re right in front of it does a hidden exit appear on your left—an easy haul over a rock step and out through a dry channel. We track round the head of the Gill to feast our eyes on the magnificent spectacle of Deep Gill Buttress, the west wall of the gill, rising imperiously from the ravine to the majestic summit of Symonds Knott.

    The Pinnacle and Pisgah Buttress from the ground above Deep Gill
    The Pinnacle and Pisgah Buttress separated by the Jordan Gap
    Deep Gill Buttress rising from the depths of Deep Gill
    Deep Gill Buttress rising from the depths of Deep Gill

    A slender grassy shoulder leads to Pisgah Buttress, and we pull ourselves up the rocks to its top. Across the plunging ravine, the West Wall looks even more monumental, and to our right across the cleft of Jordan Gap is the summit of the Pinnacle. I lack the climbing skills to make the sheer descent and re-ascent, but it is thrilling to stand so close. I spy the modest cairn on its summit and recall O. G. Jones’s mention of a tobacco tin stashed discretely below it, in which Victorian climbers left their calling cards. I wonder if it still there. Chris is gazing around enrapt. The view of Great Gable is astounding.

    The summit of the Pinnacle from Pisgah Buttress
    The summit of the Pinnacle from Pisgah Buttress
    The author on Pisgah Buttress
    The author on Pisgah Buttress – photo by Richard Jennings

    The Savage Temple and the Roof of England

    Wainwright declared, “The face of Scafell Crag is the grandest sight in the district, and if only the highest point of the fell were situated on the top of Deep Gill Buttress, perched above the tremendous precipices of stone, it would be the best summit of all”. The fact that Symonds Knott is not the summit, and the real summit is offset, somewhat removed from this sublime drama, was a disappointment to him, and the fact that much of the rest of Scafell lacks the awe-inspiring majesty at its heart, is perhaps why Wainwright, the accountant, the objective quantifier, marked it down in relation to its marginally higher sibling. But for Wainwright the poet, the romantic, the eloquent apostle of the sublime, this “towering rampart of shadowed crags” is “the greatest display of natural grandeur in the district, a spectacle of massive strength and savage wildness… an awesome and humbling scene.”

    Deep Gill Buttress
    Deep Gill Buttress / Symonds Knott

    Chris has an early draft of AW’s Fellwalking with a Camera. It contains a page on the West Walk Traverse which was dropped from the final publication (much against Wainwright’s wishes) as the photograph was slightly out of focus. In the text he describes Deep Gill as “the most enthralling place in Lakeland”.

    We wander back to the head of the gill from where Wainwright sketched the Pinnacle and Pisgah Buttress, including himself bottom right as “the Oracle”. Last year Chris published a book called Wainwright Memories in which he takes Andrew Nicol, Wainwright’s publisher back to the scenes of several photoshoots and retraces a holiday the pair took with their wives in Scotland. Andrew had the unenviable task of persuading AW to cooperate with publicity initiatives, but he soon learned to broach such matters the right way, and a deep respect and friendship grew between the two men. The book is a warm, touching, and nostalgic insight into that friendship. One of its themes involves recreating old photographs from the Scottish trip and Lakeland locations, with Andrew looking remarkably unchanged and Chris or his wife Priscilla, or her sister, Angela, or Angela’s husband, Glenn standing in for AW or Betty or Andrew’s wife, Bernice. We are certainly not going to let Chris get away without recreating Wainwright’s iconic Deep Gill sketch now. Richard takes charge, fishing out a copy of The Southern Fells and painstakingly arranging Chris’s position.

    Chris recreates Wainwright's iconic sketch
    Chris recreates Wainwright’s iconic sketch – photo by Richard Jennings

    Once done, and after a brief visit to the true summit, we pick our way down the eroded scree of a natural amphitheatre to the puddle that is Foxes Tarn, then scramble down its gully to ascend Mickledore from the Eskdale side. After gazing in hushed reverence at the “the sublime architecture of buttresses and pinnacles soaring into the sky”, we venture back through Hollow Stones, to join the hordes descending the “tourist route” from Scafell Pike.

    I understand why AW cited Scafell Pike as number one on his list of six best Lakeland mountains. There is something special about the feeling that you are standing on the Roof of England—the nation’s highest ground. I remember being there in the golden light of a winter afternoon, with snow on the ground and the low sun bathing Yeastyrigg Crags and Bowfell in an ethereal amber glow. Despite the biting cold, everywhere emanated a magical warmth. It felt like hallowed ground.

    And yet, it was only when I turned my head that my pulse truly quickened. Scafell had fallen into shadow, and across Mickledore, Scafell Crag reared like a mighty black tower, fierce and intimidating, the realm of Krampus—a savage temple at the sublime heart of Lakeland.

    Further Reading:

    Chris’s book Wainwright Memories is a must for Wainwright enthusiasts and is available from his website:

    Richard’s Lakeland Routes website is a treasure trove of detailed trip reports and local history. Well worth checking out:

    https://www.lakelandroutes.uk

    Acclaimed nature writer, James Perrin has called Andrew Terrill’s On Sacred Ground, “the newest classic of our outdoor literature”. On Sacred Ground and its prequel, The Ground Beneath My Feet are available from Amazon:

    John Pepper’s Cockley Beck – a Celebration of Lakeland in Winter is an enthralling account of the author’s rejuvenating experiences, overwintering in a Spartan Duddon Valley cottage. Robert MacFarlane has called it “one of the great classics of British nature writing”. It is out of print but secondhand copies can be found. First published in 1984 by Element Books Ltd, Shaftesbury. I believe there was also a later edition by the History Press.

    Norman Nicholson’s The Lakers is a breathtaking distillation of the work and motivations of all the early Lake District writers, interwoven with Nicholson’s own beautifully evocative prose. It is also out of print, but secondhand copies are relatively easy to find. First published in 1955 by Robert Hale, but a softback edition was published in 1995 by Cicerone.


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      Thorstein – A Viking’s Adventure In Lakeland

      Thorstein of the Mere is a fictional tale of how Coniston Water got its old name. It blends bloody history and ghostly legend in a compelling picture of life in Dark Age Lakeland. Inspired by Collingwood’s novel, I walk from Beacon Tarn to the Giant’s Grave in the footsteps of Celts and Vikings.

      Legends of The Northmen

      The son of a giant, and a shapeshifter with the ability to change sex, Loki was a companion to Odin and Thor, but his penchant for playing tricks would prove his downfall. When he tricked the blind god, Höd into killing Balder, the most loved of all the gods, his punishment was severe.

      Giant's Grave. Woodland
      Giant’s Grave. Woodland

      Loki was bound to a rock with the entrails of his son. Above, hung a great serpent that would drip venom on him. To spare his torment, Loki’s wife would catch the venom in a bowl, but when the bowl was full, she would have to leave his side to empty it. While she was gone, the venom would splash onto Loki’s face. His spasms of pain were the cause of the earthquakes.

      The story is a central tenet of Norse mythology, but intriguingly, it is depicted alongside Christian scenes of the crucifixion on a tall sandstone cross in the churchyard at Gosforth, near Wastwater. The Gosforth cross is intriguing testimony to the blending of Celtic Christian and pagan Viking cultures in 10th century Cumbria.

      The reasons for the Viking invasion are themselves misted in legend. They concern the mythical Danish king, Ragnar Lodbrok, who distinguished himself through many raids on the east coast. Ragnar’s sons, Bjorn Ironside, Ubba, Sigmund Snake-in-the-Eye, Halfdan, and Ivar the Boneless gained such fame as warriors that their father felt compelled to outdo them. Ragnar bragged he would conquer Britain with just two boats, but his efforts were thwarted by Ella, King of Northumbria, who executed Ragnar by throwing him into a snake pit. To avenge their father’s death, Ivar, Halfdan, and Ubba raised a large army and set sail. 

      On arrival in Britain, Ivar declined to fight and headed for Northumbria to make peace with Ella. In return, he asked for as much land as he could cover with a bull hide. The king agreed, but Ivar was cunning. He stretched the hide as thinly as it would go then cut it into fine strips. Sewn together, they created a cord large enough to encircle York, which duly became his Viking capital, Jorvik. Ivar then sent for his brothers and their armies. They defeated Ella and executed him by carving the blood eagle into his back (a gruesome torture, which we can only hope existed solely in the imaginations of the saga writers).

      But Ivar the Boneless and Halfdan step out of the pages of mythology and on to the pages of history when they arrive in Britain. In 865 AD, they really did lead the Great Pagan Army that proceeded to conquer the kingdoms of East Anglia, Mercia, and Northumbria. Viking ambitions to conquer Wessex were finally thwarted by Alfred The Great in 878 at the battle of Edington. A settlement was reached in which the east of England—East Anglia, East Mercia (East Midlands) and Northumbria (which included Yorkshire)—would be under Danish rule, while Wessex, and West Mercia would remain Anglo-Saxon.

      But Cumbria was not part of England. It was part of Strathclyde, an independent Celtic kingdom which stretched up above the Solway to where Glasgow now stands. It had largely resisted incursions by the Saxons, the Scoti, and the Danes. The Vikings that settled along its coastal plain were not Danes but Norwegians, arriving by way of the Orkneys, Dublin, and the Isle of Man. While undoubtedly fearsome warriors, they do not seem to have shared the desire to subjugate and rule. They were farmers and frontiersmen seeking new lands, or perhaps, their independence from a recently unified Norway. They helped shape the Cumbrian landscape by clearing forests for pasture; they may even have introduced the Herdwick sheep. In such turbulent times, their desire to self-govern was similar to that of the indigenous Celts, and they learned to live alongside each other, if not in perfect harmony, at least in a loose tactical coalition of common interest.

      Coniston Water from The Beacon
      Coniston Water from The Beacon

      A Saga of the Northmen in Lakeland

      Such is the world that provides the setting for W. G. Collingwood’s 1895 novel, Thorstein of the Mere. The eponymous mere is Coniston Water, and the novel is Collingwood’s imagined tale of how the lake got its original name, Thurston Water. Its subtitle, A Saga Of The Northmen In Lakeland, is a mission statement. Collingwood was a scholar of the Norse sagas, and an archaeologist who excavated several Lakeland sites. His novel is an attempt to credibly portray what life must have been like in Cumbria in the 10th Century, both for the Vikings and the Celts. The principal characters are imagined, but the story is woven around four historical events—the treaty in Bakewell (920), the Treaty of Dacre (927), the battle of Brunanburh (937), and the battle for Cumbria (945)—that helped shape Anglo-Saxon England and Brittonic Cumbria.

      When Alfred the Great died, he was succeeded by his son, Edward the Elder, who succeeded in driving the Danes out of East Anglia and Mercia until only Northumbria remained under the Danelaw. In 920, Edward summoned the other British kings and chieftains, including Ragnald—the Viking king—and Owain—the Celtic king of Strathclyde—to a meeting in Bakewell, where he persuaded them to accept his overlordship in return for peace and the retention of their kingdoms.

      Thorstein is a young boy at this time, growing up at Greenodd, by the mouth of the River Crake. The South Lakes is home to several Norwegian settlements, centred on Ulfar’s Town (Ulverston). Ulfar is a friend and neighbour of Thorstein’s father, Swein, and his town acts as a meeting place for the Thing—an assembly where the local Northmen agree common laws and discuss trade and harvests. Further north is another Norwegian settlement under the control of their kinsman, Ketel. Ulfar, Swein, and Ketel, are summoned to Bakewell alongside Owain. Swein has no argument with the Saxon king but becomes enraged by the presence of Ragnald the Dane, an old enemy. Edward’s diplomacy prevails, however, and he persuades Swein to agree, if not to Edward’s overlordship, then at least to peace.

      Thorstein’s early years are relatively idyllic, growing up in a fine Viking timber house, learning to till the land and look after sheep and cattle, playing in the river and dreaming of setting sail and claiming new lands. Then in 927, one of the Celtic fell-folk, a red-headed giant of a man, appears from the forest to deliver a burnt arrow. It is a summons. Swein had heard from chapmen (itinerant tinkers) that Edward and Ragnald had both died and been succeeded by their sons, Athelstan and Sigtrygg. Sigtrygg had tried to extend the boundaries of the Danelaw, but Athelstan had been quick to push him back. But now it seems that Sigtrygg too has died and Athelstan has conquered York to proclaim himself King of all England. For fear the Saxon king’s ambitions will not stop there, King Constantine of Scotland and Owain are mobilising against him. The Lakeland Northmen are urged to join them. The giant will return in several days to lead them over the mountains to join the host.

      Wool Knott, Blawith Common
      Wool Knott, Blawith Common

      ~

      W. G. Collingwood

      At the Ruskin Museum in Coniston three of Collingwood’s watercolours hang alongside Ruskin’s own. Collingwood was Ruskin’s assistant—his aide du camp as Ruskin called him—and founder of the museum. Some think that Collingwood would have achieved more had he stepped from Ruskin’s shadow, but these paintings are not overshadowed. One of the Coniston Coppermines Valley, brooding clouds swirling around the Bell, holds my attention longer than anything else in the room. Collingwood was highly attuned to the Lakeland landscape, and his vivid descriptions in the novel are as evocative as his paintings.

      Coniston Mountains across Blawith Common
      Coniston Mountains across Blawith Common

      ~

      The Giant’s Demand

      The Celtic giant leads the Northmen over the wild moorland of Blawith Common, to Hawkshead and the banks of Windermere, where they find the ruins of Galava, the Roman city of Ambleside—its former magnificence is evident even though its buildings are crumbling. From there, they follow the old Roman road past Rydal and Grasmere to Thirlmere, then east from Blencathra to Dacre near Eamont where their massed forces gather. But they are no match for Athelstan’s Saxon army, which is already encamped, and to avoid a bloodbath, they accept Athelstan’s overlordship and pledge that none shall attack their neighbours.

      Beacon Tarn from Wool Knott
      Beacon Tarn, Blawith Common

      On their return to Greenodd, Swein asks his Irish wife, Unna to converse with the Celt and ask what gift they can give him as a reward for guiding them through the mountains. His reply shocks them. As political insurance, he wants to foster one of their children. Swein refuses, but over the coming months, children of thralls (servants) and shepherds go missing and are found dead in the woods, and the Northmen remain on high alert.

      The worry of the fell-folk slowly subsides, but the peace with Athelstan is fragile, not least because the Danish King Guthferth Ivarson of Dublin (who was not part of the treaty) uses Cumbria as a through route to mount raids on York. Aware of how cut-off they from their kinsmen further north, the various Norwegian communities agree to congregate at an annual Althing. As a venue, they choose Legburthwaite at the head of St John’s in the Vale—the spot where they parted after the Treaty of Dacre.

      Thorstein Finds the Mere

      Meanwhile, Thorstein has grown into a strong and curious thirteen-year-old, thirsty for adventure. He and his brothers know “by hearsay of wide lakes among the fells, lying all alone for the first adventurer to take and hold”, and Thorstein imagines that if he could only track the Crake, he might discover “the great water”. Swein has warned his children to always keep in sight of home, “but he might as well have warned the smoke not to go out of the chimney”. Thorstein persuades his elder brother, Hundi, to go with him, and the two boys set off up the valley of the Crake. There are none of gentle pastures that grace its banks today. The shores are thick with forest, and their journey becomes a demanding ghyll scramble. By the time they reach the spot where Lowick bridge now stands, Hundi has had enough and turns back, but Thorstein battles on alone, climbing Lowick force and navigating the swamp beyond until, “when the wood thinned, and the waterway broadened, and the world grew brighter, and lo, beyond, a great gleam of blue, and a blaze of golden sky”.

      Coniston Water from The Beacon
      Coniston Water from The Beacon

      Thorstein has discovered his mere and sleeps like a squirrel in the boughs of a great oak. In the morning, he sets off for Greenodd to fetch witnesses so he can claim the lake as his territory, but before he has gone far, he is hit on the head with a cudgel. When he comes round, he is being dragged through the wood by the red-headed giant, and his henchmen. The giant has his fosterling, and Thorstein is about to enter the world of the fell-folk.

      Juniper, Blawith Common
      Juniper, Blawith Common

      Blawith Common – Home of the Celtic Fell-Folk

      “BEYOND the heather was the giant’s home, on the fell between Blawith and Broughton. On one hand were the waste wet mosses of the moor, and on the other hand, far below, the great flats of Woodlands, surrounded by the tossing rocky range of Dunnerdale fells, from Brimfell on the right hand away down to Black Comb and the glittering sea.”

      In describing this terrain, Collingwood the storyteller morphs briefly into Collingwood the archaeologist:

      “Upon these moors, here and there you can find the walls of their buildings, and even in little corners what may be chambers, or store-houses, or fire-spots, or what not, curiously built of great stones: but all quite different from the farm buildings of our own people, and plainly the relics of an earlier race. Within these homesteads there are heaps that are round and hollow in the midst, with a gap for a doorway, and edged with stone within and without. Though the top of it is fallen in, one can see that such a ruin might have been a hut shaped like a beehive, and roofed over like those Pict-houses they tell of in other parts: high enough inside for a man to stand up in, and big enough for him to lie at length. When we dig into them, we find potsherds, and bones of their feasts, the charred stones and ashes of their fires, and now and then a scrap of iron or bronze, on the paving or along the skirting of the dry-stone wall. Also, hard by, one may light upon plenty of graves where the fell folk doubtless lie buried. Indeed, upon Blawith moor, under the Knott, there is a great barrow in which folk digging found burnt bones, and you can see the tall stone that stood at the head still standing there. They call this place the Giant’s Grave: and old neighbours tell that it is the burial place of the last of the giants who dwelt in that moorland village, and that he was shot with an arrow on that very fell side, and so was killed, and his race ended.”

      Giant's Grave. Woodland
      Giant’s Grave. Woodland
      Ancient Settlement
      Ancient Settlement

      ~

      Cudgel-wielding giants no longer stalk Blawith Common. Nor are you likely to meet armed Northmen coming from Ulfar’s Town, although you may encounter walkers making a similar trek along the Cumbria Way.

      In the early half-light of an October morning, Beacon Tarn is all mine, its pewter waters, a tranquil pool of timeless memory, hemmed with soft banks of bracken, muted colour gradually returning with the daylight, twilight tones turning to autumnal tints of mulberry, russet, and mustard. Collingwood once taught his protégé, Arthur Ransome, that the unique spirit of a place has as much to do with layers of memory as with the rocks and trees, and this ancient landscape is steeped in the ambience of his novel.

      Beacon Tarn
      Beacon Tarn
      Beacon Tarn

      I follow the Cumbria Way beneath Wool Knott as far as Tottlebank Heights then track right. When I reach the far end of Blawith Knott, the red sea of bracken parts to reveal an expanse of scrubby grass and scattered boulders, some natural erratics, but one, at least, is a solitary standing stone, marking the ancient grave of a giant. A little further on are the remains of a settlement, just as Collingwood describes.

      Giant's Grave. Woodland
      Giant’s Grave. Woodland
      Ancient Settlement
      Ancient Settlement
      Ancient Settlement
      Ancient Settlement

      As a Northman, Thorstein is appalled by the primitive crudity of their huts, their semi-wild cattle, and the meekness of their Christian religion, worshipped with simple wooden crosses. But the giant’s daughter takes a shine to him, and with time, a bond between them grows.

      “The child who had nursed him gave him to understand that her name was Raineach, that is Fern: and indeed she was not unlike the bracken when it is red in autumn, and she was slender and strong and wild as its tall fronds that smother up the hollows among the boulders on the moors.”

      Boulders near Giant's Grave
      Boulders and bracken near Giant’s Grave

      From the summit of Blawith Knott, I look out across the wild expanse to the Coniston mountains, which emerge like shadows from chiffon veils of cloud—the charcoal forms of spectral fells.  Beneath White Borran, two large ancient cairns lie shrouded in shoulder-high bracken, and sparse junipers stand like stunted sentinels.  I climb to the rocky summit of Wool Knott, and gaze over Beacon Tarn, slate blue in breaking sun, to the fiery flanks of Beacon fell beyond. From the shore, I climb to the top of the Beacon, and suddenly below, there is the long slender body of Thorstein’s mere, cool and languid, under wooded slopes.

      Coniston Water from The Beacon
      Coniston Water from The Beacon

      ~

      The Battle for Cumbria

      Thorstein spends three winters with the fell-folk. With time, they appear less uncouth, and he learns their prowess as hunters and fishermen. His bond with Raineach strengthens until the two are inseparable, and although he still dreams of absconding, he now imagines taking her with him. In the end, it is Raineach who instigates their escape.

      It is 937, and the peace has broken, Constantine and Owain are again rising against Athelstan, and this time the Irish Danes have joined their alliance. The Lakeland Northmen will fight alongside them. Promising Thorstein the opportunity to see his father, the giant and a few of his men take the boy over the fells to Thirlmere, where they encamp with their kin in the Iron Age fort at Castle Crag on The Benn. Raineach follows against her father’s wishes.

      Castle Crag fort, The Benn
      Castle Crag fort, The Benn

      The Battle of Brunanburh is an overwhelming victory for Athelstan. Owain is killed and his throne passes to his son, Domhnall. Swein dies too. The giant had meant to keep Thorstein as a ransom in case of trouble with the Northmen. Now with the boar dead, the piglet is a liability, and the giant means to kill him, but Raineach overhears and alerts Thorstein. The two make their break for freedom over the fells, arriving back at Greenodd in time for Swein’s wake.

      What ensues is an engrossing tale of adventure, love, and betrayal. A twist sees Thorstein declared an outlaw and forced to take refuge on Peel Island in the middle of his mere. The real truth behind his transgression disseminates, however, and Hundi and his friends prevail on Thorstein to attend the Althing to clear his name.

      Outside the sanctity of the Althing, Thorstein’s outlaw status means he is vulnerable to attack. As such, he takes a circuitous route by way of St Patrick’s Dale (Patterdale). Here, he meets two battle-bruised Celtic warriors. They inform him that Edmund has joined forces with Constantine’s successor, Malcolm, to invade Strathclyde. He has Domhnall’s army in retreat. Domhnall now plans to lure the Scots and Saxons into a narrow mountain pass, where his men can hide in the wooded slopes and ambush the advancing Saxons by rolling great boulders on them. Domhnall is heading for the Thirlmere, right where the Northmen are innocently gathering for their Althing. Thorstein must get to Legburthwaite early to warn them.

      The battle for Cumbria in 945 is as shrouded in legend as the story of Ragnar Lodbrok. According to the myth, Domhnall (corrupted to Dunmail by the Anglo-Saxon tongue) is slain by the Saxons and buried at Dunmail Raise. To keep his crown from Saxon hands, a few of his elite bodyguards, seize the crown, climb the slope of Raise Beck, and fling it into Grisedale Tarn. Every year, Dunmail’s ghost army returns to retrieve the crown and bid Dunmail rise again.

      Historians concede that a battle probably did take place. It is likely Edmund won and gifted the rule of Strathclyde to Malcolm, but it is also likely that Domhnall survived. Later, he may even have regained control of his kingdom.

      In Collingwood’s version, Thorstein crosses Striding Edge and experiences a premonition of the coming bloodshed—a vision as ghostly as the legend that would grow up around it. Ultimately, however, events unfold in line with the historical narrative, albeit with a little poetic flourish—Domhnall casts his own crown into Grisedale Tarn as he melts into the mountain mist with Aluin, the woman who has been his undoing.

      Grisedale Tarn
      Grisedale Tarn

      To learn Aluin’s story, and the fate of Thorstein and the Northmen, you will have to read the novel. Not only is it a fine, swashbuckling adventure, but as a credible imagining of life in Dark Age Cumbria, it is hard to beat.

      I am not alone in that opinion. Arthur Ransome said this:

      “For myself, the Lake Country and my own childhood would not have been what they were if I had not known Mr. W.J. Collingwood’s ‘Thorstein of the Mere’”.

