Every time we come back to the lake district it feels like coming home. Slipping back into this timeless space; the mountains seemingly exactly the way they were in my childhood. The hours and hours on the motorway blur and then out of nowhere the mountains appear and you’re faced with this truly astonishing beauty.
We made good time this year, despite the endless British roadworks we found ourselves in Ambleside before five with sufficient time to pause and grab the makings of a hash. The directions to our cottage come in two flavours: Anytime & Non-confident drivers and ‘Daytime or confident drivers’. It must be said that despite my many years of visiting and the abundance of confidence in my ability to drive up anything (see: Rebecca on mountains, and Brick in the Lake district) the reality of traversing Wrynose and Hardknott passes in the dark after a few years away would probably have led to a very long and slow drive.
Not only that, but it still took us three passes to identify the turning we needed (we actually spotted it on the first one and thought that it was the likely of the unmarked turnings; but the instructions proclaimed it was marked.
This is the first time I’ve been in the lake district in a ‘modern’ car. Our modern fleet member prior to this was the 1989 Volvo which was still pretty good for chugging up the hills. This time we’re in a rental, Amy the Austin having only just been returned to us (and to be honest, I think bringing a 1972 Austin 1300 Automatic (even a 1982 Austin Metro Automatic, which is where the engine/gearbox are from) up Hardknott pass would be beyond folly. The Chevrolet Cruise is, well, it’s a car. Best I can say for it. It gave both of us back-ache and if I were to review it I’d say it’s irritating as hell. There’s a good second between pressing the (presumably drive-by-wire) accelerator (gas) pedal and anything at all happening at the front. You get a delay on the Austin, but that’s merely age and lack of power; not wilfully bad design. Driving over the pass was not fun in the way that the minor makes it fun; largely I think because of the detachment from reality provided by a modern car. That and the whole ‘press-wait-go’ feature. It was a little saddening to find this in the guestbook though:
But it is literally stopping you in your tracks gorgeous here. We crested part of Hardknott pass and simply had to stop. The mountains and the sky combined to make both of us want to halt the car and just gaze upon it. So that’s what we did. We’ve 9 days of nothing to do but holiday. No where to be but where we want to be.
We trundled up to the cottage not sure of what we would find. The National Trust’s description proclaimed that it was basic and listed the features of the kitchen as ‘freezer’ and ‘microwave’. They were half-right. Actually, it’s wonderful. It’s wonderful in that there’s silence here. The air feels clean and fresh. And the people are all a long way away. There’s neither mobile, nor internet. We are snuggled down here, Bird Howe is small but perfectly formed; we fried up a quick potato hash, then once we’d got the fire going we were very warm and cozy, Kathryn knitting and me reading sections from the guest book…
…and writing a quick post.
This morning the sun rose above Halter Fell, warming our temporary home and providing a glorious backdrop for our morning ablutions. The cottage was built in the 19th Century and despite the march of progress equipping it first with running water and gas lighting, then with electricity and now with instant hot water it has no bathroom. The shipoon, which I believe is where the animals would have been kept under the house has been kept largely as it was, the floor still bare rock in the earth; and upstairs the original four rooms make two bedrooms, a small lounge and a tiny, but well formed kitchen.
It warns you not to expect a bathroom; and in the shipoon sits an ‘Elsan’ chemical toilet. An object who’s olfactory notes bring back fond memories of camping with Woodcraft Folk, and the chemical toilets that those trips entailed. We’d prepared for the trip with flannels; we’ve camped at sites before that have no wash facilities other than a sink, and so were prepared to wash from a bowl. But hidden in a cupboard we came across an unexpected shower.
As you read through the journals charting the progress of the house, you find that over the many years it has been a National Trust holiday cottage (since the 1960s) it has inspired a degree of care-taking on the part of its residents. Perhaps because it is a cottage that has only an occasional caretaker and it is left to the previous occupants to prepare it for those following, there are numerous tales of temporary repairs and fixes; improvements made by those staying to ensure that it keeps being a delightful place to stay.
Our addition was to repair the front door’s lock which had broken prior to the previous resident’s stay, but which they were unable to repair. But that is as nothing compared to the excellent addition someone else had made of a shower. Hooking the pipe over the window and attaching it to the kitchen tap; you adjust it, strip naked, and share your naked body with the fells…and a sheep or two.