      Sources/Further Reading

      A translation of The Saga of Ragnar Lodbrok and his Sons:

      http://www.germanicmythology.com/FORNALDARSAGAS/ThattrRagnarsSonar.html

      In this fascinating edition of Countrystride, archeologist, Steve Dickinson talks about the Gosforth cross, the Vikings in Lakeland, and a possible lost kingdom:

      https://www.countrystride.co.uk/single-post/countrystride-90-the-vikings-in-cumbria

      A little more on the Battle of Brunanburh from Diane McIlmoyle. (Please note the Giant’s grave Diane mentions is not the same as the one in my article). Diane’s article also includes links at the end to further posts of hers on the Treaty of Eamont Bridge (Dacre) and Dunmail’s battle with Edmund and Malcolm:


      The following books were also very helpful and well worth reading:

      Schama, Simon. 2000: A History of Britain, at the edge of the world? London: BBC Worldwide.

      Eastham, Paul. 2019: Huge and Mighty Forms, Why Cumbria Makes Remarkable People. Cockermouth: Fletcher Christian Books.

      Carruthers, F. J. 1979: People called CUMBRI. London: Robert Hale. 


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        Sailor, Spy: The Revolutionary Roots of Swallows and Amazons

        Inspired by idyllic childhood holidays on Coniston Water, Swallows and Amazons turned Arthur Ransome into a national treasure, but a decade earlier, he’d been branded a political pariah for his radical bulletins from Bolshevik Russia. A friend of Lenin and Trotsky, and a secret agent for British Intelligence, could Ransome’s revolutionary experiences underpin his classic story? I head for Coniston to find out…

        In the early hush of this Torver Sunday, a song thrush grubs in the grass of the verge. I escape the road through a kissing gate where a fingerpost points the one-and-a-half miles to Coniston Water.

        Buttercup and red clover line the path. Dog roses entwine hazel, and white lace doilies of elder blossom grace the leafy canopy. Silver light promises brightening skies, and as I look northwest to the fells, The Old Man of Coniston is a drab olive shadow, emerging from soft grey cloud like teased wool. 

        Red clover by the Torver path
        Dog rose by the Torver path

        Foxgloves stand like sentries before the whitewashed walls of Hoathwaite farmhouse. From here on, the way runs through campsites, abuzz with the sound of excited awakenings. Sausages sizzle on camping stoves, cooking smells entwine with coffee and canvas. Adults perch contentedly on camping stools, quietly absorbing the ambience, while children run around vigorously role-playing pirates or explorers or whatever scenarios their lakeside holiday has fired in their imaginations, their iPads and phones for now abandoned.

        Tree roots beside the Cumbria Way
        Tree roots beside the Cumbria Way

        Through the trees is a crystal shimmer. I cross the lattice of gnarly roots that line this stretch of the Cumbria Way like the veins of a limb, and stand on Torver jetty, gazing out on the dark, inscrutable waters, gilded with sunlight and ridged with ripples like intricate engravings on a tray of antique silver.

        Torver jetty, Coniston Water
        Torver jetty, Coniston Water

        Coniston Water is a dividing line between two very different landscapes, defined by the bedrock on which they rest. Writing in 1949, Cumbrian writer and poet, Norman Nicholson describes this contrast vividly:

        “As you get out of the train, you find yourself on a vaulted platform, with a large round arch at the terminus end. Through the arch, looking so near that you feel you must be staring through binoculars, are the Yewdale Crags, along the flanks of Wetherlam. These are vicious crags, not very high, but fanged like a tiger, with slaverings of scree and bright green whiskers of larch and rowan. You walk forward and the arch widens and you see farther up Yewdale, with Raven Crag at its throat, and the road winding beneath Tom Heights on the way to Ambleside. All this is volcanic. Then you step through the arch, and Coniston village is below you, a row of villas and a neat wire fence leading to the lake. And beyond the lake, the wavy, unemphatic moors of Silurian rock behind Brantwood. The lake itself is of a dull, drab green, like the paint on the railings of Sunday-schools, and it looks uncomfortably damp—the lakes of the Silurian country always look damp. Down the lake you see a quiet pastoral country, greener and more hospitable than the Brantwood fells, full of dimples and hollows, and little misty trees and farms. Wooden railings step out into the water like children hand-in-hand, paddling. Nevertheless, the Brantwood shore, which looks so dull from this side of the lake, is full of woods and ferns and birds and little sykes with golden saxifrage among the stones.” .

        (Cumberland and Westmorland, 1949)
        Yewdale Fells
        Yewdale Fells

        That the two sides of the lake should differ so dramatically feels almost portentous; they echo the two sides in the public perception of another writer, one for whom the lake would become a muse.

        “It had its beginning long, long ago when, as children, my brother, my sisters and I spent most of our holidays on a farm at the south end of Coniston. We played in or on the lake or on the hills above it, finding friends in the farmers and shepherds and charcoal-burners whose smoke rose from the coppice woods along the shore. We adored the place. Coming to it we used to run down to the lake, dip our hands in and wish, as if we had just seen the new moon.

        Going away from it we were half drowned in tears. While away from it, as children and as grown-ups, we dreamt about it. No matter where I was, wandering about the world, I used at night to look for the North Star and, in my mind’s eye, could see the beloved skyline of great hills beneath it. Swallows and Amazons grew out of those old memories. I could not help writing it. It almost wrote itself.” 

        So wrote Arthur Ransome in 1958 of the novel that would turn him into a national treasure.

        Wetherlam Lad Howes ridge from the Brantwood shore
        Wetherlam Lad Howes ridge from the Brantwood shore

        Published in 1930, Swallows and Amazons’ reception marked a remarkable turnaround in Ransome’s public standing; just a decade earlier, the Establishment had been keen to paint him as a political pariah.

        “Mr. Ransome is a partisan. He backed the Bolsheviks from the very first and is concerned, under the guise of impartiality which he does not possess, to defend them through thick and thin.”

        Thus argued a reviewer in Justice, appraising Ransome’s 1919 work, “Six Weeks in Russia”. Justice was the journal of the Social Democratic Federation, which would become the British Socialist Party. Right-wingers were less generous. Colonel Alfred Knox, The British Military attaché, declared that Ransome should be “shot like a dog” for his Bolshevik praising articles. 

        Ransome was living in St Petersburg (then Petrograd) at the time of the Russian Revolution, and he wrote a series of articles for the Daily News praising Lenin and Trotsky and condemning the British government for backing the White Russian counter-revolutionaries. For a British Establishment who, in 1918, were forced to concede the vote to women and to working class men, and who were threatened by the rise of left wing politics, Ransome’s articles were a thorn in the side. But how Ransome came to be in Russia in the first place, and perhaps even his romantic fervour for revolution, may have owed much to his relationship with his father, and, as Paul Eastham argues in Huge and Mighty Forms, perhaps even to a particular incident here on Coniston Water.

        Eastham writes,

        “As a young boy, Arthur Ransome learned a harsh lesson about bourgeois English life. While on a family holiday at High Nibthwaite on Coniston Water his father Cyril threw him into the lake to find out if he would naturally sink or swim. Arthur sank like a stone and refused all further aquatic instruction from his well-meaning but acerbic father who accused him of being an unteachable, effeminate ‘muff’. Appalled by a dreadful threat that he would not be allowed out in boats in future, the boy saved up his pocket money and taught himself the backstroke at Leeds Public Baths near the family home in three visits. When Arthur announced this achievement over breakfast, Cyril told Arthur not to tell lies and dragged him grimly to the baths to prove the truth. Arthur never truly forgave the aspersion cast on his honesty. His father’s despotism instilled in him a lifelong suspicion of authority and an even greater horror of rejection.”

        Coniston Water, inspiration for Swallows and Amazons
        Coniston Water

        His distrust of authority almost certainly deepened at school. Teachers at Old College Prep School in Windermere failed to recognise that Ransome was myopic and needed glasses. Instead, they thought him academically slow and labelled him a coward for failing to defend himself at boxing. While he gained a scholarship to Rugby School, he distinguished himself by gaining the lowest ever pass mark. Shortly afterwards, his father died of complications following a night-fishing accident. Young Arthur would be denied the opportunity to ever live up to his father’s expectations.

        Ransome became a writer, moving to London where he embraced the fashionably anti-establishment attitudes of the Bohemian movement and married Ivy Walker. The union was ill-judged. Walker was a genuine rebel who loved to shock. Ransome was a sentimentalist, who deep-down craved acceptance. Ivy’s lewdness and tantrums appalled him, and despite the birth of their daughter, Tabitha, their relationship soon became strained.

        As an aspiring author, Ransome’s break came when he was commissioned to write a biography of Oscar Wilde. Despite his publisher’s plea for discretion, Ransome included a salacious and questionable assertion that Lord Alfred Douglas had tempted Wilde away from the straight and narrow following his prosecution for homosexuality. Published in 1912, the book was a success, but Lord Douglas, who had since adopted Catholicism and renounced Wilde as “the greatest force for evil that has appeared in Europe during the last three hundred and fifty years”, was incensed and sued Ransome for libel. Wilde’s first lover, Robbie Ross came to Arthur’s aid, providing a crack team of lawyers who won the case on a technicality, bankrupting Douglas in the process. Ivy turned up every day in court to revel in the notoriety, but victory sat uneasily with Arthur, who ordered the offending passages to be expunged from future editions of the book, and soon afterwards, fled to St Petersburg to study Russian folklore, abandoning his wife and daughter.

        In 1915, Ransome published Old Peter’s Russian Tales, an anthology of 21 Russian fairy stories. With the onset of WWI a year earlier, however, Ransome found himself ideally placed to become a Russian correspondent to British newspapers, particularly the radical Daily News.

        St Petersburg
        St Petersburg
        St Petersburg

        The war took a huge toll on the Russian army, and by 1917, soldiers had begun to mutiny. Following the widespread unrest known as the February Revolution, Tsar Nicholas II was persuaded to abdicate. The monarchy was abolished and replaced with a Provisional Government, which represented the capitalists, but a rival institution known as the Petrograd Soviet, or workers’ council was formed to represent soldiers and workers. Ransome correctly anticipated that this was not the end of the story. In Sept 1917, he reported:

        “Extremism has been spreading fast and it had seemed as if the whole broad base of the Council of Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Delegates were slipping to the Left; while its Executive Committee clings to its moderate position and risks loss of support from below… Agreement between the Government and the Petrograd Council is impossible.”

        What Ransome didn’t anticipate was how quickly events would unfold, and he found himself marooned in England on a short visit when the Bolsheviks seized power in October. He needed to get back to Russia swiftly, but now Russia was a country difficult to enter. Fortunately, Ransome’s passage was smoothed by a senior diplomat whose children were big fans of Old Peter’s Russian Tales. On arrival, a further bit of serendipity fell in Ransome’s favour. The new Head of Security had chosen that moment to personally supervise the checking of bags, and it was he who opened Ransome’s. He was amused and intrigued to find it contained a book on fly-fishing, a book of Russian folklore, and the complete works of Shakespeare. He demanded to meet the bag’s owner and the two became friends, providing Ransome with introductions to the Bolshevik inner circle.

        Arthur moved into an apartment with Karl Radek, became Lenin’s chess partner, and obliged Trotsky in his new role as a military commander by scouring bookshops for works on military tactics. He also embarked on an affair with Trotsky’s 23-year-old secretary, Evgenia Shelepina.

        As a sentimentalist, Ransome was inspired by the idealism of revolution and enthusiastically embraced the notion that the people were shaking off centuries of tyranny. On hearing an inspiring speech by Trotsky in 1918, he wrote:

        “I would willingly give the rest of my life if it could be divided into minutes and given to men in England and France so that those of little faith who say the Russian revolution is discredited, should share for one minute that wonderful experience”.

        While many in the British establishment bristled at Ransome’s apparent Bolshevism, others saw the utility in having a man on the inside, especially when official diplomatic ties had been severed. Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour asked MI6 to recruit Ransome as an agent to act as a conduit to the Bolshevik leaders. Ransome obliged and was given the code name, S76, although his involvement remained an official secret until 1991. British Intelligence Found Ransome something of an anathema. His whimsical and emotional response to events led to some head-scratching and the worry that he might be acting as a double agent, although this suspicion was later discounted.

        Indeed, Bruce Lockhart, the British agent accused by Russia of plotting to assassinate Lenin, would later write in his memoirs: “Ransome was a Don Quixote with a walrus moustache, a sentimentalist who could always be relied upon to champion the underdog, and a visionary whose imagination had been fired by the revolution. He was on excellent terms with the Bolsheviks and frequently brought us information of the greatest value.”

        Ransome’s romantic take on the Revolution blindsided him to its brutal realities. In his attempt to paint the Bolsheviks as visionaries rather than butchers, he initially defended the formation of Cheka, the secret police, the suppression of free speech, and even execution without trial as political necessities in the face of western-backed aggression. However, as the body count began to grow, disbelief must have morphed into disillusion and distrust, and in 1919 Ransome was persuaded to leave, taking Evgenia with him.

        Ransome’s great nephew, Hugh Lupton told the Daily Mirror,

        “Their escape was like one of the Russian folk tales Uncle Arthur loved, fleeing from the city, sleeping in burnt-out barns, dodging death. He rescued the woman he loved.”

        Hugh also revealed that Evgenia did not leave empty handed:

        “Possibly unbeknown to Ransome, she smuggled out one million roubles’ worth of diamonds in her undergarments to sell to Bolshevik sympathisers in the West! They had probably been confiscated from the aristocracy.”

        Arthur and Evgenia settled first in Estonia, where they married after Arthur secured a divorce from Ivy in 1924. In 1925, spurred perhaps by homesickness for those beloved Lakeland landscapes, Ransome brought his new bride to England, and the couple settled at Low Ludderburn, on Cartmel Fell above Windermere.

        Coniston Water from the Brantwood shore
        Coniston Water from the Brantwood shore

        Ransome was concerned that his reputation might see him blackballed from the yachting club. By now he would fiercely deny that he had ever been a Bolshevik, claiming that you may as well call a botanist a beetle, because he writes about them. When British Special Branch chief, Basil Thompson demanded Ransome explain what his politics were. He replied, “fishing”.

        Moored boats at Uni of Birmingham boat house jetty, Coniston Water
        Moored boats at Uni of Birmingham boat house jetty, Coniston Water

        During this time, Arthur struck up an enduring friendship with the Altounyans, an Anglo-Armenian family who lived in Syria but often visited the Lakes. Their mother, Dora, was the daughter of his old friend and mentor, W. G. Collingwood, and their children, Taqui, Susan, Mavis (nicknamed Titty) and Roger would provide the inspiration for key characters in Swallows and Amazons.

        To many, Swallows and Amazons is a delightful tale of imaginative children on a Lakeland adventure, free from shackles of parental supervision. It enshrines typically British values of fairness, decency, and self-reliance. The children’s playground is a small island, a stone’s throw from the shore and in sight of the farmhouse where their mother is staying, but in their imaginations, they are by turns explorers and pirates, inhabiting a desert island in the middle of a mighty shark-infested sea.

        Some now see the novel as dated, a story of privileged children with a colonial mindset. They see themselves as great white adventurers and imagine the locals to be “natives”, but this reading misses the point. The children are merely repeating the language of Robinson Crusoe and Treasure Island. The “natives” include their own mother, and in truth, are code for grown-ups. Jim Turner, the Amazons’ uncle, we learn can be the best of pirates (when he is disposed to indulge his nieces by joining in their adventures), but this year he has gone native, that is to say, he is acting like an adult, too preoccupied with writing a book to give them any time.

        The Old Man and Wetherlam from across the water
        The Old Man and Wetherlam from across the water on the Brantwood shore

        It was the pursuit of a writing career that took Ransome away from his own daughter, Tabitha. In 1928 Arthur attempted to reestablish contact but Tabitha shunned him. The character of Turner is often assumed to be Ransome himself, and it is hard not to read this as a veiled apology. Of course, in the novel Turner sees the error of his ways, resumes his persona of Captain Flint, and walks the plank as punishment for his neglect.

        According to Paul Eastham’s reading, the symbolism runs deeper. Flint does not only walk the plank for neglecting his nieces, but for the slurs he makes against their friends the Walker children (the Swallows), who he wrongly accuses of planting a firework on the roof of his houseboat and of stealing his manuscript. Ironically John, the eldest of the Walkers and captain of The Swallow, tries to pass on a message from some kindly local charcoal burners, warning Turner that he risks being targeted by thieves. But Turner refuses to listen, and when the burglary occurs, he blames John. In light of Turner’s accusations, suspicion of the children spreads among the locals. Eastham sees John as representing Ransome’s self-image, unfairly accused of something he is didn’t do.

        Swimming in Coniston Water
        Swimming in Coniston Water

        Whether Arthur actually advocated Bolshevism is a matter for debate. In his own mind, he was writing honest accounts of events and providing some degree of balance to an English press largely predisposed to spin against Lenin. Just as in boyhood, his integrity was besmirched and he was spurned by the Establishment.

        By the end of Swallows and Amazons, John’s innocence is proven, Turner is profusely apologetic, and the Swallows help recover the stolen manuscript. To my mind, Eastham is right on the nail. The book is more than just an adventure story, it is a personal catharsis, a symbolic attempt to set the record straight. The plot ends with an injustice righted and the rehabilitation of the Walker children as heroes rather than villains. This may have been wish-fulfilment on Ransome’s part, but thanks to the story, it became a reality. The huge popularity the book brought Arthur the acceptance he had always craved.

        A swallow, breast of wheatfield yellow and wings of royal blue, soars skyward against the chimneys of Coniston Old Hall. A small flotilla of moored yachts bob lazily on the rippling waters by the Sailing Club. The Yewdale fells rear above the Methodist chapel, with all the feral savagery of Nicholson’s description. Foxglove, bracken, and flowering bramble line the steep bank of Church Beck, which crashes and hisses down the rocky cascades of the ravine. I head up to Crowberry How and take the steep path up the Old Man, past a wall of quarried slate and the wild tranquility of Low Water. When I reach the summit, the lake stretches languidly below.

        Coniston Water shore
        Coniston Water shore
        Coniston Old Hall
        Coniston Old Hall
        Moored yachts Coniston Sailing Club
        Moored yachts Coniston Sailing Club
        Yewdale Fells above the Methodist Chapel
        Yewdale Fells above the Methodist Chapel
        Low Water and Levers Water from the Old Man summit
        Low Water and Levers Water from the Old Man summit
        Coniston Water from Old Man summit
        Coniston Water from Old Man summit

        Throughout his time in Russia, Ransome kept this landscape close. Lupton told The Mirror:

        “All the time he carried a pebble in his pocket from Peel Island, in Coniston Water in the Lake District, the inspiration for Wild Cat Island in Swallows and Amazons, like a talisman, a lucky charm.”

        Arthur once described walking the streets of Moscow as the same “wonderful experience” as “walking on Wetherlam or Dow Crag, with the future of mankind spreading before one like the foothills of the Lake Country, and the blue sea out to the west.” His romantic fervour for revolution may have palled, but his passion for Lakeland never would.  

        Sources / Further Reading

        Paul Eastham’s Huge and Mighty Forms is a fascinating book exploring why Cumbria has produced so many influential characters. Arthur Ransome rubs shoulders with everyone from William Wordsworth to Fletcher Christian, Lady Anne Clifford and Queen Cartimandua.

        Available from Fletcher Christian Books:

        https://www.fletcherchristianbooks.com/

        Roland Chambers’ article, “Whose Side Was He On?” in the 10th March, 2005 edition of The Guardian is an interesting read:

        https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2005/mar/10/russia.books

        Likewise, Jon Henley’s “I Spy Arthur Ransome” article in the 13th August, 2009 edition:

        https://amp.theguardian.com/books/2009/aug/13/arthur-ransome-double-agent

        You can find Hugh Lupton’s interview with the Daily Mirror, about his Uncle Arthur, here:

        https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/swallows-amazons-writer-double-agent-8730764.amp

        Additional information in my article came from an excellent exhibition, called From Coniston to the Kremlin: Arthur Ransome‘s Russian Adventures. It was curated by The Arthur Ransome Trust (ART) and hosted at the Ruskin museum in Coniston in 2016. ART has republished several of Ransome’s books, including his autobiography and Old Peter’s Russian Tales, which are available from their online shop.

        https://arthur-ransome-trust.org.uk/

        As part of its permanent exhibition, the Ruskin museum has the sailing dinghy, Mavis—the inspiration for the fictional Amazon—and a Ransome cabinet of curiosities:

        https://ruskinmuseum.com/who-was-arthur-ransome/

        Paul Flint and Geraint Lewis from the Arthur Ransome Trust featured in a recent podcast from the always excellent Countrystride team, which you can find here:

        https://www.countrystride.co.uk/single-post/countrystride-79-arthur-ransome-life-loves-literature

        Norman Nicholson’s Cumberland and Westmorland, 1949 is a beautifully written study of the two counties. It is out of print, but second hand copies are relatively easy to find on line.

        The British Newspaper Archive has many of Ransome’s articles from his time in Russia. The 1918 book review in Justice also came from there.


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          Four Great Books About Lakeland or Walking

          As 2021 draws to an end, I review four great books about Lakeland or walking: James Rebanks portrays three generations on a Cumbrian fell farm and finds the key to a sustainable future in the teachings of his grandfather. Chris Townsend walks Scotland’s spine. John Bainbridge takes us on furtive forays into Forbidden Britain; and Beth Pipe teams up with Karen Guttridge to blaze a new Lakeland trail, connecting the district’s distilleries..

          Four great books about Lakeland or walking. 1) English Pastoral

          English Pastoral

          An Inheritance

          James Rebanks

          2020, Allen Lane

          Change doesn’t always come from those in power. Sometimes it happens quietly from the ground up as ordinary men and women find the courage of their convictions.

          English Pastoral is a remarkable book: a work of rare lyrical beauty and an argument of astonishing power. Moreover, it is acutely in tune with the zeitgeist: as the world grows impatient with the hollow greenwash slogans of politicians, here is a simple honest testament, a voice of integrity, and an insight of major environmental significance.

          It is a book written by a Cumbrian fell farmer, renouncing the ecologically damaging efficiencies of industrial agriculture (efficiencies he once embraced), in favour of a sustainable model rooted in the past. But it is not a declamatory manifesto or dry scientific treatise. Instead, it is an engaging human-interest story spanning three generations of a family on a small farm in Matterdale.

          Woven from threads of reminiscence, it begins as the author recollects how his grandfather taught him to farm. His grandfather had a strong connection with the earth, born perhaps of walking behind a horse-drawn plough, feeling every trough and stone as the blade cut into the soil. He never lost that understanding, even when he reluctantly replaced the horse with a tractor. Rebanks remembers a day his grandfather jumped down from the tractor to rescue four curlew’s eggs from the path of the plough, diligently restoring them once the furrow had been cut, and watching from the gate to check that the bird returned.

          It was a relationship with the natural world that many of his generation possessed. Yet, two decades later, the face of farming had changed drastically. Tractors were three-times the size, combine harvesters were ivory towers of technology, driven by contractors in air-conditioned cabs with music blaring. Cows were no longer grazed on pasture but packed into barns to be fed silage and commercially produced foodstuffs. That connection with nature had been severed, and the curlews (like many other species) were in decline.

          The centuries-old practice of small mixed rotational farming was jettisoned in the name of science. You could farm industrially, stripping out hedges, ploughing right up to the edges, and sowing the same crop in the same field year after year, replenishing nutrients through the magical application of chemical fertilisers. It seemed like progress, and yet, there were worrying signs that it might be the wrong road. 

          When Henry died, a unexpected discovery sent a mini shockwave through the valley. Henry had been the last of the old guard, stubbornly refusing to modernise, eschewing chemicals in favour of manure, making hay instead of silage, mowing late. He was well liked, but perceived as a relic, marooned in the past. When his land was put up for sale, an analyst reported that the soil was the best he’d ever tested.

          To glimpse where this industrial highway might lead, Rebanks visits the Midwest. Here the tone turns chilling bleak. It is worth pausing to pay tribute to the transportive quality of the writing. Rebanks has a poetic way with words. The way he describes the landscape is painterly. We can almost smell the grass of the Matterdale meadows and, equally, taste the dust of the American near-desert, where much of the top soil has blown away and the vast acres of crop are choked with weeds, grown resistant to the pesticides. Much of the work is automated, administered by drones, while farming communities languish, their incomes gone, their buildings dilapidated, their windows dressed with confederate flags and Trump stickers—testimony to a collective refusal to face facts, placing faith instead in charlatans with ready-made scapegoats.

          Back home in Matterdale, Rebanks changes course. He brings in ecologists and begins restoring biodiversity: planting trees, laying hedges, re-wiggling rivers, fencing off boggy areas to create wetland habitats, cultivating hay meadows and resowing indigenous wildflowers. And the rewards come quickly. Curlews return. Barn owls appear. 

          He is not alone. Many of his neighbours are following suit. The benefits are not financial, but the work is vital. Unhelpfully, the government pursues destructive trade deals with nations still wedded to the industrial model. Some activists demonise stock farming, advocating a vegan future, where swathes of land are designated as wilderness while the rest is given over to intensive crop production. But those intensive methods are the very ones that have been destroying the soil. They are unsustainable.

          Rebanks doesn’t claim to have all the answers, but he is busy doing what his grandfather did—making sure that what happens within the boundaries of his own farm is done right. He humbly suggests that in a world of noise, living quietly might actually be a virtue. By farming in harmony with nature, he shows that agriculture and wilderness can co-exist. Change doesn’t always come from those in power. Sometimes it happens quietly from the ground up as ordinary men and women find the courage of their convictions.

          I grew up in a village of small mixed rotational farms; several surround the place where I live today. Thanks to English Pastoral, I no longer view them as a link with the past, but a signpost to the future.

          Follow James on Twitter @herdyshepherd1

          Next: Along the Divide by Chris Townsend


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            In the Footsteps of Wainwright – Striding Edge to Catstycam

            “For Those Who Tread Where I Have Trod”

            In 1930, Alfred Wainwright crossed Striding Edge for the first time. It was shrouded in mist and doused in rain. For all its terrors, it sparked a passion that led AW to pen his celebrated Pictorial Guides, documenting 214 Lake District fells. This year, I walked the same ridge en route to Catstycam to bag my final “Wainwright”. As I recount my precarious negotiation along craggy crests and plunging precipices, I consider what it was about an antisocial pen-pusher from Blackburn that made him such an inspiration.

            An Ex-Fellwanderer Remembers

            “Before reaching the gap in the wall we were enveloped in a clammy mist and the rain started…We went on, heads down against the driving rain, until, quite suddenly, a window opened in the mist ahead, disclosing a black tower of rock streaming with water, an evil and threatening monster that stopped us in our tracks. Then the mist closed in again and the apparition vanished. We were scared: there were unseen terrors ahead. Yet the path was still distinct; generations of walkers must have come this way and survived, and if we turned back now we would get as wet as we would by continuing forward. We ventured further tentatively and soon found ourselves climbing the rocks of the tower to reach a platform of naked rock that vanished into the mist as a narrow ridge with appalling precipices on both sides. There was no doubt about it: we were on Striding Edge.”

            Striding Edge
            Striding Edge from the Summit Plateau

            Thus writes Alfred Wainwright in Ex-Fellwanderer, recalling his second full day on the Lakeland Fells. He was 23 and having saved £5 from his spending money, he recruited the company of his cousin, Eric and embarked on the first holiday he had ever had. The pair had arrived in Windermere two days earlier and climbed Orrest Head, where the sight of “mountain ranges, one after the other” proved a startling revelation for a young man who knew little of the world beyond the “tall chimneys and crowded tenements” of industrial Blackburn. Well it did for Alfred, Eric fell asleep in the grass. There would be no sleeping the following day, however. Alfred, or AW as he preferred, was on a mission and dragged his cousin up High Street because he had read about the Roman Road that once ran over it.

            High Street was my first mountain too and for the same reason: I hadn’t yet heard of Wainwright but I had heard about the Roman Road, and the sight of High Street rearing above Haweswater in all its wild, rugged magnificence made the notion seem so implausible, I just knew I had to go up there. In 1998, I made the climb from Mardale Head, following directions in a Pathfinder guide, which I bought expressly because it contained that very walk. 

            In 1930, AW and Eric ascended Froswick from the Troutbeck Valley and walked over Thornthwaite Crag to High Street’s summit. Wainwright took comfort from the thought that the Romans had walked that way 2000 years earlier. For one unnerving moment, I thought I was coming face to face with a ghostly legion. My ascent along Riggindale Edge had been breathless not only for the exertion but for the richness of the unfolding panorama. As I reached the top of Long Stile, however, my head entered the clouds literally as well as metaphorically. Not that I cared, it was immensely atmospheric, and I was busy imagining cohorts of legionaries marching beside the summit wall. Then all of a sudden, I realised I could hear them.  Slowly their outlines started to emerge from the mist, moving two abreast in strict military two step. Part of me wanted to run, but I was rivetted to the spot transfixed by the image crystallising in front of me… It was somewhat deflating to discover their armour was Gore-Tex and their spears were trekking poles. I swear I have never since seen a party of fellwalkers march with such precision.

            I made a round of Mardale Ill Bell and Harter Fell, but AW and Eric followed the line of the old road for quite some way before descending to Howtown and walking along the shore of Ullswater to Pooley Bridge.  The very next day they set off for Striding Edge:

            “In agonies of apprehension we edged our way along the spine of the ridge, sometimes deviating to a path just below the crest to bypass difficulties. We passed a memorial to someone who had fallen to his death from the ridge which did nothing for our peace of mind. After an age of anxiety we reached the abrupt end of the Edge and descended an awkward crack in the rocks to firmer ground below and beyond, feeling and looking like old men.”

            Striding Edge from High Spying How
            Striding Edge from High Spying How

            The experience filled Eric with dread, but it sparked a passion in AW that would consume him for the rest of his life.  In 1955, he published the first of his Pictorial Guides, The Eastern Fells, in which he described Striding Edge as “the finest ridge there is in Lakeland”.

            Helvellyn swiftly followed High Street for me too, chiefly because my Pathfinder Guide drew a parallel between Striding Edge and Long Stile. Just as it had for Wainwright, High Street had sparked a passion in me, and I was hungry for more.

            Pipe & Socks: Discovering Wainwright

            In the weeks between tackling Long Stile and Striding Edge, my wife, Sandy, and I popped into Kendal Museum to see our friend, Meriel, who worked there. She was talking to an outdoorsy couple in front of a display case containing a walking jacket, boots, a pipe, and a pair of old socks that had belonged to Alfred Wainwright. Meriel explained that Wainwright had been Honorary Curator of the museum between 1945 and 1974, and as her own maiden-name was “Wainwright”, visitors frequently assumed (wrongly) that she was related to him. The couple laughed and stared at the socks with a kind of hushed reverence.

            Intrigued, I sought out a second-hand copy of one of Wainwright’s Pictorial Guides and immediately began to understand why fellwalkers held him in such esteem. The book was totally unlike my Pathfinder Guide. It contained no handy advice on parking or refreshments.  The walks weren’t graded as easy, medium, or hard. The maps were not official OS versions, but hand-drawn impressions that morphed into sketches; yet every page felt sacred, as if the author was imparting arcane secrets. The book communicated an almost religious devotion, a profound understanding, and a deep, deep love for this remarkable landscape.

            The weather was kinder to me on Striding Edge than it had been to AW and Eric; I found it utterly exhilarating. Inspired, I went on to tackle Scafell Pike, the Coniston Fells, Great Gable, Crinkle Crags, the Langdale Pikes and more. And yet, somehow, as the years passed, with work, and moving house, and everything else life throws at you, my newfound passion for the fells dwindled. Eventually, in 2015, Storm Desmond flooded the gym I had joined and forced me to think about an alternative form of exercise.  I bought a new pair of walking boots and headed for the hills. I never renewed my gym membership.

            I bought all the other Pictorial Guides and immersed myself in them. Yet to start with, I would cherry pick my walks, always favouring the high fells. Two years on, my great friends and neighbours, Paul and Jeanette would persuade me to attempt all 214 hills that AW documents. Some of the smaller ones have the most spectacular views, they said, and your understanding of how everything fits together grows exponentially. 

            All of which is why I am now heading towards Lanty’s Tarn with a mind full of memories. You see my Pathfinder guide took me over Helvellyn via its Edges, but it missed out Catstycam.  When I repeated the walk several years ago, I made the same omission. Today, Catstycam will be my 214th Wainwright, and I shall reach it by repeating one of my first mountain experiences: Helvellyn via Striding Edge and Swirral Edge.

            Nature’s Cathedrals—Striding Edge

            As I climb the slopes of Keldas, I’m gifted a glance at Ullswater, shining like a silver plate, the backward scene a moody wash of early morning monochrome, but ahead, the sun breaks through the leafy canopy to render all in summer colours, the tarn a sparkling cut of aquamarine. I remember spotting a red squirrel here, twenty three years ago, the first I had seen since moving to the Lakes.

            Ullswater from Keldas
            Ullswater from Keldas

            Today should have been a shared celebration with friends, but unexpected events forced a last-minute reschedule. No-one else was free today, but the weather forecast was perfect, and I was too impatient to wait longer. Yet as vivid memories of first fell walks flood back, part of me is grateful for the solitude to indulge them. Today marks a significant milestone in a journey, not only physical but emotional, through a landscape that has come to possess me entirely, just as it did the man whose footprints I have been following.

            Lanty's Tarn
            Lanty’s Tarn

            I emerge from the trees into Grisedale and follow the path that climbs steadily to the Hole in the Wall—up slopes where pink foxgloves rise like beacons from a rippling sea of green bracken. Two magnificent ridges dominate the forward view: one rising dramatically to enclose Nethermost Cove and attain the summit of Nethermost Pike, and beyond, the airy majesty of Dollywagon’s craggy Tongue. I’m yet to climb either—so while I’ll attain the last of Wainwright’s summits today, there are many more adventures lurking in the pages of his guides.

            The Tongue Dollywagon Pike
            The Tongue Dollywagon Pike
            Grisedale -The path to the Hole in the Wall
            Grisedale -The path to the Hole in the Wall

            From the Hole in the Wall, I’m greeted with the glorious vision of Helvellyn, looking every bit like an immense organic castle, its summit a broad stronghold rising above the languid navy moat of Red Tarn. It is defended on either side by the crenelated walls of its Edges, terminating in conical pyramid of Catstycam; to reach it via two of Lakeland’s most dramatic ridges promises to be the finest of adventures—a precarious negotiation along craggy crests and plunging precipices.

            Helvellyn & Catstycam over Red Tarn
            Helvellyn & Catstycam over Red Tarn
            Catstycam over Red Tarn
            Catstycam over Red Tarn

            The going is easy at first but gets craggier from Low Spying How. Soon the rocky turret of High Spying How looms. This is Wainwright’s black tower. Partially glimpsed through mist, its true height unknown, it must have been an intimidating prospect for two fledgling fellwalkers. In today’s brilliant light, it is less daunting, yet still imparts a frisson of nervous excitement, as on reaching the top, you are greeted with the sight of Striding Edge tapering to a slender Toblerone before rising in a steep upward sweep to the summit plateau high above.

            Striding Edge from High Spying How
            Striding Edge from High Spying How

            But where are all the people? Reports of late have suggested Striding Edge is overrun, and I was worried I’d be joining a thronging queue. I’m not entirely alone—I’m one of a handful of walkers, but we’re well spaced out, and no-one else is currently in view. It’s reassuring to know that if you pick your time, even on a Saturday in summer, there are still opportunities to wander lonely as a cloud.

            I pass the memorial that did so little for AW and Eric’s peace of mind. It reads:

            “In memory of Robert Dixon of Poolings Patterdale who was killed on this place on the 27th day of Nov 1886 when following the Patterdale Fox Hounds.”

            On reaching this point in Terry Abraham’s Life of a Mountain film, Stuart Maconie professes, “I’m not sure I’m a fan of memorials on mountains—sends out the wrong message.”

            A narrow bypass path runs below the crest on the right, but it feels more adventurous to clamber along the naked rock. Besides, I find three points of contact more reassuring than walking along a narrow ledge where one misstep could send you tumbling.

            Striding Edge
            Striding Edge

            I recall the exhilaration I felt when I first stepped out on Striding Edge, and the years have done nothing to diminish the feeling. To my left, the slopes drop abruptly into the wild green bowl of Nethermost Cove, and to my right, to the inscrutable blue waters of Red Tarn.

            A little further along, I glance back to High Spying How. The ridge looks every bit like the spiky spine of a fossilised dinosaur.

            Striding Edge
            Striding Edge

            The King & the Pen Pusher


            AW grew up in poverty. His father was an alcoholic stonemason who drank what little he earned between long bouts of unemployment. AW adored his mother who made sure the children never went hungry even when it meant going without herself. Despite exceptional academic promise, AW left school at 14 to help put food on the table.

            He started as an office boy in the engineer’s department at Blackburn Town Council, but soon transferred to the Treasurer’s office and studied at night school to become an accountant. He embraced work with a passion and attributes the failure of his first marriage to the mismatch between his own ambition to climb the professional ladder and his wife’s reluctance to leave the bottom rung. At Kendal, he rose to become Borough Treasurer, and it’s easy to think of his move to Cumbria as the logical next step in an upward trajectory. But it wasn’t. It was a voluntary step down, which involved a pay cut. Reaching the next rung was no longer his motivation. He moved here to be closer to the hills, and although he remained diligent about his work, his heart now belonged to the mountains:

            “Down below I was a pen pusher. Up here I was a king; a king amongst friends.”

            The fells were to give the spiritual nourishment that organised religion had failed to provide:

            “At Blackburn I had attended chapel. Now I worshipped in nature’s cathedrals”.

            For me too, these hills have become hallowed ground.

            Helvellyn

            Striding Edge ends in an abrupt drop—a scramble down a craggy chimney. As bad steps go, however, it isn’t Lakeland’s worst—hand and footholds abound, and with due care and attention, it is tackled with relative ease.

            Striding Edge, Helvellyn
            Looking back at the bad step from the scramble to the summit plateau

            What remains is the stiff climb to the summit plateau. On the approach, it looks daunting, but it’s an illusion that serves to test your resolve. Close up, the gradient is less severe and a plethora of options reveal themselves. It is worth pausing on the little rocky platforms to gaze back at Striding Edge, which now looks razor sharp. The aspect is best seen from the top, where a smug smile of self-congratulation is permitted.

            Red Tarn and Striding Edge
            The author in front of Red Tarn and Striding Edge

            A memorial to Charles Gough, who died here in 1805, is a poignant reminder of the dangers. Gough’s death made him, or more particularly his dog, something of a celebrity, but to learn more of their story, you’ll either have to climb Striding Edge or read my first ever blog:The Stuff of Legend—  http://www.lakelandwalkingtales.co.uk/grisedale-tarn-helvellyn/

            Looking west from the summit, I recall AW’s remark about “mountain ranges, one after the other”, but today, it’s the north-eastern aspect, over Red Tarn to Catstycam, that sets my pulse racing.

            Swirral Edge & Catstycam

            A large cairn marks the start of Swirral Edge. People talk of Swirral Edge as the less difficult of the two, but the initial scramble down bouldery rocks is the rival of anything on Striding Edge. The going gets easier after that and all too soon, I’m climbing the slope of Catstycam.

            Red Tarn from the scramble on to Swirral Edge
            Red Tarn from the scramble on to Swirral Edge
            Swirral Edge & Catstycam
            Swirral Edge & Catstycam
            Swirral Edge & Catstycam
            Swirral Edge & Catstycam

            At the summit, I delve into a rucksack for a prop that I have painstakingly placed between sheets of stiff cardboard to protect it. In our age of social media, it’s customary on completing the Wainwrights to take a summit selfie with a sign saying “214”. Sandy is an artist, so I asked her if she could draw me a doodle of a pipe—well I thought it more iconic than the socks. She did much better than that and produced a larger-than-life cardboard cut-out beautifully painted to look like a 3D pipe, replete with a puff of smoke bearing the magic number.

            Swirral Edge from Catstycam

            The trouble is there’s no-one else here and my arm is barely long enough to to take a selfie that fits in me, the pipe, and Ullswater curving away in the distance. After several squinting attempts, I just about manage it. Shortly afterwards, a girl arrives and grins as she obliges by snapping me with a wider sweep as the backdrop. The views are majestic, and I sit long in quiet contemplation.

            Catstycam
            The Author with pipe on Catstycam.jpg

            In places, Ex-Fellwanderer descends into the rant of an old man at odds with the modern world. Yet the digs are not directionless. His most extreme suggestion—that convicts be used in vivisection experiments—is not just Daily Mail style vitriol but part of a passionate plea against performing such atrocities on animals. AW loved animals and poured the royalties from his books into building an animal sanctuary—a selfless act in a decade that celebrated selfishness.

            Even before the 1980’s, the quest for ruthless efficiency was driving out values AW held dear:

            “I retired from the office early in 1967, and was glad to go. I had enjoyed the work immensely but methods of accounting were changing…Computers and calculating machines and other alleged labour saving devices, which I could not understand, were coming in and pushing out the craftsmen”.

            A master craftsman is exactly what Wainwright was: a man whose ledgers were almost works of art, and who would go on to pen his stunning Pictorial Guides in the same immaculate copperplate handwriting. It is wrong to think of these are mere guidebooks. Guidebooks are functional things, carefully targeted at specific segments of the market. Wainwright’s books are works of spiritual reverence. His devotion to nature was a form of worship he knew could cure many modern ailments. He describes the fells as “the complete antidote to urban depression”.

            A party of energetic young people arrives on the summit. One lad is curious about the pipe. He’s heard of Wainwright and comes to sit beside me, eager to know more. I fish out my copy of the Eastern Fells and watch as he turns the pages, transfixed. When they leave, he turns back to me and says, “I’m going to get that book. I’m going to get them all”, and I feel as if I have passed on a little piece of magic.

            Swirral Edge from Catstycam
            Swirral Edge from Catstycam

            Eventually, I leave too, and make my way down the lonely north-west ridge to the old Keppel Cove dam. As I follow the steep path, I remember the dedication at the start of Ex-Fellwanderer: “for those who tread where I have trod”; and I feel proud to count among them.

            Keppel Cove Dam
            Keppel Cove Dam
            Keppel Cove Dam
            Keppel Cove Dam

            Further Reading

            For more information about Wainwright’s books, visit Wainwright archivist, Chris Butterfield’s splendid website:


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              Green Mind

              Dow Crag and Coniston Old Man from Torver

              All through lockdown, distant Dow Crag reminded me of where I longed to be. No surprise that’s where I would head when restrictions lifted, ascending from Torver, past a magnificent waterfall born of childhood mischief. During the months away, I read Norman Nicholson’s The Lakers. At its core is the environmental message Wordsworth & Ruskin learned from Lakeland. In the time of COVID, it is more relevant than ever.

              John Ruskin spoke of a “plague wind”: a “strange bitter biting wind” that would cast the sky in a “dry black veil”, impenetrable to sunshine; it could carry terrible thunderstorms, “rolling incessantly, like railway luggage trains, quite ghastly in its mockery of them—the air one loathsome mass of sultry and foul fog, like smoke”. It would blanche the sun and blight the air before “settling down again into Manchester’s devil’s darkness”.

              To Ruskin the wind was a physical phenomenon, as if a meteorological distortion, provoked by the sulphurous smog belched forth by the Victorian cities of England’s Industrial Revolution. But in his book, The Lakers, Norman Nicholson counsels against taking this too literally; at home on the eastern shore of Coniston Water, Ruskin must have breathed some of the cleanest air in England. To Nicholson, Ruskin’s plague wind was a metaphor, a symbol of the spiritual corrosion which mass industrialisation had wrought.

              The Lakers is a beautifully written account of Lakeland’s early tourists, its guide-book writers and apostles. It examines how industrialisation and our mass migration to urban living provoked a love affair with Cumbria’s fells and dales. “The Middle Ages had seen the village as a small clearing of order among the illimitable wilderness of nature; the seventeenth century saw the mountains as the last defiance of disorder among the colonies of civilisation”. In the centuries to come, however, a collective desire to escape into England’s last great wilderness would germinate and grow strong. By Ruskin’s time, the urban pride of the seventeenth century was ringing hollow. As Nicholson puts it:

              “The first great thrust of the Industrial Revolution had overstretched itself; the muscles were beginning to sag, the energy to fail. In the parlours, the drawing-rooms, the pews, all was still comfortable and secure; but in the back-alleys, the rotting cottages, the slave factories, there was the strain and anger of a society at one and the same time vigorous and stunted, opulent and starved. In spite of all the clangour of the railways, the grasp and grab of trade, the grandiloquence of empire, the flags, the dividends, the Harvest Festivals, the brass bands, the gold watches and Prince Albert himself, there was hidden somewhere in every Victorian a tired, rather frightened, rather lost little dog that wanted to crawl under the table and sleep.”

              We had become divorced from nature, shut off from its rhythms and cycles. It had become something to pave over, to hide, to tame; and as we lost sight of our own place within it, it simply became a resource to plunder and exploit. Yet, when the sterility and artifice of urban living began to pall, it was nature we craved as a diversion, as an escape, as therapy, as spiritual replenishment: “The gentry, the manufacturers, the professional people, blowing their noses on the stench and stew of the money-grubbing cities, rushed to the Lakes to forget it all, at least for a fortnight.”

              Were Ruskin or Nicholson alive today, 2020 might have brought an uncanny sense of déjà vu: not just Britain, but the whole world is in the grip of literal plague wind, a pandemic, which has forced us through months of domestic confinement in a desperate bid to contain its spread. The meteorological effect of lockdown has been the polar opposite of Ruskin’s apocalyptic vision, however. China’s industrial cities, the twenty-first century’s inheritors of Victorian England’s smog, have seen blue sky for the first time in decades. And here in the post-industrial UK, where air pollution now comes from the incessant combustion of petrol, diesel, and jet fuel, we’ve witnessed a canopy free of vapour trails, and air filled, not with the unbroken hum of traffic, but with birdsong. It might have been a romantic stretch of the imagination, but in those first months of lockdown, it really did seem as if the planet was breathing a huge sigh of relief. Now, our desire to escape to our green spaces is stronger than ever.

              From his home at Brantwood, John Ruskin looked over Coniston Water to the Coniston mountains.  My house doesn’t share his panorama; trees and foothills obscure most of the range; but I can see Dow Crag. In line with government guidelines and the wishes of Mountain Rescue, I kept away from the high fells until late July. But the sight of Dow Crag, its buttresses and gullies rendered in sharp relief by startling spring sunlight, was a daily reminder of where I longed to be. No surprise then, that I should head for Torver when restrictions relax.

              Dow Crag
              Dow Crag

              In the days before magazines, songs, poems, stories, and political and religious tracts were distributed in the form of chapbooks—short, cheaply produced publications that were sold by itinerant pedlars and hawkers, known as chapmen. Disparaged in literary circles as “penny dreadfuls” and feared by the establishment as channels for subversive ideas, chapbooks were, for many, their window on the wider world. One such chapbook put Torver on the map. It included a report entitled, “a New Prophesy”—the lurid account of the vision experienced by an 8 year old Torver girl, who had lain in a trance for three days. It was billed as a “an alarm from heaven to the inhabitants of the earth, giving an account how crying sins of the day and time do provoke the Almighty; with strange and wonderful things, as a warning to this last and worst age, agreeable to the Holy Scriptures and divine revelation: the like never published”. In the girl’s revelation, “The envious and discontented were howling like mad dogs: the oppressors of the poor were trodden under foot by the devils in the burning flames; in the midst of which lake were the swearers, lyars, and covetous persons, bearing the wrath of God to all eternity!”

              I make a mental note to mind my language as I pull up in Torver and pop the suggested number of coins into the car park’s honesty box.

              Wainwright described this way up Dow Crag as “the natural line of approach”, and, “the most attractive, for when the woods of Torver are left behind the view forwards to the great buttresses of Dow Crag grows more dramatic with every step”. He’s spot on. At this early hour, Wetherlam is indistinct in shadow and the Old Man, dark-tinged, but Dow Crag is already vividly illuminated by the morning sun, its wrinkled face a huge elephantine hide, riven by deep gullies into shapes that resemble a petrified parade of prehistoric creatures.