There’s something marvellous about showering in the open air. If you’ve never done it; I highly recommend it. We showered in the forest at Crafty Camping, although there you were surrounded by a fence of wicker. But as the steam rose from the stone and I hopped through the leaves to the shower, I discovered something I’d never known before; it’s quite delightful to be in the open air having a hot shower; even when it’s really, really cold.
I thought I might feel self-conscious here; stripping naked and standing outside the house. But actually it’s remarkably freeing. That said, I did check before I went out that I knew where the road that passes the cottage is and that I wasn’t going to be giving a free show without at least a zoom lens or the use of binoculars. But that done I grabbed a towel, the soap and shampoo and with the aid of my beloved we got the temperature adjusted in seconds. Cumbrian sun beaming down (because incredibly, it was a nice morning), I stood in my birthday suit and had a very pleasurable shower. I was being gazed upon by one particularly fascinated sheep; but I was again reminded what a delicious experience showering al fresco is.
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We headed out in of food after breakfast. We’d arrived yesterday just in time to watch the wholefoods / grocer in Ambleside shut. There used to be a Deli, I think, by the name of Lucy’s. There’s now a restaurant, but I think the Deli may have succumbed to the recession. In fact, one place where I swear there used to be a very nice shop with very nice bread and such seems to have been split in two. We made several loops of Ambleside before giving in and using the co-op to get a few staples, with the expectation that today we’d head out early enough and be able to hit up a few small stores or a farm shop. Unfortunately, while there may be farm shops, we didn’t see any.
After several abortive visits to small towns suggested by the National Trust’s all important folder, we finally landed up in Whitehaven. Whitehaven isn’t somewhere that I think I’ve visited before, nor is it somewhere that’s high on my return visit list. I don’t want to be overly harsh, and I’m aware that I’m being a total snob, but it made me both feel incredibly lucky to live within reasonable distance of a decent green grocers (three, actually, that I know of); and also feel so sorry for Whitehaven that it seems so poorly catered to.
We stopped at a Deli, which I shall not name, for lunch. Which was okay. But not what I’d expect from a Deli, which perhaps I should have realised wasn’t going to be winning any awards when the coffee machine was lurking in the corner and was one of those auto-vend devices. The people were very nice and friendly, but the whole town felt not just like it had suffered but like it was continuing to suffer from a lack of investment. It used to be a harbour/fishing town, I think. Now I don’t know that it has a huge amount of identity. Outside the borders of the National Park and feeling like it lacks that vision that drives a place to pull itself out of the post-boom doldrums.
Anyhow, having managed to find enough stuff that we felt would ‘do’ we hopped back in the car and headed back.
The car continues to annoy. Here, have a sample of my in-my-head review:
The Chevrolet Cruise LS would be a wholly unremarkable car were it not for the things that it does badly. It’s moderately inoffensive to look at, the dashboard is reasonably well laid out and apart from suffering from the modern ‘plethora of buttons’ design scheme, the hideously named infotainment unit is not awful. But where it really falls down is in driving it. At only 22,000 miles, the reviewer’s car made an awful graunching noise on full lock in either direction, presumably related to the power steering. The accelerator pedal has a good half inch of action which I’ve named the zone of nothingness, because nothing happens in that zone at all. The electric windows appear to have a range in which it is incredibly difficult to persuade them to stop. But perhaps irritatingly, the lag time between requesting acceleration and receiving a response is sufficient for the reviewer to have penned this review, had it submitted and copy , and possibly even published before actually achieving an increase in speed. This is phenomenally tedious when driving.
Anyhow, we’re not planning to drive anywhere tomorrow, so you should be saved any more car related rants for a few days. We’re contemplating a tarn or a fell tomorrow, so wish us luck.
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Today we hit up two tarns and a beck. Not, obviously, The Beck. That would be different. No, this was a beck. Specifically Blea Beck. Incidentally; one of the delightful things about visiting somewhere that changes very little over time is that it is only a few trips ago that I gave up bringing my ‘One Inch Map of the Lake District’ which didn’t feature the M6. I’ve now stepped it up to my parent’s Tourist Map (updated 1973) and some lovely maps of The English Lakes that my best beloved and I picked up a few years ago which were updated, I think, in 1978 and 1980.
Positively modern.
Anyhow, so, with the aid of the thorougly modern maps and a little guidebook from the house we set off on a quest. Namely to visit Stony Tarn and Blea Beck (which interestingly has nothing to do with Blea Tarn) and possibly Eel tarn on the way back. The path on the map sort of peetered out a bit short of Stony Tarn, but never ones to shirk a little irresponsible wandering on fells with a compass, an out of date map and some Tiffin, we disregarded this. Anyhow, the guidebook suggested that we’d quite definitely reach Stony Tarn if only we kept on walking, so it was all fine.