              Before long, the path splits. The right hand fork crosses Torver Beck and climbs between spoil heaps to the deep pit of Banishead Quarry. Wainwright’s map notes simply, “there is much of interest to see here”. The Southern Fells was published in 1960, so Wainwright would have researched it in the late 1950’s. Whether the waterfall was yet to exist, or whether it was simply too new and contentious to be guaranteed a future, I couldn’t say, but AW’s circumspection hints at, but never actually mentions, the quarry’s crowning glory.

              Banishead Waterfall
              Banishead Waterfall

              The waterfall is not a natural feature, it was born of mischief in the 1950’s, and we have three local boys to thank. Their playground was the quarry pit and the beck that ran past its top. One day, in a daring flash of inspiration, they hit on the idea of moving rocks to divert part of the flow into the pit. Their endeavours that afternoon yielded a small trickle, but after tea, one of the boys returned with his brother and a mattock; their renewed efforts produced the cascading majesty of the cataract that now plunges into the pool. An anonymous narrator recounts the story beautifully on the Torver website. So familiar with the finer details is the narrator, he even knows what they ate for tea.

              Today, the waterfall is magnificent surprise, concealed until the last minute when it springs a vista as arresting as it is unexpected. A vast chute of white spray hurtles headlong down a vertical wall of cut stone, striped orange and black with lichen. It falls into a dark pool, its surface as glassy and reflective as polished granite, except where it escapes the shadow to turn sapphire, fringed green with a leafy canopy of tree cover.

              Banishead Waterfall
              Banishead Waterfall

              For most of the Victorian era, the definitive guide to the Lakes was one written by Harriet Martineau and published in 1855.  Martineau was a prolific author and social reformer who did much to improve the lot of rural communities in the Lakes.  Her early life was dogged with illness, and she was rendered largely immobile when diagnosed with a uterine tumour at the age of 37. Remarkably, five years later, she underwent a course of mesmerism and declared herself cured. She relocated to Ambleside and embraced the outdoors with a physical vigour that matched her formidable mental strength.  When I first read some of her suggested excursions, I wondered if she had ever actually walked them.  Scafell Pike via Rosset Pike and Esk Hause, returning by Tarn Crag and Easedale Tarn, leaving time to explore Grasmere, before travelling to Ambleside to tackle Nab Scar in the afternoon, anyone? Such reservations are dispelled when you discover that this was a woman who took daily walks of six to eight miles before breakfast at 7:30.

              Ahead of me, above an expanse of moorland, lies the Walna Scar road. There can be no doubt that Harriet knew this area, her account is replete with such intimate detail:

              “Amidst the grassy undulations of the moor, he (the walker) sees, here or there, a party of peat-cutters, with their white horse; if the sun be out, he looks absolutely glittering, in contrast with the brownness of the ground. It is truly a wild moor; but there is something wilder to come…The precipice called Dow (or Dhu) Crag appears in front ere long; and then the traveller must turn to the right, and get up the steep mountain-side to the top as he best may. Where Dow Crag and the Old Man join, a dark and solemn tarn lies beneath the precipice… Round three sides of this Gait’s Tarn, the rock is precipitous; and on the other, the crags are piled in grotesque fashion, and so as to afford, —as does much of this side of the mountain,—a great harbourage for foxes, against which the neighbouring population are for ever waging war.”

              Dow Crag from Old Man
              Dow Crag from Old Man
              Great Gully
              Great Gully

              When I reach the old quarry road, the precipice towers ahead, an awe-inspiring wall of cliff and cleft. Wainwright rates it second only to Scafell Crag in its sublime grandeur. Gait’s Tarn, or Goat’s Water, is hidden from view; it is a further climb through the Cove to reach it. That will be my way down.  The ridge running left from the summit, over Buck Pike and Brown Pike, will be my way up; so I turn left and follow the Walna Scar road up to the Walna Scar pass, detouring right to visit the tranquil oasis of Blind Tarn, an ephemeral ripple of mossy reflection under the green skirts of the crags.

              Blind Tarn
              Blind Tarn

              From the pass, I follow the steep path up Brown Pike, where a stone shelter offers respite long enough to sip coffee and look back at the long silver sliver of Coniston Water, glimmering in the distance. Along the onward path, the hunched shoulders of the Old Man form an imposing bulk of blue and green beyond the slender pyramid of Buck Pike. From the top of Buck Pike, a grassy ridge leads to Dow Crag’s summit. Along its precipitous edge, slender crevices plunge into the deeper chasms of Great and Easy Gully. A simple scramble gains the highest point. To the west, across a sea of green foliage and white rock, the darker summits of the Scafells are constantly retouched by the fleeting flicker of sun and shadow: a scene of wild vitality; a Van Gogh painting animated into life.

              Old Man over Buck Pike
              Old Man over Buck Pike
              Gully top
              Gully top

              I follow the ridge path down to Goat’s Hause, and with my lockdown legs bearing up, continue up on to the Old Man, where a small party of young women are in jubilant spirits; the euphoria of the peaks after the shackles of lockdown, perhaps, but it seems like something more.  One of them is draped in an Olympic cape.  I ask her if they’re raising funds for charity.

              “No,” she says. “The cape is from the Olympics. I was part of the women’s hammer-throwing team. But since then, I sustained a serious back injury that put me in hospital for ages. I was told I might never walk again. I was determined to prove them wrong, and I made a bucket list of all the things I wanted to do when I got better.  Climbing the Old Man was one.”

              “I’m a bit sweaty,” she grins when I congratulate her. “It’s hard work. Give me an Olympic final, any day!”

              Low Water from Old Man
              Low Water from Old Man
              Old Man Trig Point
              Old Man Trig Point

              As I descend the zig zag path to the shore of Goat’s Water, I’m elated to be here again; but at the same time, I’m as reflective as its copper-green surface.  Last time I took this path, three shepherds and their tireless dogs were bringing a Herdwick flock down off the fells, a practice that goes back centuries. My thoughts return to Nicholson. At its heart, his book is study of folly. The folly of the Picturesque. The folly of “landscape”.  Most of those early apostles of the Lake District were as guilty as the industrialists in misunderstanding the land and our relationship with it. They saw it as something distinct from us; something to be marvelled at; something to be captured on a canvas and hung on the wall of a civilised townhouse. William Wordsworth was different. He understood how disconnected we had become from the ecosystems we are part of. In the traditional farming communities of the Lakes, he saw a unity between man and the land, which he exalted as a blueprint for how things ought to be. By Nicholson’s time, Wordsworth was massively popular, but his message had been largely lost. He’d become the Sunday School impression of a poet, a purveyor of pretty words about lakes, and daffodils, and quaint rustic traditions.

              Dow Crag over Goat's Water
              Dow Crag over Goat’s Water

              Yet these days, Wordsworth is enjoying something of a re-evaluation as an early environmentalist. The need to heed his message has never been more urgent: COVID-19 is the latest in wave of viruses that have made the transition from animals to humans, a phenomena scientists are linking directly to our relentless destruction of habitats and wild places.  Today’s extinction rate is hundreds, maybe even thousands, of times higher than the natural base rate. The first species to go are usually larger mammals. Their disappearance, in turn, triggers an explosion in the populations of smaller mammals like rodents—those species most likely to spread disease to us. Declining insect populations affect pollination and result in crop failures.  The devastating wildfires in Australia and California are directly linked to global warming.  And yet we describe environmental initiatives as “saving the planet”, as if the planet is some nice-to-have pleasure park that we enjoy at weekends. By destroying ecosystems that we are part of, we are, quite simply, sowing the seeds of our own destruction.  It’s not just about saving the Black Rhino or the Amur Leopard, ultimately, it’s about saving ourselves. To think otherwise is to be a man relentlessly sawing away at the branch that he’s sitting on while his  companion begs him to stop for the sake of the bird’s nest further along.

              We urgently need to change: to find more sustainable ways of sustaining ourselves. Yet, it seems a problem so insurmountable, we are inclined to bury our heads in the sand: slam activists as scaremongers, deny climate change; deny COVID, even.  And yet, if lockdown has taught us anything, it’s that we are actually very good at adapting.  When the offices closed, huge numbers of employees switched to homeworking in days; complex systems that companies had procrastinated on for years were deployed in weeks. All of a sudden, vast numbers of us discovered we can do our jobs from anywhere, without burning daily excesses of petrol, diesel, or jet fuel. Innovation abounds. When we up against it, we are capable of the most remarkable things. I think of Harriet Martineau’s miraculous recovery, and of a jubilant girl in an Olympic cape, conquering the Old Man of Coniston. 

              Nicholson dreamed of a time when we would achieve a “new synthesis of the scientific and imaginative vision”:

              “Then perhaps, we may be able to look at the fells of Cumberland with a new understanding. For they rear themselves in the middle of our civilisation like an ancient boulder lying in a garden. An archaism, belonging to the world of nature as it was long before man came to look at it; belonging, also, to the world which will survive man. They are a sign both of what man comes from and what he is up against. They may be mapped, footpathed, sign-posted, planted with conifers, gouged with quarries, titivated with tea-shops. They may even, in some gigantic explosion, be blown out of shape. Yet they will remain the same, for they are a fact, a fact we cannot alter and perhaps cannot even understand. They are the past which shaped us and the future in which we shall have no shape. To talk of preserving them is both irrelevant and irreverent. All that matters is how long they will allow us to preserve ourselves”.

              – Norman Nicholson
              Dow Crag over Goat's Water
              Dow Crag over Goat’s Water

              Sources/Further Reading

              Read the story of how the Banishead Waterfall came into being as told by one who was there:

              http://www.torver.org/torver-history/banishead-quarry

              David Attenborough’s Extinction sets out the science that links destruction of habitats and our current biodiversity crisis with the rise in pandemics (still available to view on iPlayer at the time of writing).

              http://bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000mn4n

              Norman Nicholson’s The Lakers is well worth a read, if only for the beauty of his writing. It is out of print, but second-hand copies can be found. Here are the details of the Cicerone paperback edition:

              Nicholson, Norman. 1955: The Lakers. Milnthorpe: Cicerone, 1995

              The Lakers
              The Lakers

              In this excellent edition of the CountryStride podcast, farmer and author, James Rebanks, explains how he, and many of his neighbours, are moving to a more sustainable and wild-life friendly form of farming: Lakeland farmers returning to the traditions that inspired Wordsworth:

              https://www.countrystride.co.uk/post/countrystride-38-james-rebanks-english-pastoral


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                Rhiannon

                A Midsummer Night’s Dream on Dixon Heights

                One of the positives of lockdown has been waking up to what is right on your doorstep. With its ruined tower, Bay views, and fell ponies, Dixon Heights (Newton Fell South) is a Wainwright outlier, rich in enchantment. Its mention in the Annals of Cartmel reads like a nineteenth century episode of Father Ted. As I discover, on the eve of midsummer, it can prove veritably dreamlike.

                “Things seen, things remembered, and things imagined are blended together into a delicate landscape which is half reality and half dream, but in which the dream helps to clarify rather than to obscure that which is really there.”

                Norman Nicholson

                In its heady days as a watering hole for coach and horses, High Newton boasted three inns. Now there’s only The Crown, a fine pub, but closed this evening, due to lockdown. Newton was once a stop on the horse-drawn omnibus route from Lancaster to Ulverston. As 19th century interest in the Lakes awakened, a steady stream of curious sightseers made the journey, inspired in part by the hyperbole of early apostles of the picturesque, like William Gilpin. In 1820, a new turnpike opened through Levens, Lindale, and Newton that offered an alternative to the perilous race over Morecambe Bay. In his guidebook of 1842, J Hudson commends the route to “those Tourists who dislike to cross the sands”, adding, “the road is excellent, and passes through a pleasant and agreeable country”.

                For the best part of two centuries, High and Low Newton suffered their share of pass-through traffic. Fifteen years ago, you needed your wits about you to cross this road. It was a single carriageway bottleneck on the A590, and an accident black spot. In 2006, however, work began on a bypass that would transform village life here. The new stretch of dual carriageway opened in 2008 and reduced traffic through the villages from 17,900 vehicles per day to 550. This midsummer evening, with the road journeys restricted further by COVID, I see none. The prevailing sounds are the distant bleat of lambs and a sudden downbeat of big wings as a buzzard takes off from an overhanging branch.

                Buzzard
                Buzzard

                Our house looks out on Newton Fell, the long low heather-clad ridge that runs north through the woods of Chapel House and Simpson Ground to the rocky summit of Gummer’s How, perched above Windermere. Wainwright features Newton Fell in his book of outliers, dividing it into two separate walks which he calls Newton Fell North and Newton Fell South. No right of way exists between them, and although much of the ground is now open access, there is still a portion that is not, an untempered legacy of an 1806 land-grab—the enclosure of the Cartmel Commons.

                With lockdown keeping me from the mountains, I’ve been taking a deeper interest in what is right on my doorstep. The trek along the ridge from the Newton reservoirs over the tops of Saskills (Newton Fell’s summit) and the weathered crag of White Stone has become a fast favourite, but until last week, I’d never climbed the southern tip, Dixon Heights. It is the shortest of fell walks but rich in enchantment, and on this balmy midsummer’s eve, I’m eager for some solstice magic.

                Dixon Heights from Bishops Tithe Allotment
                Dixon Heights from Bishops Tithe Allotment

                Wainwright climbed Dixon Heights from Lindale, but his route is bisected now by the dual carriageway. Happily, there is an alternative that starts closer to home for me. Opposite Yew Tree Barn Antiques in Low Newton, a track skirts a farm and narrows to a public footpath, little more than a furrow through the bracken.  As I leave the road, I disturb a grazing roe deer. It darts away through dense foliage, a ripple in the fern. Beyond a gate, the path forks. The lower prong hugs the wall, but the higher one climbs through a sea of leafy green, dotted purple with the cascading bells of foxgloves. Red admirals flit over canary coloured tormentil, and as the trod meanders toward the ridge line, craggy outcrops spring from the undergrowth like eroded ruins of ancient temples. To the right of Buck Crag, over the lush flatland of Cartmel valley, I catch my first glimpse of the Bay.

                Path to DIxon Heights, Low Newton
                Path to DIxon Heights, Low Newton
                Ridge line Bishops Tithe Allotment
                Ridge line Bishops Tithe Allotment
                Bracken, foxgloves, and rocky outcrop, Dixon Heights
                Bracken, foxgloves, and rocky outcrop, Dixon Heights

                The first summit is Bishop’s Tithe Allotment, a name echoed in a portion of neighbouring Hampsfell, which suggests the church may have been an early beneficiary of the enclosures. The elevation is a humble 620 feet, but it boasts fine views. The Bay stretches out to the south, and Arnside Knott rises across the Kent Estuary. The eastern skyline is dominated by the dark distant shapes of the Pennines, the Howgills and Ingleborough. Closer at hand, across the Winster valley, is another Wainwright outlier, one of his favourites, Whitbarrow Scar. Its western flank is long and wooded, but it presents a 200 foot escarpment to the A590, and to the turnpike that preceded it. To J Hudson, writing with all the poetic overstatement of his age, it was, “a huge arched and bended cliff, of an immense height”.

                Bishop's Tithe Allotment
                Bishop’s Tithe Allotment

                Down in the valley, the River Winster forms a natural parish boundary. A country lane runs from High Newton to Witherslack, borne over its waters by the twin arches of an old stone bridge. According to James Stockdale’s Annals of Cartmel (1872), here in April 1576, stood the gibbet from which Richard Taylor swung, deliberately conspicuous from the road, a macabre moral lesson to all would-be ne’er do wells. Stockdale writes,

                “The highway road from Newton-in-Cartmel to Witherslack, after the steep zigzag descent of Towtop, crosses the river Winster at Bleacragg Bridge (so spelled in the Ordnance map, 1850). On the Lancashire side of the river, and adjoining the south-western end of the bridge, is a small rocky knoll, on which some Scotch fir and larch trees now grow; this knoll has always had the name of “Gallows Hill,” which may be accounted for by the above register, though all other tradition of the crime and its punishment has been lost.” 

                The church register, from which Stockdale quotes, states, “April 10. Richard Taylor was buryed whoe suffered the same daye at Blakragge bridge end for murthering wilfullye Richard Kilner of Witherslack.”

                If Bleacrag bridge supplies Stockdale with a dark tale, Buck Crag, on the western slope of Bishop’s Tithe Allotment, furnishes a lighter one. At the start of the 18th century, the farmhouse at its foot was home to Edmund Law, the curate and schoolmaster at Staveley. Stockdale praises Law for his “pedestrian achievements” and calculates that by walking the eight miles there and back to the church and school every day, over his forty-nine years in post, Law must have clocked up 122,696 miles—“a distance more than equal to five times the circumference of our globe”. Edmund remained a humble footsore curate, but his educational prowess propelled his progeny into high office: his son became the Lord Bishop of Carlisle, and his grandsons went on to become variously, the Bishop of Elphin, Baron Ellenborough, and the Bishop of Bath and Wells.

                Stockdale describes the house at Buck Crag as “one of the most homely and lonely places in these realms”, but evidently, it held such a fascination for Law’s grandsons that, in 1818, one of the bishops arrived on the doorstep, replete with an entourage of clerics and a secretary, and much to the astonishment of the farmer who now lived there, requested a thorough tour of the premises. Apparently, “t’Bishop inquir’t t’dog tail aut a-joint”. Meanwhile, a scene straight from Father Ted was playing out on the fell: “Whilst all this was going on, some of the younger clergymen took the opportunity, under the guidance of the farmer’s two daughters, to scale and scramble over the precipices of Buck Crag and the mountains adjoining; but whether it was the delightful scenery or the presence of the ladies that rendered them oblivious, they certainly quite forgot ‘that time hath wings,’ and having kept the bishop a long time waiting, they did not escape some mild reproof for tarrying so unnecessarily long on the top of Buck Crag”.  The Bishop himself, it seems, left with his grandfather’s old armchair from “i’ t’ingle neak” as a keepsake, despite some mild reluctance from the farmer who had grown rather fond of it.

                Top of Bishop's Tithe Allotment
                Bishop’s Tithe Allotment above Buck Crag

                From the summit, the ridge continues south, dropping 130 ft to the saddle with Dixon Heights. At the bottom of the depression, Tom Tarn nestles beside a copse. In wetter times, a stone wall divides its waters, but after weeks of little rain, it’s dry, distinguished only by a small expanse of cracked mud. Whitbarrow Scar to the east and Hampsfell to the west are renowned for their limestone pavements, but Newton Fell is an outcrop of older Silurian mudstone, muddy siltstone, and muddy sandstone of the Bannisdale formation. In times past, the slopes down to the tarn were quarried for slate and flag. I lose the path amid prolific undergrowth. To regain it, I affect an easy scramble over a grey face of cut slate, now prettily laced with white and pink petals of English stonecrop. I disturb a skylark. It shoots skyward, its flight a succession of deft tacks on the arc of white-tipped wings.

                Rocky Outcrop Dixon Heights
                Rocky Outcrop Dixon Heights

                A gate by the tarn leads through to Dixon Heights. The wall disappears into the deep tree cover, but ahead, there is a grassy clearing, mown close by the carefree grazing of the wild ponies that dwell here. Beyond, a hawthorn covered bank rises to the grassy top. Here stands a ruined tower.

                The Tower Dixon Heights
                The Tower Dixon Heights

                In 1827, architect George Webster, acquired Dixon Heights and built an elegant country mansion, Eller How, at its foot. Webster made his name extending and remodelling stately homes like Hutton in the Forest, Dallam Tower and Holker Hall. He also built Kendal Town Hall and several local churches. Eller How became his home. It is often supposed that Webster erected the summit tower as a romantic folly, but in his book of 1849, succinctly named, A History, Topography, and Directory, of Westmorland: And Londsdale North of the Sands, in Lancashire Together with a Descriptive and Geological View of the Whole of the Lake District, P. J. Mannix calls it an observatory. Wainwright says it was used by the Home Guard during the war but suggests its origins are obscure.  According to Wainwright, a local legend claims it was “a lookout for the observation of smugglers in the estuary”, but he admits it’s equally likely that it was “merely a decoration of the Eller How estate”.

                The Tower, Dixon Heights
                The Tower, Dixon Heights

                Whatever its original purpose, it is a romantic ruin now and a fine viewpoint over the estuary and the Bay. As I settle on its old stones and surrender to the charm of midsummer solitude, the soft light of evening weaves a gentle magic.

                The Tower, Dixon Heights
                The Tower, Dixon Heights
                The Tower, Dixon Heights
                The Tower, Dixon Heights

                I’m not quite alone. A feral white horse is grazing at the edge of the summit plateau, its taught muscular frame, flowing tail and unkempt mane, the epitome of wild majesty. Backdropped by the shimmering mudflats of the estuary, shores braided with dark woodland, and lit by an opal sky feathered silver with cirrocumulus, the whole scene is beguilingly beautiful. The horse looks ethereal, not quite of this world: a vision of something simpler, something older, something finer. I’m entranced, and I watch for a long while, lost in the rarefied poetry of the moment. It’s a wrench to tear myself away.

                White horse, Dixon Heights
                Rhiannon
                White Mare and the Bay from the Tower
                Dixon Heights (Newton Fell South)
                Dixon Heights (Newton Fell South)

                Below the summit, on a wooded bank above the track that leads to Eller How, there is a weathered arch. This was certainly a folly, likely built by Webster as a mock ruin; the vogue for the picturesque prized ruins in the landscape, and it became fashionable to build your own. William Gilpin, a devout apostle of the movement, frowned on such contrivance, but after two and half centuries, nature has conspired to turn this arch into the very thing it was meant to mimic, a gothic relic. Wainwright sketched it with more battlements than it boasts now, so perhaps Gilpin would relent, and admire the effect of time and weather on these chiselled stones. After the dreamlike wonder of the white horse, the arch assumes an air of Arthurian romance.

                Arch, Dixon Heights
                Arch, Dixon Heights

                One version of the Arthurian legend can be found in the Mabinogion, a collection of Welsh stories composed in the 13th century from older Celtic tales. When waves of pagan invaders pushed into Cumbria, its Celtic priests and poets fled to Wales, taking their traditions with them, so it is entirely possible that some of the stories of the Mabinogion are Cumbrian in origin.

                The Arch, DIxon Heights
                The Arch, DIxon Heights

                Also featured in the Mabinogion, is Rhiannon, a woman of the Otherworld, who appears to Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed, astride a horse. Smitten with her beauty, Pwyll follows her, but despite her gentle pace, he can never catch her until he implores her to stop, which she does willingly and rebukes him for not asking earlier. Rhiannon then reveals she has chosen Pwyll to be her husband. Pwyll and Rhiannon marry, but their son is abducted on the night of his birth. Fearing execution for their negligence, his nursemaids kill a puppy and smear the sleeping Rhiannon with its blood. Just as they plan, she is accused of murder and cannibalism. Pwyll refuses to abandon her and retains her as queen, but she is obliged to undergo a penance. Every day, she must sit outside the castle by the stable block and profess her crime to visitors. She must then offer to carry them into the castle on her back, like a beast of burden. Eventually, a vision of a foal being stolen from a mare by a dark presence leads to the baby’s rescue and to Rhiannon’s exoneration.

                Rhiannon is associated with the Gaulish horse goddess, Epona, and often portrayed as a maiden. But in some depictions, Rhiannon, herself, is an ethereal white mare.

                “Things seen, things remembered, and things imagined are blended together into a delicate landscape which is half reality and half dream, but in which the dream helps to clarify rather than to obscure that which is really there.”

                White horse, Dixon Heights

                Further Reading/Sources

                Stockdale, James. 1872: Annals of Cartmel. Ulverston: William Kitchen; London: Simpkin, Marshall, & Co

                Guest, Lady Charlotte E. (Translator). 1838: The Mabinogion. Dover Publications, 2000

                Wainwright, A. 1974: The Outlying Fells of Lakeland. Kendal: The Westmorland Gazette

                Nicholson, Norman. 1955: The Lakers. Milnthorpe: Cicerone Press, 1995.

                Hudson, J. 1842: A Complete Guide To Wordsworth’s Scenery of the Lakes of England.

                Mannex, P. J. 1849: History, Topography, and Directory, of Westmorland.
                London: Simpkin, Marshall & Co.

                Thomas, P.R.. 2006 Geology of the area between Lindale and Witherslack. Nottingham, UK, British Geological Survey, 39pp. (IR/06/079) (Unpublished), Available at: http://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/7302/


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                  The Fell King

                  High Rigg and the Poet Stonemason of St John’s in the Vale

                  Named for a 13th century’s hospice built by the Knights Hospitaller, St John’s in the Vale is an idyllic glacial valley, hemmed in by High Rigg & Helvellyn  with Blencathra at its foot. In the 1800’s, it was home to a stonemason turned schoolteacher who became a minor celebrity when he published two volumes of dialect rhymes that capture the comedy and romance of Cumbrian life like few others could. A few weeks before lockdown, on a brooding day between seasons, I walked through the vale to visit his modest grave, then returned over High Rigg where I found the view that inspired one of his finest poems.

                  The valley is soft grey and mauve, a wash of impressionist watercolour, bathed in fine mizzle, like a comforting memory that patters faintly on the cosy cocoon of my waterproofs. Through a bare-branched lattice of beech and silver birch, Wren Crag rises, a gaunt white face of rock, furrowed with olive wrinkles, its lower reaches wrapped in a scrubby winter blanket of mustard and salmon pink. At the bottom of the slope, St John’s Beck roars and hisses, gushing and crashing over rocks in a surging torrent of youthful exuberance.

                  St John's Beck
                  St John’s Beck

                  Here and there, a fallen tree testifies to the brutal winds that have scourged the land in recent weeks. Battered and weather-beaten, but perennially resilient, the first signs of spring rebound in the respite of this gentler day. The moss that clothes the mottled stone of an ancient wall is vivid green, as is the grass of the grazing pasture beyond. Across the valley, shafts of sunlight tint the orange bracken that cloaks the foot of Calfhow Pike, while above, its charcoal crags are flecked yellow with straw grass.

                  Calfhow Pike across the vale
                  Calfhow Pike across the vale
                  Calfhow Pike
                  Calfhow Pike

                  At Low Bridge End Farm, a tea-room (self-service today) is testimony to a farmer’s ability to diversify, while a vintage tractor, inert in a meadow, is a silent echo from an older time. Further along the track, a lichen-stippled ruin tells of a farming heritage that stretches all the way back to the Vikings; its roofless gables mirror the mighty pyramids of Blease and Gategill fells, Blencathra’s western buttresses, that rise as a colossal rampart beyond.

                  Vintage tractor and Blencathra
                  Vintage tractor and Blencathra
                  Blencathra over farm ruin
                  Blencathra over farm ruin
                  Farm ruins
                  Farm ruins

                  Soon after the Norman conquests, Ranulph Engayne, chief forrester of the Forest of Inglewood (which once stretched from Carlisle to Penrith), is said to have built a hospital at Caldbeck for the relief of travellers that had fallen victim to the “desperate banditti” that roamed the woods. The same dangers may have beset travellers journeying south from Keswick. Perhaps this is why, in the thirteenth century, The Knights Hospitaller of St John are said to have built a hospice on the pass between High and Low Rigg.

                  The Knights Hospitaller were a religious and military order with their own papal charter, which exempted them from the laws of the countries through which they travelled and held them answerable only to the Pope. They were originally formed to staff a hospital in Jerusalem, providing succour for sick or injured pilgrims, but they began to offer armed escorts through the Holy Land, and they became an elite fighting force in the crusades. By the late thirteenth century, the order had acquired significant lands in several countries, including England.

                  The Hospitallers’ chief rivals in terms of power and influence were the Knights Templar. The Templars are widely accredited with having invented modern banking. Noblemen planning to visit the Holy Land could assign their wealth over to the Templars, and on arrival at a Templar stronghold in the East, they could withdraw money and treasures to the same value.

                  By 1312, the Templars had become victims of their own success. With banking came credit, and with credit, debt. King Philip IV of France owed so much that he was desperate to wriggle out of his obligation. When an ex Templar brought some dubious criminal charges against the order, Philip seized the opportunity to have the Grand Master and many prominent members arrested. The Templars’ secret initiation ceremonies bred distrust, and the confessions Philip extracted under torture “revealed” that Templar recruits were required to spit on the cross, deny Christ, worship false idols and indulge in acts of homosexuality: all highly dubious claims that nonetheless resulted in dozens of members being burnt at the stake as heretics. Under duress, Pope Clement V disbanded the Templars, signing over much of their property (like Temple Sowerby in the Eden Valley) to the Knights Hospitaller.

                  Evidence for the hospice below High Rigg is sketchy, but there is a mention of a “House of St John” in a land bequest to Fountains Abbey in 1210. It is thought the hospice evolved into the inn that stood on the pass for many centuries. It likely lent its dedication to St John’s church, which dates back to the 1500’s (possibly earlier). For many centuries, St John’s was an outlying chapel of the parish of Crosthwaite, Keswick. (It became a parish church in its own right in 1863). It’s a lonely setting for a country chapel, but it serves both the Naddle valley and St John’s in the Vale, and if James Clark’s  Survey of the Lakes of 1778 is anything to go by, the presence of the inn may have been an incentive for the faithful to turn out for worship:

                  “all the inhabitants of the parish, old and young, men and women, repair to the ale house after Evening Prayer”.

                  According to Clark, the valley was properly known as the Vale of Wanthwaite but calling it the Vale of St John had already become common practice. In his wonderful parish history, former vicar, Geoffrey Darrall, suggests that the variation, St John’s-in-the-Vale, was first used to differentiate the chapel from St John’s Keswick, when the latter was built in 1838.

                  By 1845, the chapel had fallen into disrepair to the extent it needed rebuilding. The man who was given the job was a local stonemason who had built many of the area’s dry stone walls and dwellings. His name was John Richardson, and he lived at the end of this footpath.

                  Beyond Sosgill Bridge, the beck that has been a constant companion takes a wider birth, swinging back for a final parting kiss beneath the copper-bracken clad slopes of Rake How.  Lonscale Fell commands the forward view now, soft purple but for a thin band of snow that defines its pointed eastern peak, the valley at its foot is fleetingly gilded by a shaft of sunlight. Ahead, beneath an intricate tracery of black branches, appears the white-walled haven of Bridge House, the Richardsons’ residence from 1858, when they moved from Stone Cottage on the Naddle side of the Fell.

                  Bridge House and Lonscale Fell
                  Bridge House and Lonscale Fell

                  The path meets the winding lane that climbs the pass. I turn up it, and in no more than a hundred yards, I reach the church. This humble edifice of weathered slate, nestled under High Rigg, in the shadow of Blencathra, looks as if it has been carved from the hillside—an enduring unassuming testament to rural faith.

                  Originally, the pass served as a corpse road. Anyone who died in the valley had their coffin carried to Crosthwaite for burial. In 1767, the chapel was granted the right to bury its own dead in its own chapel yard. It wasn’t until nine years later that the first burial took place here. A local superstition held that the Devil was waiting to claim the soul of the first interred, and the belief was so strong as to compel all ageing locals to insist they be carried to Crosthwaite when their time came (unless, by chance, someone else had beaten them to the first lot). According to Richardson, that “someone else” was an ailing vagrant who dropped dead on the road. Rather than being bemoaned as burden by the parish saddled with his burial costs, the poor soul met with a hero’s funeral.

                  John Richardson grave and St John's church
                  John Richardson grave and St John’s church

                  In the churchyard, opposite the east window, stands an old gravestone in the shape of a Celtic cross, its edges softened by moss and its face mottled with lichen.  The circle at the centre of the cross holds a Christogram, intwining the letters “I”, “H” and “S” into a gothic motif—iota-eta-sigma—the first three letters in the Greek for Jesus. The foot of the cross broadens into a tablet, which bears the following inscription:

                  IN LOVING MEMORY OF JOHN RICHARDSON
                  Of Bridge House
                  ST JOHN’S IN THE VALE
                  WHO DIED ON THE 30TH APRIL 1886
                  Aged 68 Years
                  ALSO OF GRACE, HIS WIFE
                  WHO DIED FEBRUARY 11TH 1909
                  Aged 90 Years

                  John Richardson's gravestone
                  John Richardson’s gravestone

                  Writing in 1975, Frank Carruthers lamented, “Today (the grave) is seldom visited because memories of John Richardson have faded”. Almost ninety years earlier, the whole valley turned out for his funeral, and they were joined by many, many more from far further afield. For John Richardson was more than a stonemason, and his legacy, more than the humble church in whose shadow he lies.

                  After rebuilding the church, Richardson built the school next door (now the Carlisle Diocesan Youth Centre), then put down his chisel and took up the position of school master. It was during these years that he gave full reign to another talent—a gift for capturing the rural life of the fells and valleys in a way few others have ever managed.

                  In 1871, Richardson published Cummerland Talk—being short tales and rhymes in the dialect of that county. A second volume followed five years later, and between them, the books turned Richardson into a minor celebrity. Seamus Heaney has described his own poetry as “the music of what happens”, and this too is what Richardson makes, a celebration of the commonplace, rendered in the everyday parlance of the district and the time, a Cumbrian counterpoint to the writings of his hero, Robbie Burns

                  Tom an’ Jerry (written forty years before the cartoon when the term meant a drinking den) tells the story of a man and wife, who procure a barrel of ale, which they plan to pay for by selling pints at threepence apiece to their neighbours.

                  Says Ben to t’ wife, “Auld wife”’ says he,
                  “We’ll hev a Tom an’ Jerry;
                  An’ thoo can wait, an’ I can drum.
                  By jing! but well be merry!
                  We’ll hev a cask o’ yal for t’ start,
                  An’ than when we want mair.
                  We’ll pay wi’ t’ brass we’ve selt it for.
                  An’ summat hev to spare.”

                  As each decides to sample the ale, the other insists they hand over the requisite threepence. In the absence of any other punters, they carry on like this all evening until they both pass out. When they awake, they find they’ve drunk the barrel dry, and they’ve no means to pay for it as, all night, they were simply swapping the same threepence back and forth.

                  In “FOR SHAM O’ THE’, MARY!” SES I, the narrator admonishes his wife for spreading gossip, but in his eagerness to express his own disdain for such “clattin’ an’ tattlin’ ‘s aboot nowt”, he manages to repeat every piece of salacious tittle-tattle he’s heard.

                  The Cockney in Mosedale tells of a farmer chancing upon a strange red-whiskered creature running about the fellside in fear of everything around him: the farmer, his dog, the sheep, and the fells themselves. In his panic, the poor creature gets stuck fast in a “peet-pot”. Fearing it might come to harm if left to its own devices, the farmer leaves it “stack theer as fast as a fiddlepin” while he fodders his flock. Then he hauls it out, ties it up in his hay sheet, and carries it down to Troutbeck station, where he discovers the creature is a cockney, who’d taken the train out of London for the first time and alighted, in the dark, at the wrong station.

                  By way of an introduction to Sneck Posset, Richardson explains the term:

                  “The old fashioned mode of courting in the northern counties, which is still common in many places, is for the young man to go to the house where his sweetheart lives, late at night, after all the other members of the family have retired to rest, when gently tapping at the window, the waiting damsel as soon as she has ascertained, by sundry whisperings, that he is the expected swain, admits him. If from any cause she refuses to let him into the house, he is said to have got a ‘Sneck Posset’.”

                  John used the same mode (albeit with more success) to court Grace, and he tells the story (from her point of view) in It’s Nobbut Me:

                  “Ya winter neet; I minds it weel,
                  Oor lads ‘ed been at t’fell,
                  An’ bein’ tir’t, went seun to bed,
                  An’ I sat be messel.
                  I hard a jike on t’window pane,
                  An’ deftly went to see;
                  Bit when I ax’t, ‘Who’s jiken theer?’
                  Says t’chap, it’s nobbut me!”

                  By turns comical and romantic, Richardson’s rhymes drip warmth and earthy authenticity.  As he explains in the preface to Volume II, they are “strictly Cumbrian in character and idiom, the author having taken pains to ascertain that the real incidents related actually happened in that county; while in the few pieces which are purely imaginary, he has been careful to preserve the same characteristics.”

                  He could be reflective too, philosophical even. Carruthers describes him as “the supreme example of one of the popular images of the Lake Country Dalesman—quiet, resolute, kind-hearted and self-effacing”.  In What I’d Wish For, Richardson concludes,

                  “Oor real wants are nobbut few
                  If we to limit them would try”

                  It’s a sentiment I’ll dwell on more than once in the weeks to come, when the country goes into a painful lockdown, and yet the birdsong seems louder and the sky, free of vapour trails, clearer than I have ever known. Such was the wisdom of a man who prized peace of mind over celebrity and chose to live all his life in the parish of his birth, under the vaunting ridges of Blencathra.

                  Blencathra
                  Blencathra

                  It’s a steep pull up High Rigg from the Youth Centre, but the effort pays back handsomely. On this brooding day between seasons, the ridge is a patchwork of grassy paths, rocky turrets, drystone walls, tiny tarns and swathes of scrub in shades of ochre, tan, russet and green. The views are procession of riches: Skiddaw and Blencathra, Clough Head and the Dodds, Castle Rock, Raven Crag and Thirlmere. Helvellyn is capped in snow and wrapped in mist. Skiddaw is brown and snow-free, just as they both were when I stood here in November. Then, the snow marked the onset of winter, now it marks the season’s last stand.

                  Tarn on High Rigg
                  Tarn on High Rigg
                  Ridge Path High Rigg
                  Ridge Path High Rigg
                  Thirlmere from High Rigg
                  Thirlmere from High Rigg
                  Wren Crag from Long Band
                  Wren Crag from Long Band

                  Surely this is where Richardson stood when the muse struck in 1876, for this very picture is the premise for one of his greatest rhymes, the Fell King, which I’ve reproduced in full below; so I’ll leave the last words to John.

                  (If you’re struggling with the dialect, read it aloud—persistence rewards richly).

                  Helvellyn from Naddle Fell
                  Helvellyn from Naddle Fell

                  THE FELL KING.

                  By John Richardson of Saint John’s, 1876

                  Breet summer days war aw gone by
                  An’ autumn leaves sa’ broon,
                  Hed fawn fra t’ trees, an’ here an’ theer,
                  War whurlin’ up an’ doon;
                  An’ t’ trees steud whidderin’ neàk’t an’ bare,
                  Shakken wi’ coald an’ wind.
                  While t’ burds war wonderin’ hoo it was
                  Neah shelter they could finnd.

                  Helvellyn, toorin’ t’ fells abeun,
                  Saw winter creepin’ on,
                  An’ grummelin’ sed, “Hoo coald it’s grown;
                  My winter cap I’ll don.”
                  Clean wesh’t an’ bleach’t, as white as drip,
                  He poo’t it ower his broo;
                  An’ than to t’ fells aw roond he sed,
                  “Put on ye’r neetcaps noo.”

                  Auld Skiddaw, lap’t i’ heddery duds,
                  Laal nwotish seem’t to tak:
                  An’ seun wi’ lood an’ thunnerin’ voice,
                  Agean Helvellyn spak:
                  “I say, put on that winter cap,
                  Broon hill ower-groun wi’ ling;
                  Rebellious upstart! put it on;
                  Obey thy lawful king!”

                  Auld Skiddaw lang hed hanker’t sair
                  Itsel to be t’ fell king;
                  An’ Saddleback hed egg’t it on,
                  Thinkin’ ‘t wad honour bring;
                  An’ bits o’ profit it mud be,—
                  Fwok see eneuf o’ that;
                  When kings an’ girt fwok thriven ur
                  Their flunkies oft git fat.

                  Seah, Skiddaw stack it’ hedder up,
                  An’ pertly sed, “Is yon
                  Rough heap o’ crags an’ shilly beds,
                  To tell us what to don?
                  I’ll freely oan it’s wise eneuf
                  To hap itsel wi’ snow;
                  If I was neak’t an’ bare like it
                  I’d hide mysel an’ aw.

                  “I’s nut asham’t my heid to show,
                  Withoot a neetcap on;
                  An’ claim mair reet to be t’ fell king
                  Nor a bare hill like yon,
                  Fra t’ farthest neùks o’ t’ warld fwok come
                  Fam’t Skiddaw bit to see;
                  Whoar ten climm up Helvellyn breest,
                  Ten twenties climm up me!”

                  With threetnin’ storm, Helvellyn laps
                  Dark cloods aroond it’ heid;
                  An’ noo a voice fra t’ clood com oot,
                  “A bonny king, indeed!
                  A hill thrown up by mowdiwarps,
                  An’ cuvver’t ower wi’ ling,
                  Withoot a crag, withoot a tarn,
                  Wad mak a nice fell king!

                  “Laal brag it is for enny man
                  To climm up Skiddaw side;
                  Auld wives an’ barnes on jackasses,
                  To t’ tippy top may ride;
                  When theer, it’s nut sa’ much they see,
                  Bit level country roond;
                  They’re better pleas’t when gangin’ up.
                  Nor when they’re comin’ doon.

                  “Bit let them climm Helvellyn side,
                  If climm’t they nobbut can;
                  They munnet be auld wives or barnes;
                  It taks a strang hale man,
                  To stand on t’ dizzy edge, an’ leuk
                  Doon t’ screes, whoar Gough was lost;
                  An’ he’s neah snafflin’ ‘at can say,
                  Ower Striden edge I cross’t.

                  “Than what a glorious scene it is
                  ‘At ‘s spread befwore his eyes,
                  O’ lakes an’ tarns an’ woody deàls.
                  An’ fells ower fells ‘at rise.
                  A dozen lakes, an’ twenty tarns,
                  Ur spread befwore his een;
                  An’ Skiddaw, like a low black hill,
                  Far doon to t’ north is seen!”

                  What mair palaver theer hed been,
                  It’s hard for yan to tell;
                  For gnimmelin’ soonds, an’ snarlin’ words.
                  Noo spread fra fell to fell;
                  An’ some their caps o’ white don’t on,
                  While udders went without;
                  An’ some proclaim’ t Helvellyn king,
                  While some wad Skiddaw shoot.

                  Bit noo roond Scawfell Man theer hung,
                  As midneet black, a clood;
                  An’ oot fra’t brast a thunner clap,
                  ‘At rwoar’t beàth lang an’ lood:
                  Than hail an’ snow com whurlin’ doon.
                  An’ hap’t beàth crags an’ ling;
                  While t’ fells aw roond, as whisht as mice,
                  Oan’t Scawfell as their king!

                  Sources/Further Reading

                  Richardson, John. 1871: Cummerland Talk. London: John Russell Smith; Carlisle: Geo. Coward.

                  Richardson, John. 1876: Cummerland Talk (Second Series). London: Bemrose and Sons; Carlisle: G. & T. Coward.

                  Carruthers, F. J. 1975. The Lore of the Lake Country. London: Robert Hale & Company

                  Darrall, Geoffrey. 2009. The Story of St John’s-in-the-Vale. Keswick: Piper Publications (available from St John’s Church)


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                    Before the flood

                    Raven Crag & the Flooding of Thirlmere

                    In 1879, the Manchester Corporation obtained royal permission to turn Thirlmere into a reservoir by building a dam that would flood the valley, drowning the hamlets of Wythburn and Armboth and submerging a shoreline rich in beauty and folklore. I climb Raven Crag and Launchy Gill in search of the ghosts of a lost world.

                    Frost has iced the earth, feathering treetops in elegant plumes of winter. Above a lake of shadows, Raven Crag stands proud, mirrored in waters blue as midnight, its chiselled face furred with conifer. Not that anyone left alive remembers, but it once stood taller:

                    “Farewell! the dear irrevocable shore!
                    Dark firs, and blue-bell copse, and shallowing bright!
                    Stern Raven Crag is cheated of its height”

                    Raven Crag
                    Raven Crag

                    The words are Canon Hardwicke Drummond Rawnsley’s, lamenting a Victorian act of vandalism wrought on this ancient landscape by the construction of the stone dam beneath my feet. He was not alone in his anger: W. G. Collingwood, founder of the Ruskin museum and designer of the Great Gable war memorial, declared, “Thirlmere… once was the richest in story and scenery of all the lakes. The old charm of its shores has quite vanished, and the sites of its legends are hopelessly altered, so that the walk along either side is a mere sorrow to anyone who cared for it before; the sham castles are an outrage and the formality of the roads, beloved of cyclists, deforms the hillsides like a scar on a face”. Ruskin himself was less generous, saying of the dam builders, “as to these Manchester robbers … there is ‘no profit’ in the continuance of their lives”.

                    The “robbers” were the Waterworks Committee of the Manchester Corporation. In 1877, they published a report predicting that Manchester would outgrow its current water supply within seven years—this in spite of municipal policies that discouraged water closets and baths in working class homes. They proposed a scheme to turn Thirlmere into a reservoir that would supply Manchester with fifty million gallons of water per day by means of a ninety-six-mile-long aqueduct. It would be an innovative triumph of engineering, and it would provide the city (and its cotton mills) with some of the purest water to be found anywhere in England.

                    Raven Crag and Thirlmere from the dam
                    Raven Crag and Thirlmere from the dam

                    To obtain the powers necessary, a private bill was brought before Parliament. The corporation had anticipated the kind of objections that were raised by wealthy landowners (such as, “undesirable disturbance by constructing the aqueduct through gentlemen’s private pleasure grounds”). They had even whipped up local support—when petitioned the ratepayers of Keswick voted 90% in favour (they’d been promised the scheme would free the town from flooding forever). But Manchester had underestimated the weight of opposition from another quarter.

                    Social reformer, Octavia Hill, called for a committee to examine the matter, devise a plan of opposition, and raise funds to fight the scheme. Under a name more evocative of a paramilitary force than a village green preservation society, the Thirlmere Defence Association was born. It was a coalition of creatives, including eminent writers, artists and philosophers.

                    The debating of a private bill is designed to consider objections from those who will be financially disadvantaged by its proposal. Unable to demonstrate any such private interest, the TDA presented the landscape as a public asset and its despoliation as an affront to the nation. Their argument was sufficiently strong, and whipped up enough public support, to commute the private bill into a hybrid bill, which considered the public as well as private interests.

                    The Defence Association was particularly incensed by Alderman Grave’s assertion that the scheme would improve on nature. John Grave actually had closer ties with the area than many of his opponents, being the son of a Cockermouth saddler. He had moved to Manchester to found a highly successful paper manufacturing business and had become mayor three times. He was now chairman of the Waterworks Committee—converting Thirlmere into a reservoir had been his brainchild.

                    Lord of the Manor, Thomas Leonard Stanger Leathes of Dale Head Hall, on the eastern shore, was outraged; he banned anyone associated with the scheme from his land. As a result, Grave and Sir John James Haywood had to conduct a clandestine survey, on hands and knees in appalling weather to avoid forcible ejection. As a consequence, they both spent several days in bed with severe colds.

                    But Leathes died in 1877, and the Manchester Corporation bought his estate. Despite spirited opposition, Parliament found in favour of Grave’s committee, and in 1879, the Corporation was granted royal permission by Queen Victoria to begin work; the first stone of the dam was laid in 1890. It would eventually raise the level of the lake by 54ft and increase its expanse to 690 acres, submerging the cottages and farmsteads of Wythburn and Armboth, and transforming the valley forever.

                    Thirlmere from the dam
                    Thirlmere from the dam

                    The Thirlmere Defence Association had lost the battle but not the war. It inspired the formation of the National Trust and was iconic in the development of modern environmental protection—it was, essentially, the birth of the Green movement in Britain.

                    Grave died in 1891, three years before the water supply was switched on, but not before the Cumbrian landscape had exacted a degree of poetic justice. With the scheme underway, Grave retired to Portinscale where he built a grand residence, the Towers. In a headstrong rush of pride, Grave augmented his property with an ostentatious gothic coach house, sporting steeples and cloisters. Locals warned him that the ground between the lake and road was too moist to support such a thing. When he refused to listen, they termed the building, “Grave’s folly”; and such it turned out to be. In a scenario reminiscent of a Monty Python sketch, it “sunk into the swamp”.

                    I walk on past one of the faux castles that so enraged Collingwood. They were built by the Manchester Corporation to house the dam’s workings—Grave’s vision of enhancing the landscape, no doubt.

                    A faux castle
                    A faux castle

                    Some people felt that the greater affront was the Corporation’s aggressive afforestation policy, replacing the thin skirt of indigenous oaks that lined the lake with dense spruce and larch plantations. The aim was to filter run-off water from the fells and preserve the lake’s purity, but the dense cover obscured magnificent vistas and gave Thirlmere a look more in keeping with Canada than the heart of the English Lake District.