Now, before we get into our tale of the day, let’s get one thing absolutely straight. I, of course, fell over.
I do this on every walking holiday, at least once, if not more than once. And I’m pleased to say that I did it today. I like to think it’s my youthful exhuberance (although it’s more likely a mixture of incompetence and a faith in my own abilities vastly exceeding the same). I did so and obtained a small wound on my hand, a second small wound on my hand and very little else. I wasn’t even completely smothered in mud, which is always a plus. Nor did I do it on one of the slippery boggy bits, which were both very slippery and very boggy, and that’s also a plus.
See, there was a phrase in the guidebook.
“The path momentarily vanishes at a circular boggy patch, but keep to the right, skirting the jumble of rocks, and up a marshy ramp. This damp section is short lived…”
Well, some parts of that were right. Often at this time of the year it’s a trifle difficult in the Lake District to distinguish the paths from the streams. Today we spent a lot of time trying to do this and I’m not quite sure if we entirely succeeded. However, we did locate both the very pleasant and harshly named ‘Stony Tarn’ and the also lovely (if surrounded entirely by bog) Eel tarn.
The views were the Lake District standard, namely utterly gorgeous. A sort of bleak, untamed beauty. The colours, rich reds and browns interspersed with bristling whites and mats of greens from the grasses; they’re just delicious. The mountains and fells, layers of greys fading quietly into the distance. It’s sometimes frustrating though, because pictures just don’t capture it. Occasionally, just occasionally it’s possible to get some of the spirit of the place; but usually they just look flat and uninspiring.
At any rate; we tromped merrily over the hills; largely disregarding the paths because it was so difficult to find any evidence of them. One minute you’d be walking down what you thought might be a path, the next you’d be looking at a full on bog with a couple of inches of surface water and trying to work out which plants to stand on to sink the least.
And it must be said, my feet were very wet when we made it back to the house. So wet that here, 6 hours on, my shoes are still drying by the fire. This is because my Vibrams may save my knees and are awesome (the slipping over thing I’ve always done, this is not new to my Vibram experience. I used to regularly fall over in walking boots, too), but the one thing I’ve never had is a pair of waterproof Vibrams. I thought these were water resistant, more at least. But then I stood on the path outside our little cottage and discovered that no, they’re not. So leaving the house I get wet feet…
That being said, I don’t really care. Once they’re wet, they’re wet. I get home and dry them off and slip on toasty warm socks that have been by the radiator, and I light the wood fire, and curl up with tea and more tiffin (because I made Tiffin yesterday and thus we got to sit on the fell, by the Tarn, and munch on yummy cheese sandwiches and yummy tiffin) which in my book is a pretty awesome day.
And it only rained on us on the last stretch before the house. So yay.
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We had decided to have a bit of a quiet day; a more gentle walk or two and a quick trip to Eskdale Green to retrieve some fresh firewood; there being pretty much none left (or an axe, because there’s an enormous hunk of wood but it needs splitting into firewood sized logs). The shop in Eskdale green turns out to be startlingly well stocked and also happens to be right near one of the quirkiest little gardens. In the early 1910s someone decided to plant a Japanese garden near Eskdale.
Unfortunately, it has suffered from a disease which has meant that many of the Rhododendrons have had to be removed (and apparently lots of herbicide sprayed around) and in the grey mizzle of a Lakeland afternoon it was clearly not shown in its best light. But the little pseudo traditional style Japanese bridges and cheerfully red Acers were quite lovely; and the light and shade, along with some of the views out to the fells were really special.
We meandered through the woodland and back to the car for a traditional British ‘lunch in the car’ experience (with rain accompaniment) before toddling along to Dalegarth station on the Ravenglass and Eskdale (narrow gauge) railway where we had an enormous pot of tea before heading up to Dalegarth Force (or Stanley Falls, which is its formal name). This is apparently one of the beautiful falls in the Lake District and the valley approaching it is just incredible. It feels almost prehistoric; the walls covered in mosses and ferns (and, it turns out, Rhododendrons). The light creeping down and lurking in pools.
I’m pretty certain I’ve been to Dalegarth before; along with another of our planned destinations; Blea Tarn. But that’s for another day. Today we’ve just meandered the hills above Dalegarth, pottered to St Catherine’s Church (in Eskdale) before finally heading home.