                    These days, the prospect is changing. Even before handing stewardship to the Water Board, the Manchester Corporation had adopted more sensitive policies, thinning the conifer and planting broad-leaf tree varieties. As I climb through the woods, a clearing reveals the bay-dun majesty of Helvellyn and the Dodds, and splashes of deciduous shrub lick sombre greens with flames of autumnal copper. Ahead the larches are not without their charms. Unique among conifers in shedding the needles, their stark winter forms adorn the mossy terraces and vertical white walls of Raven Crag. Their perpendicular trunks are slender pillars, and their bare branches, rib vaults to a succession of rock galleries, enhancing the stately grandeur of this immense natural cathedral.

                    The path to Raven Crag
                    The path to Raven Crag
                    Helvellyn from Raven Crag
                    Helvellyn from Raven Crag
                    Larches on Raven Crag
                    Larches on Raven Crag

                    The path tracks uphill beside the cliff to the old iron age fort of Castle Crag. From here, I climb to Raven Crag’s summit from behind by means of a wooden boardwalk. The top commands a peerless view down the entire length of the lake.  This is the spot where Wainwright sketched himself, “apparently contemplating the view (but more likely merely wondering if it’s time to be eating his sandwiches)”.

                    Thirlmere from Raven Crag summit
                    Thirlmere from Raven Crag summit

                    Edward Baines, writing in 1834, helps us imagine what all this looked like in the pre-Manchester days:

                    “Before us, and lying along the foot of the fells, which separate this valley from that of Watendlath, stretched the dark, narrow lake of Thirlmere, which bears also the names of Leathes Water and Wythburn Water. It is nearly three miles in length, but about the middle the shores approach each other so as almost to divide it into two distinct lakes, —a bridge being thrown over the strait. It is overhung and shaded by crags, some of which are stupendous, and all naked and gloomy. The most conspicuous is Raven-crag, near the foot of the lake, which forms a striking object for many miles,—resembling a gigantic round tower, blackened and shattered by the lapse of ages. Thirlmere has a higher elevation than any other lake, being 500 feet above the level of the sea: its greatest depth of water is eighteen fathoms. Its borders are not adorned, like those of the other lakes, by wood, with the exception of a few fir plantations, (which rather increase the gloominess of the scene), and of a bold wooded eminence, called the How, at the foot of the lake. This valley has no luxuriance, and its general character is wild magnificence.”

                    (It was Thirlmere’s elevation that proved so attractive to the Manchester Corporation. Few other English lakes could have fed the aqueduct by gravity alone.)

                    Harriet Martineau, in 1855, adds to the picture:

                    “Of the two lake-roads, the rude western one is unquestionably the finest. The woods, which were once so thick that the squirrel is said to have gone from Wythburn to Keswick without touching the ground, are cleared away now; and the only gloom in the scene is from the mass of Helvellyn. The stranger leaves the mail road within a mile of the Horse’s Head, passes the cottages called by the boastful name of the City of Wythburn, and a few farmhouses, and soon emerging from the fences, finds himself on a grassy level under the Armboth Fells, within an amphitheatre of rocks, with the lake before him, and Helvellyn beyond, overshadowing it. The rocks behind are feathered with wood, except where a bold crag here, and a cataract there, introduces a variety.”

                    This old road has been lost beneath the waters, along with its landmarks, rich in stories. Submerged is Clark’s Lowp, a huge boulder opposite Deergarth How Island, from which Clark, a henpecked dalesman made mortally miserable by the nagging of his wife, sought peace by launching himself into the water and drowning. His wife apparently remarked with indifference, “he had often threatened to do away with himself, but I never thought the fool would find the courage to do such a thing”.

                    Where Launchy Gill crossed the old road was the Steading Stone. Here, the manorial courts were held and the Pains and Penalties of Wythburn were exacted.  The penalties included fines for allowing more than your allotted number of sheep to graze the fell or letting cattle wander and foul the becks. (Years later, Wainwright was rumoured to have fouled the becks in protest at “the dark forests (that) conceal the dying traces of a lost civilisation, lost not so very long ago.”

                    Thirlmere from Launchy Gill
                    Thirlmere from Launchy Gill

                    Many of these legends are woven into Hall Caine’s novel, The Shadow of a Crime, published in 1885.  Caine grew up in Runcorn but his mother was Cumbrian, and while his story is a fiction, the book is steeped in local heritage. Set just after the English Civil War, it tells the story of Ralph Ray, an honest dalesman, who won respect fighting in the republican army.  Times are changing, however, and with Cromwell in the grave and Charles II on the throne, opinion is turning against former Roundheads. Ralph saved the life of a turncoat royalist soldier, James Wilson, and brought him home to Wythburn to work on his father’s farm; but his father suspects Wilson is a snake-in-the-grass. When Wilson is found dead, suspicion falls on an impoverished tailor, called Simeon Stagg.  There is insufficient evidence to convict Stagg and he walks free, but the community, convinced of his guilt and fearful of divine wrath should they knowingly shelter a murderer, drive him out, forcing him to live in a cave on the slopes above Fornside.

                    Ray and Wilson are Caine’s inventions but the story of Sim’s cave and the “hang-gallows tailor” are a genuine part of the valley’s folklore. He allegedly murdered a traveller on the eastern shore road near the Nag’s Head tavern that once stood opposite Wythburn Church. Sim is said to have eventually left the area when the hardships of cave-dwelling became too much. 

                    In Caine’s version, however, Sim is innocent.  He knows what really happened that night but refuses to tell as the truth would harm Ralph, his only friend. Not even Sim knows the whole story, however. That only emerges when another villager is stricken with The Plague and resolves to die with a clear conscience.

                    The Great Plague of 1665 was a genuine concern for the residents of Wythburn and Armboth (as it was for many other Cumbrian villages). At its height, movement around the District was restricted, but livings still had to be made. Up above Launchy Tarn, at a confluence of paths, is the Web Stone, a boulder where webs of wool would be covertly traded well away from the villages.  Coins were washed in vinegar and water to disinfect them before they were brought back down the fell.

                    When the Manchester Corporation felled the last of the old oaks that used to line Launchy Gill, Canon Rawnsley was moved to write, “Where are the thrushes and blackbirds to build now? Every branch had been a possible home but for the axe. I have many a time heard thrushes singing from these lower branches, and watched the squirrels playing upon them. I shall hear and see them no more”.  The canon would be heartened to know that Launchy Gill is again flanked by indigenous broad-leaf trees, one of the most conspicuous examples of the more recent rewilding policies.

                    Storm Desmond also conspired to help with the rewilding.  The Corporation had incurred the wrath of the conservationists by erecting a wooden walkway and footbridge around the gill to encourage tourists to view its spectacular waterfalls.  The storm destroyed the bridge and obstructed the path with a succession of uprooted trees.  When I visited, I was obliged to don microspikes to ford the beck and scramble the wall of greasy boulders on the other side.  For the motorist looking for an easy twenty minute peramble in pub shoes and leisurewear, it might prove an unnerving experience. As a precaution, United Utilities (the present stewards) have removed the signpost and steps by the road.  For the romantically-inclined fellwalker, however, it feels like a victory for nature, and a far-more satisfying adventure.

                    Launchy Gill
                    Launchy Gill

                    Above the A591, that now skirts the eastern shore of the lake, is Wythburn church. With the exception of Dale Head Hall and the farms at Stenkin and Steel End, it is the only surviving building. Today, it is a church without a congregation.  The communion rail is dedicated to the Reverend Winfried Des Vœux Hill, vicar of Wythburn at the time of the dam’s construction; the pastor who saw his flock dispersed. Outside, gravestones stand as monuments to Wainwright’s “lost civilisation”.

                    Wythburn Church
                    Wythburn Church
                    Wythburn Churchyard
                    Wythburn Churchyard

                    On the wall is an old photograph, taken from the churchyard, looking down over farmland to Armboth Hall.  Superstitious villagers must have drawn some comfort from the church’s pre-eminent position, as the Hall was once considered the most haunted house in Lakeland.  Harriet Martineau reported:

                    “Lights are seen there at night, people say, and the bells ring; and just as the bells set off ringing, a large dog is seen swimming across the lake. The plates and dishes clatter; and the table is spread by unseen hands. That is the preparation for the ghostly wedding feast of a murdered bride, who comes up from her watery bed in the lake to keep her terrible nuptials. There is really something remarkable, and like witchery, about the house.”

                    According to W. T. Palmer, the hall played host to an annual supernatural jamboree for all the spooks in Lakeland, including the skulls of Calgarth:

                    “For once a year, on All Hallowe’en, it is said, the ghosts of the Lake Country, the fugitive spirits whose bodies were destroyed in unavenged crime, come here… Bodies without heads, the skulls of Calgarth with no bodies, a phantom arm which possesses no other member, and many a weird shape beside.”

                    But the spirits are all gone now, along with the homes of the dalesfolk who feared them.  Drowned beneath the waters of progress. It’s a fate that farmers whose lands fall across the proposed HS2 route may find painfully familiar.

                    In the wider context, what the engineers achieved was phenomenal. The Cumbrian water supply has long been a cause for celebration in Manchester, and it benefits local towns too. The Corporation proved a good employer, allowing workers to live on in their cottages after retiring, and protecting the surviving farmland from property developers.

                    Thirlmere is still astoundingly beautiful. But standing here in this lonely churchyard, with a head full of old stories, looking out over the rippled expanse of water, I can’t help but wonder whether its soul has been submerged.

                    The drowned village of Armboth
                    The drowned village of Armboth
                    Armboth
                    Armboth
                    Rainbow over Thirlmere from Armboth
                    Rainbow over Thirlmere from Armboth

                    Sources/Further Reading

                    Baines , Edward. 1834: A companion to the Lakes of Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Lancashire. London: Simpkin and Marshall

                    Martineau, Harriet. 1855: A Complete Guide to the English Lakes. Windermere: John Garnett.

                    Palmer, W. T. 1908. The English Lakes. London: Adam and Charles Black.

                    Carruthers, F. J. 1975. The Lore of the Lake Country. London: Robert Hale & Company

                    Caine, Hall. 1885. The Shadow of a Crime. New York:  W. L. Allison Company

                    Findler, Gerald. 1984. Lakeland Ghosts. Clapham: Dalesman Books

                    Pipe, Beth and Steve. 2015. Historic Cumbria. Off the Beaten Track. Stroud: Amberley.

                    Darrall, Geoffrey. 2006. Wythburn Church and the Valley of Thirlmere. Keswick: Piper Publications (available from Wythburn Church)

                    Wikipedia is also good on the history of the reservoir:

                    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirlmere


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                      An Unkindness of Ravens

                      How Castle Rock of Triermain got its name

                      A striking outcrop of Watson Dodd, Castle Rock of Triermain is named for a local superstition and a legend of King Arthur, popularised by Sir Walter Scott. It was a favourite of rock climbers until a recent event that bore an uncanny resemblance to the story. On a crisp and frosty morning, I go in search of Merlin in the Vale of St John.

                      A sheer wall of white rock, marbled with indigo and mauve shadow, rises over stark winter branches. Spindly rowan saplings extend white twigs like spectral fingers, and burgundy berries hang in clusters over copper bracken. I climb over littered boulders to the foot of a crag that looms like the ruin of a colossal fortress. The earth is crisp with frost and the air hangs still but for the staccato croak of ravens. These giants of the crow family have kept guard, since time immemorial, over this natural castle in the Vale of Saint John.

                      Castle Rock of Triermain
                      Castle Rock of Triermain

                      The Vikings believed ravens to be the eyes and ears of Odin; the Greeks considered them associates of Apollo, god of prophecy, and ill omens in the mortal world; native Americans thought them tricksters. Collective nouns for ravens include: an unkindness, a treachery, and a conspiracy.

                      Deceptive spirits are associated with this crag. In 1773, William Hutchinson published perhaps the first real Lakeland guidebook, An Excursion to the Lakes in Westmoreland and Cumberland. In its pages he gives rein to a local superstition, and in doing so, helps cement a change of name for this towering outcrop of Watson Dodd, once known as Green Crag. Hutchinson writes:

                      “In the widest part of the dale you are struck with the appearance of an ancient ruined castle, which seems to stand upon the summit of a little mount, the mountains around forming an amphitheatre. This massive bulwark shows a front of various towers, and makes an awful rude and Gothic appearance, with its lofty turrets and ragged battlements; we traced the galleries, the bending arches, the buttresses. The greatest antiquity stands characterised in its architecture; the inhabitants near it assert it is an antediluvian structure.

                      “The traveller’s curiosity is roused, and he prepares to make a nearer approach, when that curiosity is put on the rack, by his being assured, that, if he advances, certain genii who govern the place by virtue of their supernatural art and necromancy, will strip it of all its beauties, and by enchantment, transform the magic walls. The vale seems adapted for the habitation of such beings; its gloomy recesses and retirements look like the haunts of evil spirits. There was no delusion in the report; we were soon convinced of its truth; for this piece of antiquity, so venerable and noble it its aspect, as we drew near changed its figure, and proved no other than a shaken massive pile of rocks, which stand in the midst of this little vale, disunited from the adjoining mountains, and have so much the real form and resemblance of a castle, that they bear the name of the Castle Rocks of St. John.”

                      Overhead, the guttural squawk of the ravens assumes a mocking tone.

                      In Susanna Clarke’s novel, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, the Raven King is the custodian of English magic and the builder of the King’s Roads, the realm behind the mirrors that affords access to other worlds. Clarke’s figure is a fiction, but a Raven King does exist in Celtic mythology. He was Brân the Blessed, a Welsh giant, and high king of Britain. Brân’s sister, Branwen, was due to marry the Irish king, Matholwch, however, resentful that his permission had not been sought, their brother, Efnysien, mutilated Matholwch’s horses. Matholwch was incensed, but Brân placated him with the gift of a magic cauldron which could bring the dead back to life.

                      Back in Ireland, Matholwch began to brood afresh on Efnysien’s affront, and banished Branwen to the kitchen where she was beaten daily. In retaliation, her brothers waged a vicious war which only seven of the Welsh and none of the Irish survived; the Irish were initially indomitable as they could use the cauldron to resurrect their fallen, but Efnysien dived in and destroyed it from within, sacrificing himself in the process . Mortally wounded in the foot, the Raven King instructed his seven survivors to cut off his head and carry it with them. The head continued to talk. Eventually, it instructed them to carry him to England, to White Hill, where the Tower of London now stands, and to bury him facing France so that he could forever ward off invasion.  To this day, six ravens are kept at the Tower. Should they leave, superstition says, the kingdom of Britain will fall.

                      A Celtic king whose spirit is eternally entwined with the fate of the realm has an Arthurian overtone. Indeed, in one Cornish version of the Arthurian legend, the dying King Arthur transforms into a raven. King Arthur has a direct association with the Castle Rocks of St John, courtesy of Sir Walter Scott’s epic poem of 1813, Bridal of Triermain. The poem was in part, inspired by Hutchinson’s account, and it is set right here in St. John’s in the Vale, where Gategill fell, that steep pyramidal buttress to Blencathra, dominates the northern skyline, and the Helvellyn massif is a high eastern rampart.

                      Gategill Fell, Blencathra from Legburthwaite in St John’s in the Vale

                      Scott’s poem intertwines three stories. The first is that of the narrator, a lowly musician attempting to win the hand of his high-born sweetheart, Lucy. Afraid that Lucy’s head may be turned by a rival with greater wealth or breeding, he recounts the tale of Roland De Vaux, the twelfth century Baron of Triermain, as a cautionary tale against maidenly pride. In the story, the Baron has a vision of a maiden so fair, he swears he will wed none other than she. He dispatches his faithful page to Ullswater to seek the advice of the Lyulph, a sage whose ancestry stretches back to King Arthur’s time (and who gave his name to the lake: originally, Ulph’s Water).  The Lyulph recognises the girl from the page’s description:

                      “That maid is born of middle earth
                      And may of man be won,
                      Though there have glided since her birth,
                      Five hundred years and one.
                      But where’s the Knight in all the north,
                      That dare the adventure follow forth,
                      So perilous to knightly worth,
                      In the valley of St. John?”

                      He goes on to recount “a mystic tale… handed down from Merlin’s age”. In the Lyulph’s tale, King Arthur rides out from Carlisle and reaches Blencathra (which curiously, Scott calls Glaramara).  Arthur passes Scales Tarn and descends beside the fledgling Glenderamackin river until he reaches the Vale of St. John, where he spies a formidable castle. Arriving at the gate, the castle appears deserted: it is silent, no banners flutter, and no guards patrol the battlements. Arthur sounds his bugle, and immediately, the portcullis is raised, and the drawbridge lowered. The king rides in to find a castle inhabited entirely by fair young maidens and their beautiful queen, Guendolen, in whose seductive company, he wiles away the next three months.

                      Guendolen has an ulterior motive for seducing the unsuspecting king:

                      “Her mother was of human birth,
                      Her sire a Genie of the earth,
                      In days of old deemed to preside,
                      O’er lovers’ wiles and beauty’s pride,
                      By youths and virgins worshipp’d long,
                      With festive dance and choral song,
                      Till, when the cross to Britain came,
                      On heathen alters died the flame,
                      Now deep in Wastdale solitude,
                      The downfall of his rights he rued,
                      And, born of his resentment heir,
                      He train’d to guile that lady fair,
                      To sink in slothful sin and shame
                      The champions of the Christian name.”

                      While Guendolen’s charms hold sway over Arthur, his kingdom languishes, ravaged by Saxons and Vikings alike. Eventually the king remembers himself and resolves to return to Camelot, but mindful of a lover’s responsibility, he first swears an oath to Guendolen: if, as a result of their union, she should bear him a son, the boy shall be heir to Arthur’s kingdom.  Should she bear him a daughter, Arthur will hold a tournament, where the best of his knights will battle for the girl’s hand in marriage.

                      With the king mounted on his charger, Guendolen offers a parting drink: “not the juice the sluggish vines of earth produce”, but “the draught which Genii love”.  She quaffs from a goblet and hands it to Arthur, but as he raises the cup toward his mouth, a drop falls on his horse’s neck and burns it so badly, it leaps twenty feet in the air:

                      “The peasant still can show the dint 
                      Where his hoofs lighted on the flint”

                      Dropping the goblet, Arthur returns to Carlisle, resumes command of his knights, and defeats the Saxons in a series of twelve bloody battles.  Fifteen years pass, then during an extravagant feast at Camelot, a fair young maiden appears on a white charger. At first, Arthur thinks it is Guendolen, but quickly realises he is wrong. This is Gyneth, his illegitimate daughter by Guendolen, come to claim her birthright.

                      Arthur is true to his word and organises a tournament, offering Gyneth’s hand together with a handsome dowry of Strathclyde, Reged and Carlisle to the victor.  However, fearing the cost to his army should his knights battle to the death, he instructs Gyneth to stop the combat before any blood is shed. But Gyneth is her mother’s daughter, and she refuses. 

                      As one by one, Arthur’s knights begin to fall, and their hearts’ blood stains Gyneth’s sandals red, Merlin appears from a cleft in the ground and orders a halt the proceedings, condemning Gyneth for her pride and sentencing her to unbroken sleep in the Castle of St. John…

                      “until a knight shall wake thee,
                      For feats of arms as far reknown’d
                      As a warrior of the Table Round”

                      To make the quest more difficult, a spell will hide the castle from mortal eyes.

                      ~

                      The musician’s tale has the desired effect, and Lucy marries her humble lover, but following their wedding, she presses him to tell her what becomes of Gyneth and whether Sir Roland De Vaux goes in search of her…

                      …Of course he does. Sir Roland spends many long days and nights in the Vale of St. John, searching in vain for the castle.  Then one night, he is awakened from his wild camp by a strange sound echoing around the fells. A meteor passes over, and by its ethereal light, he glimpses the castle, but such is the enchantment, that by the time he reaches its walls, they once again resume the form of a shattered crag. In frustration, Sir Roland raises his battle axe…

                      “And at the rocks his weapon threw,
                      Just where one crag’s projected crest,
                      Hung proudly balanced o’er the rest.
                      Hurl’d with main force, the weapon’s shock
                      Rent a huge fragment of the rock”

                      In response to the blow, the rocks come tumbling down, and when the dust has settled, a fractured and mossy staircase is revealed that leads Sir Roland up to the castle’s entrance.  He swims the moat, and enters the castle where, in successive chambers, he runs a gauntlet of ferocious tigers, declines the offer of untold riches, resists the charms of wanton maidens who declare themselves slaves to love, and declines offers of power and influence. Having thus conquered fear, pleasure, wealth and pride, he proves his worth and dissolves the spell that holds Gyneth in perpetual sleep. On awakening, King Arthur’s daughter happily agrees to wed her rescuer, and they leave the castle to lead a long and happy life together.

                      However, in their absence, the enchantment on the castle resumes:

                      “Know too, that when a pilgrim strays,
                      In morning mist or evening maze,
                      Along the mountain lone,
                      The fairy fortress often mocks
                      His gaze upon the castled rocks
                      Of the valley of St. John;
                      But never man since brave De Vaux
                      The charmed portal won.
                      ‘Tis now a vain illusive show,
                      That melts whene’r the sunbeams glow,
                      Or the fresh breeze hath blown.”

                      ~

                      Today, Harvey maps name Castle Rock, the Castle Rock of Triermain, in reference to the poem. Its north face offers popular rock climbs with names like Zigzag and Overhanging Bastion. But in 2012, a large crack was discovered in the buttress; a block the size of bungalow threatened to splinter from the main cliff, and climbers were cautioned to keep away.

                      On 18th November 2018, in an uncanny echo of the poem, the block finally detached and came crashing down, disfiguring the cliff face and littering its foot with shattered rocks. I climbed over its remnants to get here, and now, I stand gazing at the jagged spot from which it cleaved. A steep irregular gully climbs behind it, carpeted with green moss and fractured rock. It ends in a vertical wall. Yet, however hard I stare, it refuses to resolve into an ancient staircase and a castle gate.

                      A loud croak comes from a raven perched on the crag; its beady eye fixes me in cool appraisal. A raven’s stare is quizzical; it’s easy to see why our ancestors thought these birds prophetic, or spies for the gods. It could be a genie bent on trickery. Its demeanour is haughty, and the raucous cackle of its call sounds like mockery. Is it laughing at me for something it knows, and I don’t? That I am staring blindly at a faery castle? I see only ruptured rock—the will of Merlin perhaps, or an unkindness of ravens.

                      Further Reading

                      Bridal of Triermain by Sir Walter Scott.

                      You can probably find a digital transcription, but it’s much more fun to pick up an old edition, like this one, on line or in an antiquarian book shop. They can be had for just a few quid.

                      Rockfall at Castle Rock of Triermain

                      In this article, mountain leader, Graham Uney, laments the toppling of the North Crag and reminisces about climbing Zigzag and Overhanging Bastion…

                      https://www.grahamuneymountaineering.co.uk/rock-fall-at-castle-rock-of-triermain


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                        Pedestrian Verse

                        St. Sunday Crag, Fairfield, Seat Sandal & Grisedale Tarn

                        Inspired by the words of National Trust founder, Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley, I trek over St. Sunday Crag, Fairfield and Seat Sandal to Grisedale Tarn, where a prized Celtic crown lies deep in the water, a spectral army stands guard, and a lonely rock bears a poignant inscription from William Wordsworth to his shipwrecked brother, John.

                        “A sparrowhawk swung out from the crags, and the swifts screamed at us while we watched him. St. Sunday Crag itself cannot be viewed to finer advantage than from here, and the little Cofa Pike, like a watchtower guarding the portcullis, was a remarkable feature in the near foreground.

                        One was sorely tempted to climb Cofa and drop down upon the narrow neck that divides Fairfield from St. Sunday Crag—for St. Sunday Crag is said to be one of the few mountain heights that can boast remarkable flowers and plant growth—but we contented ourselves with the marvellous beauty of the colouring of the red bastions of Helvellyn as they circled round to Catchedecam, with the ebon-blue water patch of Grisedale Tarn in the hollow. With memories of Faber’s love of that upland lake, and of Wordsworth’s last farewell to his sailor brother on the fell beside the tarn, we turned our faces from the battle-ground of the winds to Great Rigg, but not before we had wondered at the piling up of the gleaming cloud masses above the long range of High Street to the west, and the sparkling of the jewel of Angle Tarn between Hartsop Dod and the Kidsty Pike.”