And emptying the chemical toilet.
Mmm.
Still; as a price to pay for seclusion and peace it’s a pretty small one.
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Keswick has long been one of my favourite towns in the Lake District. It sports some of our favourite shops and is generally a bit more of a real working town with things like DIY merchants and so forth. Or so we thought.
We’d made space for today to be our day in town, mainly to give our unfit legs a bit of a rest. We hopped into the car and made our way back over Wrynose and Hardknott pass, through Ambleside and up to Keswick which, it seems has also been bitten by the recession. We hunted for our favourite cafe (although we think we may have found it as we were leaving, having previously declared it dead and having eaten elsewhere). We also found our favourite shops had disappeared leaving only the strangely disorganised bookshop (which I like for its odd variety – more on which in a moment, should you want more – but dislike for its general overpricedness) and the Old Friars of Keswick sweet shop, which sells very nice sweets.
Indeed, many of our little haunts have vaporised, a couple of galleries have disappeared and our general middleclassishness showed horribly as we wandered around and slightly despaired at the inordinate number of cut-price mountain clothing stores, and not terribly exciting tea rooms. I mean I’ve nothing against a good tea room, but there were a hell of a lot of them.
The whole experience was slightly disheartening; and I know these things go in swings or circles, and yes, it’s probably somewhere else’s turn, but it was sad for me. That said, in the bookshop in Keswick was something randomly awesome. And I’m sure I paid more than it was worth being a single volume of a multi-volume set. And certainly it’s a ridiculous thing to own but given my ambitions with the minor it seemed unreasonable to skip it – also a quick look online revealed a lot of print-on-demand modern copies (hand bound in India, oddly) and a ‘8 volume set’ in which it was included but which only apparently had 336 pages. The other single, original were a bit more pricey (but probably also not slightly foxed).
What was it? It was (or is) Cyclopedia of Automobile Engineering, Volume III, Electric Automobiles & Automobile Driving. Dating from 1910.
It’s an American Correspondence course book dating from a time when the Electric Automobile was not considered quirky, but instead considered a as a mixture of an excellent city vehicle (it comments on the incredible reliability and longevity of the Electric Cabs working in New York) and as a ‘Ladies’ or ‘Family’ car (because it doesn’t need ‘a man’ to look after it). It’s actually fascinating although the language is a little 1910’s froofy, but it’s filled with photos of a surprising number of (mainly Baker Electric) vehicles.
It also talks about interesting little factoids like the fact that the first circular race in the states was won by an electric automobile as was, the Blanchet Cup in 1900 at Long Island which was won by A.L.Riker in his Locomobile Racer ( name there) by a margin of “Fully half an hour over the best gasoline car’s performance”. Sadly it doesn’t deign to provide a photograph of that car. It also goes on to talk about touring anywhere “North of Ohio or East of the Mississipi” being completely practical and no one should have any concerns about doing so in a well maintained EV, before commenting on a variety of long tours that have been done in EVs in essentially the same amount of time as in a gasoline car. I would guess, given the comments about the EVs generally being somewhat slower than the petrol cars of the same era that it was a case of the tortoise and the rabbit :)
Handily, if anyone ever gives me a 1900s Electric Vehicle (which I positively hope they do) then it’ll also give me lots of information for how to maintain it, and indeed how to build a mercury vapour rectifier, which obviously I need simply because it sounds awesome. So yes, clearly a very sensible buy. (There’ll be a post up at Transport Evolved soon about this).
We also went to Booths, which is a supermarket, which I only mention because it has a fantastic name. Booths. Boooooths. Go on, try it. It’s for your mouth.
Aaaanyway.
Feeling slightly disparaged (mainly because we’d set our whole day around lunch in a cafe which we think, now, has moved but at lunch time we thought had closed) we headed out and back towards home when we succumbed to the urge to pop into Grasmere. I must admit I always think of Grasmere as having become much more touristy, but it turned out to have quite a few nice little galleries and even a small sculpture garden that we enjoyed. Also a family of artists with an excellent gallery, some wonderful sculptures that we both would have quite liked to bring home, and paintings that capture some of the beauty of the lake district that is so hard to successfully show in photographs.
Whilst we only spent an hour and a half there, it felt like it somewhat rescued the day.
Although perhaps the best bit was yet to come. Driving back over Wrynose and Hardknott pass, the Lake District treated us to just such incredible light; it was an adjective exhausting experience. Perhaps there are ways in English to describe how unutterably gorgeous it can be up here, but neither of us seemed to find the way to do it. We’d be rhapsodising on a view we’d seen, have been frustrated by the inadequacy of the language available to describe it, round a bend (and there are a lot of them), see another view, and be lost for words all over again.