                        Grisedale Tarn and Seat Sandal from Fairfield

                        Thus wrote Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley of a walk upon Fairfield—“the battle-ground of the winds”—in 1911. Rawnsley was a vicar, a social reformer and a conservationist to whom us Lakes lovers owe a significant debt. Influenced by William Wordsworth and John Ruskin, Rawnsley believed that education and immersion in nature were key to improving the lot of the impoverished. His work began in the slums of Bristol where he arranged classes and country walks for the residents of Clifton, one of the city’s poorest areas. In 1878, he moved to Cumbria to become vicar of Wray. Five years later, he moved to the parish of Crosthwaite on the outskirts of Keswick.  Here, he and his wife, Edith, founded the Keswick School of Industrial Arts as an initiative aimed at tackling the widespread unemployment that dogged the town during the winter months.

                        The school began in 1884 as free evening classes in the parish rooms offering professional instruction in wood carving and decorative metalwork. The proceeds from sales of the work were used to fund tuition and materials, and the school rapidly gained a reputation for quality. By 1890, it was winning prizes in national exhibitions, and by its tenth year, it had outgrown the parish rooms and was obliged to move into purpose-built premises, where it continued for ninety years, finally closing in 1984.

                        Understandably, Rawnsley’s belief in the benefits of the natural landscape burgeoned with his move to Lakeland, and he became an ardent conservationist, battling against the proliferation of both slate-mining and the public transport network. He campaigned to keep footpaths and rights of way open and quickly realised the biggest threat to the landscape and its traditions came from private property developers. In 1895, together with Octavia Hill and Robert Hunter, he founded the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty.  The Trust aimed (as it still does) to acquire and hold land to protect it from development.  Thanks to the efforts of Rawnsley, Hill and Hunter (and the bequest of Rawnsley’s protégé, Beatrix Potter), the establishment of the Lake District National Park was made possible.

                        On this occasion, Rawnsley had climbed Fairfield from Grasmere via Stone Arthur and would return down the ridge from Great Rigg to Nab Scar—half of the horseshoe that remains the most popular way to ascend the mountain. But for my money, the finest way up is the one he gazes over: St. Sunday Crag and Cofa Pike.

                        St. Sunday Crag
                        St. Sunday Crag

                        Inspired by Rawnsley’s words I ready myself for the route. I see a sparrowhawk before I even leave the house. It’s perched on an old wooden chair in the garden, beneath the bird feeder, wondering why the gang of sparrows that perennially besiege the spot have all mysteriously disappeared. By the time I reach Patterdale, the sun is out, marking a welcome change in what has so far been an underwhelming August.

                        Sparrowhawk
                        Sparrowhawk

                         I’m heading for Birks but intend to forego the summit in favour of the path that crosses its north-western shoulder and provides spectacular views over Grisedale to Striding Edge, Nethermost Pike and Dollywagon Pike. I was there in February when the Helvellyn massif was a dark volcanic rampart, frosted with snow and illuminated in a spectral light that would have had you believe you had somehow traded Wainwright for Tolkien’s Pictorial Guides to Middle Earth. I’m keen to see how it has transformed in high summer. 

                        Striding Edge from Birks
                        Striding Edge from Birks
                        Striding Edge & Dollywagon Cove
                        Striding Edge & Dollywagon Cove

                        It’s a tough old pull up Birks, but the backward prospect of Ullswater stretched out below, a cool blue languid pool, gives ample excuse to stop. Over a rickety stile, I gain the clear path that traverses the shoulder. The summit is up on my left, but to my right, the slopes fall steeply away to Grisedale, and across the valley are the flanks of Helvellyn, with Striding Edge a crowning wall, ahead.

                        Ullswater from Birks
                        Ullswater from Birks

                        Some argue these fells assume their true mountain character in winter, shorn of green vegetation, their physiques chiselled, their craggy profiles sharpened and highlighted with snow. But only a churl would deny the splendour of their summer majesty; their lower slopes mottled as they are now, olive, gold and forest green; higher daubs of purple heather are stippled with exposed stone, tinged coral pink by the ever shifting splashes of sun that dance across their sides. A slim stream of silver tinkles down from the dark cliffs of Nethermost Pike to meet a broad river of light cascading over Dollywagon to illuminate its lower crags. If you don’t believe in magic, you have simply never stood here in February and then again in August.

                        Nethermost Pike
                        Dollywagon Pike
                        Dollywagon Pike
                        Nethermost Pike
                        Nethermost Pike
                        Helvellyn from St Sunday Crag
                        Helvellyn from St Sunday Crag

                        The gentle shoulder affords a temporary respite from the steepness of the incline, but beyond the col with St. Sunday Crag, the strenuous effort resumes. The stiff climb finally relents, but the remaining ground to the summit presents a fresh challenge—the wind is gusting hard. Rawnsley’s “battle-ground of the winds” has extended along the ridge. Even if I had his botanical insight, today might not be the time to study the “remarkable flowers and plant growth”. Simply staying upright is taxing, but it’s edifying, and just beyond St. Sunday Crag’s summit is a sight to further lift the spirit.

                        In the distance, the mighty trinity of Fairfield, Seat Sandal and Dollywagon Pike form a circle as if to guard something of value in their midst. That something is Grisedale Tarn. From here, it looks like a dewdrop in the hollow, or perhaps a tear shed for the last king of Cumbria—a deep well of myth and religious impulse.

                        Grisedale Tarn between Fairfield, Seat Sandal and Dollywagon Pike
                        Grisedale Tarn between Fairfield, Seat Sandal and Dollywagon Pike

                        Rawnsley talks of “Faber’s love of that upland lake”. Frederick William Faber was a theologian and hymn writer, and a friend of William Wordsworth, who would take long vacations in the Lake District to soothe the spiritual and intellectual stress of wrestling with divergent forms of the Christian faith. In 1840, he published a poem, Grisedale Tarn, in which he imagined that if he were “a man upon whose life an awful, untold sin did weigh,” then here is where he would build a hermitage.

                        Grisedale Tarn
                        Grisedale Tarn

                        John Pagen White’s poem, King Dunmail, tells a darker story that links the Tarn with the large pile of stones at Dunmail Raise. According to the legend, Dunmail was the last king of Cumbria, a kingdom that then stretched as far north as Glasgow. This Celtic stronghold had long resisted subjugation by the Saxons and the Scots but was finally overthrown when they joined forces. Dunmail was supposedly slain at Dunmail Raise and his men are said to have built the large cairn to mark his grave. As White puts it:

                        Mantled and mailed repose his bones
                        Twelve cubits deep beneath the stones
                        But many a fathom deeper down
                        In Grisedale Mere lies Dunmail’s crown.

                        Dunmail’s crown held magical powers and his dying wish was that it should be kept from Saxon hands. A small cohort of his men took the crown and fought their way to Grisedale Tarn where they cast it in. To this day, they keep a spectral guard, and every year their apparitions carry another stone from the tarn to Dunmail Raise.

                        And when the Raise has reached its sum
                        Again will brave King Dunmail come;
                        And all his Warriors marching down
                        The dell, bear back his golden crown.

                        Grisedale Tarn
                        Grisedale Tarn

                        It’s a long descent to Deepdale Hause, and from the trough, the sight of Cofa Pike towering above is formidable. In actual fact, the path cuts a canny zigzag up through the crags and three points of contact aren’t required quite as often as you’d imagine. On a good day, it’s an exhilarating airy scramble, but as I start up its slopes, the heavens open and the wind whips the rain into a stinging scourge.

                        Cofa Pike from St Sunday Crag
                        Cofa Pike from St Sunday Crag

                        In the notes to his poem, White suggests the idea of Dunmail, and King Arthur, as once and future kings may have been a legacy of the Vikings. In old Norse belief, Odin would enact a winter trance in which he rode across the sky, accompanied by wolves, ravens and an army of the dead, in pursuit of a wild boar or, in some versions, a whirlwind. Shortly after dispatching his quarry, the god himself would die, only to be born again when next he was needed. In the eye of a mountain storm, it’s a dramatic notion and one that haunts as I tread lightly over the slender summit of Cofa and climb into the mist atop the Battleground of the Winds.

                        Cofa Pike from Fairfield
                        Cofa Pike from Fairfield
                        Cofa Pike from Fairfield

                        Thankfully, the rain is easing by the time I negotiate the steep eroded path down to Grisedale Tarn. As I lose height, I come into the lee of Seat Sandal and the wind abates. After Birks, St. Sunday Crag and Cofa Pike, another stiff ascent will be taxing, but Seat Sandal shows no mercy. As I scramble up its rock steps, I’m passed by two fell runners. I catch up with them at the top. Above, the clouds are rolling back, and down towards Grasmere, summer is re-revealing itself.

                        “They’ve got sunshine down there”, one says.

                        “And beer”, replies the other.

                        And with that, they take off down the southern ridge.

                        Down the valley towards Grasmere

                        I sit awhile in the shelter of the summit wall, then retrace my steps down to the water’s edge, now dark and inscrutable as the legend it harbours. Beyond the far shore, I follow the stepping-stones across the tarn outlet to join the Patterdale path.  In the shadow of Dollywagon’s Tarn Crag, I keep my eyes peeled for a brass sign affixed to the top of a hefty boulder.

                        Wordsworth Brothers Parting Stone
                        Wordsworth Brothers Parting Stone

                        Here did we stop; and here looked round
                        While each into himself descends,
                        For that last thought of parting Friends
                        That is not to be found.


                        Brother and Friend, if verse of mine
                        Have power to make thy virtues known,
                        Here let a monumental Stone
                        Stand–sacred as a Shrine;

                        The words are William Wordsworth’s, inscribed on a slab set into a rock that stands about 200 metres from the path. The stone is now so weather-beaten, the words are hard to read, but they combine two halves of different stanzas from Wordsworth’s Elegiac Verses, written, “In Memory of My Brother, John Wordsworth, Commander of the E. I. Company’s Ship, The Earl Of Abergavenny, in which He Perished by Calamitous Shipwreck, Feb. 6th, 1805”

                        This is the spot where the brothers bade farewell, neither knowing it would be for the last time.

                        The brass sign says, “The Brothers Parting, Wordsworth”. It was a later addition, intended, I suppose, to highlight the stone’s whereabouts to those passing along the path. I confess to having walked by unawares before, but after reading Raymond Greenhow’s blog, I’ve come looking for it. Raymond’s article provides rich historical detail and tells the little-known story of how the brass sign went missing just before the outbreak of WWI. It was retrieved, some years later, from Grisedale Tarn, where, like Dunmail’s crown, it had apparently been flung.

                        Wordsworth Brothers Parting Stone
                        Wordsworth Brothers Parting Stone

                        Inspired by Wordsworth’s elegy, Raymond asks an interesting question: “What would you say if you knew it was the last you would ever see of your kin”? This gets right to the heart of why this simple inscription retains such power to move. Wordsworth elevates his account of his brother’s loss above the personal and speaks to us all about our own uncomfortable farewells to those we love. It captures the awkward reticence, the sense of something left unsaid, that intangible emotion we perpetually fail to put into words. There will, we assume, be time enough for that anon. But what if that opportunity is denied us as it was for William?

                        Robbed of the opportunity to ever see his brother again, the Lake Poet wishes for a monumental stone to stand on this spot as a shrine to John. That wish was granted some thirty years after the William’s death by the Wordsworth society and Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley… And here it stands, a monument to fraternal love, near the site of Faber’s imagined hermitage and the watery refuge of a lost Celtic crown, it’s inscription now as spectral as Dunmail’s army.

                        When in late September 1800, John, William and their sister, Dorothy, said their last goodbyes, William and Dorothy returned to Grasmere, but I turn now in the opposite direction and follow in John’s footsteps—down through Grisedale to Patterdale.

                        Grisedale Tarn and Dollywagon Pike
                        Grisedale Tarn and Dollywagon Pike from Seat Sandal

                        Further Reading

                        Raymond Greenhow’s blog on the Brother’s Parting Stone is well worth a read:

                        https://scafellhike.blogspot.com/2019/08/the-wordsworth-brothers-parting-stone.html

                        … as is the Grisedale Family blog, which has an interesting quote from Dorothy Wordsworth about her brother, John, and features the full Elegiac Verses at the end:

                        https://grisdalefamily.wordpress.com/tag/brothers-parting-stone/

                        You can find Frederick William Faber’s poem, Grisedale Tarn, here:

                        https://www.poetrynook.com/poem/grisedale-tarn

                        … but you’ll have to look for John Pagen White’s Lays and Legends of the English Lake Country (1923), which contains his King Dunmail, in printed form, or search harder than I on t’Internet.


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                          Here’s where the story ends

                          Paw Prints of the Plague Dogs part II

                          News bulletins, artillery fire and the shadow of Sellafield conspire to recreate the atmosphere of Richard Adams’ 1977 bestseller, Plague Dogs, as I continue to follow Rowf and Snitter’s footsteps through the fells. It’s an adventure that takes me off the beaten track in the Duddon Valley, and out to the coast at Drigg, where the story reaches its dramatic finale.

                          Seathwaite Tarn, Dow Crag, Caw & Brown Haw

                          It’s as if Seathwaite mine has been swallowed by the mountain. The entrance to level no. 1 is buried under a bed of spoil. You could easily miss it, your attention seduced by the precipitous face of Dow Crag reflected in the still waters of Seathwaite Tarn, or the sheer slopes of Brim Fell, Swirl How, and Great Carrs plunging to enclose the valley like a steep sided bowl. Even when looking its way, your gaze would likely lift above to the imposing crags of Grey Friar. 

                          Seathwaite Tarn and Levers Hause
                          Seathwaite Tarn and Levers Hause
                          Grey Friar
                          Grey Friar

                          But the keen-eyed might notice the remains of two small walls extending from the rubble like the outstretched arms of an avalanche victim. These ruins demarcate the cutting. I climb up and pull away a few loose stones from the top to reveal the hollow behind—the dark of a tunnel entrance. You’d need a JCB to excavate it, but readers of Richard Adams’ The Plague Dogs have a clue to its whereabouts. It sits behind a small plateau of grass, “about the size of a lawn tennis court” on top of a spoil heap; this terrace, at least, is just as Adams described.

                          Seathwaite mine level no. 1
                          Seathwaite mine level no. 1

                          The Plague Dogs is the story of Rowf, a big black mongrel, and Snitter, a small fox terrier, who escape a vivisection lab, fictionally located on the east shore of Coniston Water. The dogs have been subjected to harsh experiments. Before his incarceration, Snitter remembers a happy life, tragically cut-short when his loving master was hit by a lorry. When he and Rowf escape, he imagines the outside world will be a familiar place of houses, gardens, dustbins and lampposts, populated by kindly men and women, who will give them a happy home, like the one he used to know. Their initial encounters are discouraging, however, and the pair flee into the Coniston fells, a frighteningly alien wilderness, where they realise that they must learn to live as wild animals. This old copper-mine tunnel is where Rowf and Snitter first take refuge.

                          In a previous post, Whitecoats, I trace the first leg of their journey, using the maps and illustrations contributed to the book by Alfred Wainwright. Today, I pick up their path again.

                          Earlier, I met the farmer from Tongue House Farm. He was driving a flock of Herdwicks on to the fellside. I was walking up the narrow lane from Seathwaite village when the sheep charged out of the farm drive. My presence stopped them in their tracks, and in a flash, his sheepdog was beside me, blocking their path and sending them the other way.

                          Herdwicks
                          Herdwicks

                          “That was lucky,” said the farmer, as he arrived at the rear, “there’s not usually someone there to turn them. It’s always the same. If there are two options, they always go the way you don’t want them to.”

                          Tongue House Farm
                          Tongue House Farm

                          As he took off up the lane on his quad bike, I gazed across at the farm house. It features in the story, and the occupant in the book is a real-life former tenant, Dennis Williamson. After years of struggling to make a go of things, Williamson is now just about comfortable, so it’s with some alarm that he finds one of his ewes lying dead on the path at Levers Hause. This was Rowf’s first kill, but it was a rookie error to leave the carcass where Williamson so easily finds it.

                          Fortunately for the dogs, they’re not the only occupants of the tunnel. In the dead of night, an elusive presence tries to steal the sheep’s leg that Snitter dragged here. Rowf jumps up aggressively. Snitter is close behind, but when the shadowy creature starts to talk, the dogs are astonished, “for the voice… was speaking, unmistakably, a sort—a very odd sort—of dog language.”

                          The animal is the tod, a shrewd, sharp-witted fox. He speaks in a broad rural Northumbrian dialect, and scorns at the dogs’ naivety, “By three morns, the pair on yez’ll bowth be deed”. All the same, he’s impressed with Rowf’s ability to kill ewes, so he offers to school them in survival, if they share their kills with him. On top of Dow Crag, the tod teaches the dogs to kill a sheep by driving it over the precipice (this way, its death looks like an accident). He shows them how to raid chicken runs and snatch ducks from the stream. But when Rowf kills a ewe on Tarn Head Moss, five hundred yards from the tunnel entrance, the tod is incensed: “Forst ye kill on th’ fell—reet o’ th’ shepherd’s trod, clartin’ th’ place up wi’ blood like a knacker’s midden. An’ noo ye kill ootside wor aan nyeuk! Thon farmer’s nyen se blind! He’ll be on it, sharp as a linty. Ye’re fee th’ Dark, nee doot, hinny. Yer arse’ll be inside out b’ th’ morn.” (Translation: now you’ve killed outside our own lair. That farmer’s not blind. You’re as good as dead.)

                          Great Gully, Dow Crag

                          Despondent, Rowf considers giving himself up, but the tod knows better, “Yer nay a derg noo, yer a sheep-killer. The’ll blaa yer arse oot, hinny. Howway let’s be off, or ye’ll bowth be deed an’ dyeun inside haaf an hoor, ne bother.”

                          The tod leads the way up above the reservoir, below the summits of Dow Crag and Buck Pike, and down to the Walna Scar quarries. From there, they climb over Caw to a cave on the slopes of Brown Haw.

                          Two paths lead that way from here: one follows Far Gill up to Goat Hawse, over the summit of Dow Crag and along the ridge line. The other tracks the southern shore of Seathwaite Tarn. The animals’ route is somewhere in between. Looking up, I see only crags, sheer and unassailable, but the OS map shows that the incline eases above them, and a strip of gentler terrain runs below the spine. There are no paths here, but if I follow the course of Near Gill to its source above crags, then walk on a bearing to Bleaberry Gill, the stream will take me down to a wall that leads to the quarries. At one point, Adams says the dogs are nine hundred feet above the reservoir road; I count the contours; this looks about right.

                          Seathwaite Tarn from copper mine
                          Tarn Head Moss

                          The path across the squelching bog of Tarn Head Moss is no more than a line of flattened reeds. I leap the beck and cross the sketchy trod that leads up to Goat Hawse. I ford Far Gill and start my pathless ascent beside Near Gill. It climbs steeply beside the crags. Where they finish, the slope relents and the stream curves round into the wetter ground above. Green sphagnum moss carpets the spongy peat. I check the compass and track below the ridge.

                          The moorland is moist, but firmer than the valley bottom. Hassocks of straw-coloured grass anchor the hummocks of soft moss. Elsewhere are red stalks of bog cotton, its white candyfloss flowers long gone. Harter Fell rises across the valley—a mossy pyramid, upper reaches defended by charcoal crags. Its lower slopes are swathed in russet, striped with yellow and coppiced with evergreen. Underfoot, clumps of rare red sphagnum now compliment the green.

                          Harter Fell from Dow Crag Fell
                          Harter Fell from Dow Crag Fell

                          I cross a brow and start to descend. The distant wall is in sight below, with the Walna Scar quarries beyond. Ahead, there is a break in the long rampart of hillside where the slopes of White Pike drop steeply away. The high ground rises again to the summits of Pikes and Caw, but through the gap, I can see silver inlets of the Irish Sea. The sky above is a rolling ocean of cloud – raging white breakers and darker swells.

                          Bleaberry Beck
                          Bleaberry Beck
                          Clouds over Dunnerdale
                          Clouds over Dunnerdale

                          I stray northward to overlook the reservoir road. From here, the tod spots Dennis Williamson, walking purposefully toward the mine, shotgun in hand.

                          When I reach the Walna Scar quarries, I have a dearth of daylight hours left to me so turn down to Seathwaite. I return at first light, when the grey fluffy clouds above the fell have orange underbellies. Across the valley, the Scafells are flood lit red. Harter Fell wears incandescent robes of gold and green, and in silhouette against the flaming sky, the slate ruins of quarry buildings are dark satanic mills.

                          Caw from the Walna Scar road
                          Caw from the Walna Scar road
                          Scafells at first light
                          Scafells at first light
                          Walna Scar quarry buildings
                          Walna Scar quarry buildings
                          Walna Scar quarry buildings
                          Walna Scar quarry buildings

                          A Herdwick ewe eyes me with suspicion. She carries a red smit mark on her back. The tod understands that smit marks are shepherds’ marks. He points out to Rowf and Snitter how the colours used here are different from those on the ewes near the copper mine. If Rowf were to kill here, it wouldn’t further antagonise Williamson.

                          Under White Pike, the path traverses the soggy sump of Yaud Mire, and I leave it to scramble between the crags to the summit of Pikes. Caw lies across another boggy depression; a trig point stands on a slender rocky plinth to crown its highest point.

                          Caw summit
                          Caw summit
                          Grey Friar from Pikes
                          Grey Friar from Pikes

                          The descent to Long Mire Beck is steep and slippery. Ahead, on the slopes of Brown Haw, I spy the cave that becomes the dogs’ new hideout. Once I reach it, however, I realise it’s an illusion; what I took for an entrance is just shadow cast by the low winter sunlight. I hunt further along, but the cave eludes me. I meet a walker, striding with the easy confidence of someone who knows his way. I ask if he knows of a cave, but the only one he can think of is a quarry tunnel on the north-western face of Caw. He’s curious at my question, so I ask if he’s read The Plague Dogs.

                          “Rowf and Snitter?” he grins, his face suddenly animated with memories of childhood.

                          I show him a photo of the Wainwright map that gives the cave’s location. We agree it’s pretty much where we’re standing.

                          I never do find it, but I climb to the tops of Brown Haw and Fox Haw (which seems appropriate), then return to Seathwaite on a track that the dogs will come to know.

                          Brow Haw from Caw
                          Brow Haw from Caw

                          ~

                          When further sheep are found dead, and word gets out that two dogs have escaped from the Lawson Park laboratory, Dennis Williamson kicks up a fuss. Mr Ephraim, a gentleman’s outfitter, organises a hunt, hoping the publicity might boost trade. Unfortunately, he doesn’t know one end of a shotgun from the other, and his inexperience results in a tragic, fatal accident. Snitter is seen running from the scene. When the story reaches the offices of the London Orator, a notorious tabloid, it’s the opportunity they’ve been looking for. Their owner is keen to discredit the government. There has been some controversy about the public funding for Lawson Park. If the Orator can discredit the lab, they can embarrass the Secretary of State. An unscrupulous but brilliant young reporter, named Digby Driver, is dispatched to Cumbria with a remit to dig dirt on the lab and spin the story of the killer dogs into a national scandal.

                          As the heat rises in Dunnerdale, the tod leads the dogs over Crinkle Crags and Bowfell, through Langstrath to Wythburn and up on to the Helvellyn range. From here, Sticks Pass offers access to the farmsteads of Glenridding.

                          Rowf and Snitter are caught raiding a chicken coup. The farmer has a shotgun, but inexplicably, he backs away in fear and encourages the dogs to escape. Unbeknown to them, Digby Driver has published some shocking revelations. As part of top-secret research for the MOD, Lawson Park has been cultivating a strain of bubonic plague. There is no way the dogs could have been infected, but fact never got in the way of a good headline and now, in the public mind, Rowf and Snitter have become the Plague Dogs—public enemy number one; pawns in a political game.

                          Driver has the Secretary of State in check, and just as intended, awkward questions are asked in the House. To save his skin, the minister employs an age-old politician’s trick—misdirection. If he can be seen to act decisively, perhaps the concerns about funding and who knew what about the plague research will all go away.

                          Two battalions of paratroopers are dispatched to Cumbria, and the minister means to preside, in person, over the Plague Dogs execution.

                          Back in Dunnerdale, Snitter watches helplessly as the tod is torn apart by hounds. With the army closing in, he and Rowf make one last brilliant move. By night, they flee over Harter Fell and down into Boot, where they hide out in a wooden crate; exhausted, they fall asleep. When they awake, they’re moving. Unknowingly, they’ve stowed aboard L’ile Ratty, the steam train that runs between Eskdale and Ravenglass. Rowf and Snitter are heading for the coast.

                          Harter Fell from Park Head road
                          Harter Fell from Park Head road

                          If he knew, Dennis Williamson would undoubtedly be delighted. He bitterly regrets raising the alarm. The dogs were no trouble at all compared with the human circus that has followed. He knows the plague hysteria is nonsense and wholeheartedly hopes the dogs escape. It’s a faint hope, however. They’re spotted in Ravenglass, and the army units are mobilised.

                          Ravenglass and Drigg

                          It’s out of season when I cross the footbridge in Ravenglass station. L’ile Ratty isn’t running, but an open carriage, like Rowf and Snitter’s, is parked in the siding below.

                          All the way here, the car radio was reporting on the furore unfolding in Westminster. Theresa May has just presented her Brexit plan to parliament, and her ministers are queuing up to resign. Pundits are particularly bemused by the departure of Dominic Raab, who helped negotiate it. As the papers spin the story to favour whichever faction best suits their agenda, it dawns on me that this has all the hallmarks of Adams’ novel. Plague Dogs is how he saw the British political landscape in 1977; forty-one years later, it seems little has changed. Vox pops with members of the public reveal attitudes not dissimilar to Dennis Williamson’s—whatever it was we wanted, it wasn’t this.

                          The rivers Irt, Mite and Esk commingle in the Ravenglass estuary. The tide is out, leaving moored yachts beached and the river channels exposed. This is just how it is when Rowf and Snitter arrive. They escape the village by running across the mudflats and swimming the River Irt to reach the Drigg sand dunes. My route there is a little more circuitous. I follow a country lane from Low Saltcoats to Hall Carlton and cross by the packhorse bridge at Holme Bridge. From here, a path runs over fields to the sleepy coastal village of Drigg. Beside the quaint rural station, a road leads down to the beach.

                          Ravenglass estuary
                          Ravenglass estuary
                          Ravenglass estuary
                          Ravenglass estuary

                          Before I reach the shore, I pass something altogether more menacing. High security fences topped with rolls of barbed wire protect the Drigg low level nuclear storage facility. A sign warns that armed guards patrol at unpredictable times. Another says that the site is protected under section 12b of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005. This is all very evocative of eighties’ TV drama, Edge of Darkness, about a low-level nuclear storage facility that’s illegally processing weapons-grade plutonium. Swap a nuclear facility for a laboratory researching germ warfare, and we have a scenario not a million miles away from The Plague Dogs.

                          Behind the Drigg facility is Sellafield, the nuclear reprocessing plant that really was designed to extract plutonium from spent fuel rods. It’s visible through a gap in the sand dunes. Someone has positioned a bench such that you can sit and look at it. This may seem bizarre, but it’s perhaps indicative of the regard in which Sellafield is held around here. It’s rejuvenated the area, providing large numbers of people with well-paid jobs. To others, though, it is a Sword of Damocles, hanging over our heads by the finest of threads.

                          Drigg Low Level Nuclear Waste Repository

                          By the time I reach the beach, the nuclear facilities are hidden by the dunes. What’s here instead is a breathtakingly beautiful stretch of coastline, a nature reserve and a site of special scientific interest, a haven for natterjack toads, stonechats, sandpipers, skylarks and all manner of marine life. The tide has turned but a wide stretch of sand is still exposed, riven with delicate channels and intricate rock pools, studded with shells—cockle, razor clam—and patterned with the honeycomb stencilling of lug worm colonies.

                          Drigg Beach
                          Drigg Beach
                          Drigg Beach
                          Drigg Beach
                          Drigg Beach
                          Drigg Beach

                          I walk the one and half miles to Drigg Point, lost in the lazy, wild wonder of the beach. But as I reach the headland, my reverie is broken by an explosion. Across the estuary, a red flag is flying. The artillery are conducting large calibre gun testing on the Eskmeals range. I look back to Ravenglass and the route Rowf and Snitter took to get here. For them too, armed troops are closing in.

                          Drigg Beach
                          Drigg Beach

                          The sun slips behind a bank of cloud, and the sky darkens. Out to sea, slender shafts of golden light pierce the gloom and spotlight the white crests of waves. The horizon is a band of ethereal yellow. All of a sudden, the scene assumes a drama befitting of the book’s dark heart.

                          Drigg Beach
                          Drigg Beach

                          And that dark heart is human. It asks us hard questions about ourselves and our relationship with the natural world. Near the end, Snitter has a revelatory vision:

                          “The world, he now perceived, was in fact a great, flat wheel with a myriad spokes of water, trees and grass, forever turning and turning beneath the sun and moon. At each spoke was an animal—all the animals and birds he had ever known—horses, dogs, chaffinches, mice, hedgehogs, rabbits, cows, sheep, rooks and many more which he did not recognize—a huge striped cat and a monstrous fish spurting water in a fountain to the sky. At the centre, on the axle itself, stood a man, who ceaselessly lashed and lashed the creatures with a whip to make them drive the wheel round. Some shrieked aloud as they bled and struggled, others silently toppled and were trodden down beneath their companions’ stumbling feet. And yet, as he himself could see, the man had misconceived his task, for in fact the wheel turned of itself…”

                          But the novel is also an allegory about how we treat each other. The Brexit vote was howl of protest at a disengaged elite, governing in their own interest—out of touch with the hardships faced by ordinary people. Average incomes have flat-lined over the past ten years, and we’ve been hurt by savage cut-backs, implemented in the name austerity, to bear the cost of bailing out our banking system. In the run up to the referendum, the finger was pointed at immigration, but the causes of our current situation are multi-faceted and far-reaching. They stretch back to the 1980’s and the deregulation of the money markets that sent the value of the pound skyrocketing and did for British manufacturing. They encompass the takeover of the City of London by large American investment banks, and forty years of ripping up employment law in the hope that leaving everything to the free market will bring prosperity.

                          And it has. To some. We’re now the sixth richest nation in the world, but 20% of all that wealth lies in the hands of just 680,000 people, while almost twice than number are obliged to use food banks. Can we really lay the blame for all of that at the feet of the ordinary individuals who are now being spat at in the street and told to “go home”? They’ve become the scapegoats, the Plague Dogs, callously used by media moguls to sway public opinion in favour of political initiatives that advance in their own agendas. With the current farce unfolding in Westminster, the guns sounding across the estuary, and the shadow of Sellafield on the sands, the atmosphere of Adams’ novel is perfectly evoked.

                          I sit down on a dune and gaze out at the encroaching waves. In my mind’s eye, a small fox terrier and a black mongrel stand before them. To stay on land means certain death, but to swim out to sea seems like suicide. An optimist to the last, Snitter wonders whether they could reach the Isle of Man. Rowf doesn’t like the sound of that, but Snitter has heard tell of another place, a better island, the Isle of Dog. It has to be out there somewhere. Perhaps, just perhaps, they could reach it. Despite his suffering, Snitter has always been sustained by hope, and it sustains him now as he leads his friend out into the icy waters.

                          The Irish Sea
                          The Irish Sea

                          The book and the film conclude differently. I’ll divulge neither denouement, but they both play out in my head as I sit on the beach and gaze over the Irish Sea—for according to Wainwright’s final map, right here is where the story ends.

                          Drigg Beach
                          Drigg Beach


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                            Whitecoats: On the Path of the Plague Dogs, Part I

                            Raven Tor, Levers Hause and Seathwaite Tarn.

                            In Richard Adams’ 1977 bestseller, Plague Dogs, Rowf and Snitter are two dogs subjected to cruel experiments in a vivisection lab. When an unsecured catch and a loose bit of wire afford a means of escape, they find themselves in the Coniston Fells. Adams describes the landscape in vivid detail, and original editions of the book are illustrated in characteristic part sketch/part map style by one of Lakeland’s greatest apostles. Inspired by the story, I put on my boots and set off on the path of the Plague Dogs.

                            I’ve never read Watership Down. I was seven when it was published, but it didn’t cross my radar until the film of 1978. By then I was thirteen, and I’d just discovered Black Sabbath. I had long hair and a full-length leather coat from Oxfam, which I thought made me look like Geezer Butler. My mum had a different take. It was only after a year of people telling me the same thing that I came to accept that she might actually be right: the padded shoulders, pinched waist, faux fur collar and the particular arrangement of buttons meant it was unquestionably a woman’s coat, and if it made me look like anyone, it was Bet Lynch.

                            My teenage tunnel vision dismissed Watership Down as a cartoon about rabbits, soundtracked by Art Garfunkel and clearly aimed at girls; not the sort of thing a pimply, pubescent Prince Of Darkness should be watching, even if he was unknowingly experimenting with cross-dressing.

                            Eventually, I ditched the coat but never recovered sufficient good sense to read the book or watch the film. Now, at the tender age of fifty-two, I’m desperate to put that right because I’ve been utterly bowled over by The Plague Dogs.

                            Plague Dogs by Richard Adams
                            Plague Dogs by Richard Adams

                            The Plague Dogs was Adams’ third novel. It tells the story of Rowf and Snitter, a big black mongrel and a little fox terrier who escape from a vivisection laboratory and make for the hills. At first, they incur the wrath of local farmers whose sheep they kill in an attempt to stave off starvation, but when an unscrupulous tabloid journalist, with a remit to embarrass the Secretary of State, gets involved, the story snowballs into a national furore, inflamed by an unsubstantiated allegation that the dogs could be carrying the bubonic plague. Questions are asked in the House, and the army is despatched to assassinate our innocent canine heroes.

                            It’s a rollicking adventure, an emotional rollercoaster and a biting political satire, but it’s also a passionate anti-vivisection statement. The cruelty and utter pointlessness of the procedures beggars belief, yet in his preface, Adams confirms that “every ‘experiment’ described is one which has actually been carried out on animals somewhere”.

                            It’s not a wholly one-sided picture, however. No sooner do we sense that Stephen Powell, a young scientist at the lab, is becoming increasingly uncomfortable with his work than we learn his young daughter is suffering from a terminal illness. It’s Powell’s desperate hope that animal research will yield a breakthrough before it’s too late to save her.

                            And yet the experiments are as barbaric as they are futile: Rowf has been subjected to a succession of near drownings, repeatedly submerged in a tank of water and only revived once he goes limp and sinks to the bottom. He has never known men other than the “whitecoats”. Despite his traumatic experiences at their latex-sheathed, disinfected hands, he still wants to be a good dog and please his masters; but he can’t face another day in the immersion tank. Snitter’s story is even sadder as he remembers a blissfully happy home life before his beloved master was knocked down by a lorry—an accident for which Snitter blames himself. The details are incoherent because the whitecoats have cut open Snitter’s head and rewired his brain to confuse the subjective and the objective. As a result, he suffers disorienting confusion and bouts of vivid hallucination. In his lucid moments, however, he’s smart. Smart enough to notice an unsecured catch and a loose bit of wire. Smart enough to figure out how he and Rowf might escape. When they do, it’s into a landscape very familiar to lovers of Lakeland.

                            The real Lawson Park was a remote fell farm on the eastern bank of Coniston Water; now it’s an artists’ retreat, run by Grisedale Arts. Never in reality has it been any sort of research lab, but it’s the fictional location of Animal Research (Scientific and Experimental), A.R.S.E. for short—the setting for Rowf and Snitter’s inhumane treatment in the interests of science. When they make a break for hills, they find themselves in the Coniston Fells, which Adams renders in rich detail.

                            Coniston Fells
                            Coniston Fells

                            My friend, Gillian, grew up in Coniston and suggested I should read the book for this very reason. “You could walk the routes and write about it in your blog”, she said. It sounded a fine idea, so I searched for The Plague Dogs on Amazon. I was one click away from buying the current paperback, when a customer review caught my eye.

                            “Before buying a copy of The Plague Dogs I took out a request from the library and ended up with an older edition. It was a wonderful hardback – the illustrations of the Lake District by the late Alfred Wainwright complimented Adams’ rich, vivid prose perfectly. Sadly though, the illustrations have been removed from this recent (2015) re-issue.”

                            The original hardback was illustrated by Wainwright? This was the edition I had to have. Google found me a second-hand copy for £1 + £3.99 p&p. It arrived two days later, and it looked wonderful. As well as hatched pencil drawings of the fells, there were eight characteristic route maps, rendered in the same part sketch, part map style, familiar to readers of AW’s Pictorial Guides. Indeed, for Wainwright fans, the book is a welcome supplement.

                            Page 46
                            Page 46

                            Wainwright was also an ardent anti-vivisectionist, and Adams says in the preface, “I seriously doubt whether an author can ever have received more generous help and co-operation from an illustrator”.

                            It’s in the early hours of a crisp autumn morning that Rowf and Snitter make good their escape. As the sun rises, they find themselves on the wild expanse of Monk Coniston Moor. Snitter is appalled. What have the men done? “They’ve taken everything away, Rowf—the roads, cars, pavements, dustbins, gutters—the lot. How can they have done it?”

                            The pair head down hill, cross the road and trot along the shore of Coniston Water. Here, Snitter is entranced by how still everything looks beneath the surface. Would his racing mind be as calm if he was in there? Rowf is terrified of the water, however, and remonstrates with his friend not to go in. “You can’t imagine what it’s like”.

                            Monk Coniston Jetty
                            Monk Coniston Jetty

                            Coniston Water
                            Coniston Water

                            Buoyed up by the sight of houses in the distance, the fugitives head along the road to Coniston village, but Snitter is overcome by one of his turns and has to lie down. A car stops, and two men get out to help, but when they try to pick Snitter up, Rowf assumes they are trying to recapture him and return him to the lab. He springs forward in attack and frees his friend, and the pair run for the village.

                            Coniston village
                            Coniston village

                            Rowf is understandably wary of men, but Snitter knows they’re not all like the whitecoats. On the streets of Coniston, he remembers shops. In his former life, these were places where people made a fuss of you and gave you treats. They try their luck in a butchers’ shop. The friendly but fastidious proprietor comes over. He means no harm and crouches to greet them, but his hands smell of disinfectant, he’s carrying a knife, and a pair of scissors protrude from the pocket of his WHITE COAT.

                            The two dogs flee up the walled lane beyond The Black Bull and out into the Coppermines Valley. On page 46, Wainwright documents their route, and on a bright November morning, this is where I pick up the trail.

                            Track to Coppermines Valley
                            Track to Coppermines Valley

                            Church Beck
                            Church Beck

                            Track to Coppermines Valley
                            Track to Coppermines Valley

                            Above Miners’ Bridge, the Old Man, Brim Fell, Swirl How and Wetherlam are ablaze, lit orange and blue in the first light of morning, just as Adams describes. I follow the track beside Low Water Beck to the Youth Hostel. Here I pause to check the map and imagine the scene. As I do, I hear a faint patter and something soft brushes my leg. It’s a black dog. After a startled double take, I make friends with an excitable border collie, who can’t hang about because he’s just spotted a big stick. His loving owners are laughing as they catch us up, “that’ll be the first of many, today”, the woman grins. Proper masters, as Snitter might say.

                            Miners' Bridge
                            Miners’ Bridge

                            Church Beck waterfall
                            Church Beck waterfall

                            Border Collie, Coniston Youth Hostel
                            Rowf?

                            The main track swings right along the lower slopes of the Black Sails ridge, but I turn left towards the quarry, its marbled face, a dark daubed cubist canvas below the tufts of russet scrub. The road is blocked by a gate. It’s padlocked, but perhaps only to vehicles. Beyond, the word “Footpath” has been scrawled on a slate. I climb the bars and start up the faint grassy trod to which it points. Above the spoil heaps, I join the path from Crowberry Haws. Two slate cairns stand guard, and a Herdwick grazes unperturbed.

                            Quarry, Coppermines Valley
                            Quarry, Coppermines Valley

                            Quarry, Coppermines Valley
                            Quarry, Coppermines Valley

                            Wetherlam from Boulder Valley
                            Wetherlam from Boulder Valley

                            I cross the footbridge into Boulder Valley and pause by the Pudding Stone. The path continues to Levers Water, but immediately above, Brim Fell towers, craggy and intimidating. Anxious to escape the reach of man, it’s up these steep slopes that Rowf and Snitter start. I feel duty-bound to follow, although perhaps not strictly in their paw steps. They have me at a disadvantage: for one, they’re dogs—replete with four legs and a low centre of gravity; and two, they’re fictional, so they have the intrinsic power to do whatever Adams’ imagination invents. He has them climbing on the line of Low Water Beck, clambering up its boulders, skirting its shallow falls and splashing through its brown pools. His co-conspirator, Wainwright, plots the path. But from where I’m standing, the beck is an angry cascade, crashing down a severe ravine. I see no way up for a meagre middle-aged mortal.

                            Low Water Beck ravine
                            Low Water Beck ravine

                            In his Pictorial Guide, Wainwright advocates a mildly more man-friendly route, which climbs a grassy rake on the opposite side of the crag. I detect what might be a path leading to the crag’s foot. It proves something of a mirage, and I’m quickly off piste, but I track around the bottom of the rocks toward the strip of mossy green. A brief scramble provides a short-cut, and soon I’m clambering up steep and slippery grass. It’s hard going, requiring hands and feet, and I can see why AW advises against it for descent. But it’s not far from the beck, so I feel I’m being as true as I can to the plot, and besides, I’ve always wanted to try this ascent, AW promises it furnishes a fuller understanding of the fell’s true structure.

                            Simon's Nick, Coppermines Valley
                            Simon’s Nick, Coppermines Valley

                            I reach an old mine level, where the curled ends of rail tracks protrude like vestigial limbs. Here a path of sorts emerges; it’s a steep rocky staircase, skirting a river of loose stone, but the going is firmer than before, if no kinder on the calves. Eventually, the gradient relents, and I’m confronted with a vision that fills Rowf with dread—the limpid corrie tarn of Low Water, a pool of primeval tranquility, a dark oasis of serenity below the plunging slopes of the Old Man, but to poor traumatised Rowf, a huge, menacing immersion tank.  He races away up the slope to the summit of Raven Tor. I sip coffee, catch my breath, and just as Snitter does, I follow.

                            Looking back down from Brill Fell ascent
                            Looking back down from Brill Fell ascent

                            Raven Tor
                            Raven Tor

                            Beyond the summit, the ground drops abruptly to Levers Water. Strangely, despite its larger size, the tarn holds no fresh dread for Rowf. It’s just as well because Snitter spots a line of sheep by the western shore. They’re being pursued by two border collies and a man. The man is whistling and calling to the dogs, encouraging them to chase the sheep, and the dogs are listening and responding. Man and dog, working as a team. Here at last is a proper master. All he and Rowf have to do now is bound down the fell side and join in. If they chase the sheep too, perhaps the man will give them a home, and food, and a happy life away from the whitecoats.

                            Levers Water from Raven Tor
                            Levers Water from Raven Tor

                            My descent is more circumspect. The slopes below the col look precipitous. In his Pictorial Guide, AW shows a route beside Cove Beck. I follow a narrow trod over the spine of Gill Cove Crag, in the shadow of Brim Fell’s summit, and as the contours diverge, I descend through increasingly soggy ground. Eventually, I hear the sound of running water, and the beck appears, a narrow scar trickling elusively through scrubby moorland.

                            Beyond, a cairn marks the path up to Levers Hause. Between here and the waterline, Rowf and Snitter make their ill-fated attempt to gain a master by chasing his sheep. Luckily, his sheep dogs reach them first and vent their anger in broad Cumbrian:

                            “Art out of the minds, chasing yows oop an’ down fell, snappin’ an’ bitin’?”, fumes one. “Wheer’s thy farm at? Wheer’s thy master?”.

                            When Snitter explains, “we haven’t a master. We want to meet yours”, the answer is unequivocal: “He’ll fill thee wi’ lead”.

                            I turn and follow the forlorn fugitives’ escape route up steep rocky steps to Levers Hause. Here, the dogs ruefully acknowledge they’ll find no welcome in the world of men. They must become wild animals. Still stoked from the chase, Rowf attacks a mountain ewe. He makes the kill, but takes a fair battering in the process. With his hunger satiated, exhaustion takes hold, and the big black mongrel lies down in the bog myrtle to nurse his injuries. Meanwhile, Snitter despairs at the bleakness of their prospects. As his synapses start to misfire, he scampers down the steep slopes to the Duddon Valley in a firestorm of neurotic confusion.

                            Levers Water from Levers Hause path
                            Levers Water from Levers Hause path

                            A right of way runs from Levers Hause to the far shore of Seathwaite Tarn. Or at least it does on the map. There’s little sign of a path on the ground, and the gradient is frightening. I’d have to be as mad as Snitter to attempt it, and yet somehow, I do. I climb down a little way to test the going, stepping sideways from grassy tuft to stony shelf. Emboldened, I soldier on. Part way down, I imagine a path, but it’s just a loose spray of scree, too shallow to offer much support. Zigzagging avoids the severest sections, and earlier than I’d reckoned, I’m approaching the tumbling waters of Tarn Beck.  Here, the ground grows marshy; the valley bottom is a quagmire, red with reed beds as it reaches out to Seathwaite reservoir. I keep to a contour to stay out of the worst. The sun is streaming over Dow Crag, bleaching the fell sides and blinding me with its glare.

                            Seathwaite Tarn from Levers Hause
                            Seathwaite Tarn from Levers Hause

                            Tarn Beck

                            Duddon Valley and Seathwaite Tarn
                            Duddon Valley and Seathwaite Tarn

                            Here, Snitter does what I decline to do. Lured by the fevered machinations of his scrambled mind, he breaches the beck and splashes through the boggy ground on the other side. The kindly man in the brown tweed coat that he imagined was there is an illusion, but as the fit passes and the world comes back into focus, he spots something else. Something welcome. Something real. Just shy of the reservoir he finds a small spoil heap:

                            “On top was a levelled space of turf and small stones, perhaps half the size of a lawn tennis court. It was completely empty, but on the further side, where Great Blake Rigg, the south face of Grey Friar, rises like a wall was a symmetrical, dark opening, lined and arched with stones”.

                            I’m looking at it now (through binoculars).  It’s an old level of Seathwaite copper mine, and in the book, it becomes a temporary home for Rowf and Snitter. Here, they meet the tod, a wily fox, well-versed in the ways of the wild.  His savvy, calculating instinct for self-preservation contrasts markedly with the dogs’ innocent loyalty. He’s appalled by their naivety and sees them as a liability, likely to draw the attention of farmers and their shotguns. Yet, in Rowf he also sees a valuable asset: there’s not many a wild Lakeland beast can bring down a full-grown ewe.  The dogs might have their uses after all, and an uneasy alliance is formed.

                            Rowf and Snitter's new home

                            Rowf and Snitter’s new home

                            Short winter daylight hours dictate that here, for now, I must take my leave. But as I make the day’s last ascent out of lonely Dunnerdale and up to Goat Hawse, the peace is broken by an alarming bark, fuelled with feral bloodlust. A chilling chorus of murderous howls swells into an amplified echo, and on the lower slopes of Grey Friar, I make out a swarm of white dots moving fast across the fell.  With binoculars comes comprehension: fuzzy points resolve into a pack of foxhounds. They’re coursing an aniseed trail. It’s profoundly unsettling because it’s a scene straight from the book. In all my years on the fells, I’ve never witnessed this, yet later in the story, Snitter sees the self-same thing.  Only this time, it’s not aniseed they’re hunting… it’s the tod.

                            To be continued…

                            Read the second part of my journey along the path of the Plague Dogs here:

                            Here’s where the story ends


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