Whilst we had the benefit of signal (my phone’s been happily displaying ‘No Signal’ for much of the trip when it’s been on; much of the time it’s been in ‘Airplane’ mode because I don’t really see the point in it exhausting itself looking for signal when there isn’t any) we took the chance to look at the weather forecast (we have no phone, no radio, no mobile, no TV, no newspapers. It’s quite delicious and I’m surprised how little I miss it. ). Our original plan was to do Harter Fell tomorrow and Blea Tarn/possibly a little ride on the Ratty on Sunday, but the weather forecast, which I’ll admit is even more of a work of fiction here than in Bristol advised us that tomorrow will be wet and Sunday marginally less so. So we’ve switched that round. Tomorrow we’re going to say hello to my dad at Blea Tarn (ISTR it was one of his favourite places) and then Sunday we’re going to attempt to exhaust ourselves on Harter Fell.
As an unrelated side point we seem to have managed to buy a bag of almost entirely fireproof wood. We stopped off, as I mentioned, in a Eskdale Green and bought both firewood and kindling. The kindling is , but a couple of pieces of wood almost literally won’t burn. As in, it won’t hold a self-sustaining flame, and if you don’t surround it with coal or some other more inflammable object then it just goes out. Which is quite frustrating.
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We took the day sort of off yesterday; a brief wander up to Blea Tarn. A place that I’m certain was a destination of my youth. Despite the vagaries of our 30 year old map we managed to make it up there; getting back was a little bit more entertaining although how much of that was due to the map and how much was fairly recent shifts in the paths was a little difficult to ascertain.
Today though was the main event. And I’m incredibly grateful that we left it for today, because the weather was astonishing. It wasn’t sunny all day, but it never rained. We walked from about 1030 am until 1730, up over Harter Fell – although the route we attempted to find up didn’t really exist. It was more optimism than reality, it’s not marked on our map but we thought these two points might have been linked – and we found, as we were at the bottom that there was a distinct, if not signposted track upwards. This obviously petered out, but by this time we were up far enough that we just carried on. We spent an awful lot of time playing a game which I call ‘stream or path’. This is based on the fact that a lot of Lake District paths are derived from what appear to be stream beds. But with a degree of confidence borne from my parents “let’s go this way what do you mean there’s no path it looks interesting” and faith in us both being able to navigate our way out we marched, waded, and stomped our way to the top.
Which was definitely worth it, the views were exceptional and the weather remained kind, although there were definitely clouds we could see well into the surrounding valleys and out into the ocean. The way down, however, proved more of a struggle. At the top we’d declared that we definitely wouldn’t be visiting the Roman Fort that sits on Hardknott pass. It was far too far out of the way and we’d be way too tired. This time with some assistance from the map being out of date we found ourselves part way down and deciding that actually, the pass looked like the better option, the forest we’d planned to walk along having been clear-cut (although again, it looks like it’s only happened in the last few years). We waded through a lot more marsh and bog land than is strictly reasonable and ended up reaching a point where we carefully clambered over a couple of new lines of fencing which were definitely not marked on our aged map (I might consider replacing it, but it’s only 30 years old).
Anyhow, eventually we made it across to the Roman Fort which is incredibly preserved given its age (110 AD ish) and its location which is not the gentle on buildings. Indeed, its in about the same state of repair as many 18th Ct buildings in the area. Finally we made our way back to our cottage… and then to the Woolpack inn for a solid roast dinner before curling up by the fire.
Tomorrow is our last full day, but we plan to spend much of that in Miller Howe, luxuriating and pretending we’re wealthy souls.
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Miller Howe was, as usual, a delight. The food was excellent; particularly the evening meal which was utterly delicious. The room and the view were quite lovely, and lounge just contains furniture that we really, really want to own. It’s a fantastic place; and always makes me wish that we had enough money to make going there something we could do yearly, instead of only very, very occasionally.
Heading home we stopped off at Blackwell, a Lake District Arts and Crafts house; opened as a charity – and with an interesting range of local arts displayed in one of the best gift shops I’ve encountered. The house itself is really fascinating, being an incredibly intact survivor of the arts and crafts period – despite having a period in use as a girls’ school…
Sadly, the interior of the house is dark enough that without a tripod, the photos are only really fit for reference photos.
