Back in the late-1760s the poet Thomas Gray travelled twice to the Lake District. The first visit was very short but he was so impressed that he returned a couple of years later and wrote extensively about about it. Sadly, he died in 1771 but in 1775 his account was publish as a “Journal of his Tour in the Lake District”.

This became an extremely popular book at the time. Other writers such as West added their own descriptions in words, but Joseph Farrington followed in Gray’s steps not as a writer but as a watercolour artist. It is more than two centuries since it was suggested that Gray’s prose should be published accompanied by illustrations, and now it has been done, using Farrington’s paintings from the same era.

John Murray, of the publishing family of the same name, has brought together Gray and Farrington, and gone even further. He has also published present day photographs to compare what the writer and painter of 250 years saw with what we can see today. Any lover of the Lake District will be intrigued and fascinated to see how the Landscape has changed (which it has) and also how it has stayed the same (which it also has). This mixture of basic stability and living development is surely what we should expect of a landscape over time – please note, those who want now to freeze it!

To buy a copy (at well below the cover price) click now on the cover graphic above or here for the hardback edition. Click here for the paperback.

From now until early January 2013 the Wordsworth Museum at Dove Cottage, Grasmere, has an exhibition running, “Pen, Paint and Pixels: Touring the English Lakes across 250 years”. This is one not to be missed.

Today’s suggestion takes us outside the Lake District National Park, but administrative boundaries are artificial and I’ve no hesitation in including the Eden Valley within the scope of this site.

Having fallen even deeper in love with the Eden Valley since coming to live here just over a year ago I’m constantly looking for new ideas for places to explore. Ron Scholes’s 2006 set of thirty six walks, Walking in Eden, ranging in length from 2 to 15 miles (but mostly in the 8-10 range) is not a disappointment. They include both circular and linear routes and the text provides a wealth of information about places seen along the way.

The walks are divided into 6 geographical groupings, starting with the Eden headwaters:

The Eden Valley – Walking Guides and General Titles

Although it was possible to buy a new copy of Walking in Eden through Amazon with no problem only last week, having written this I now see that today they are showing only second hand copies available, but that might change so it’s worth checking. Here’s the link, and also a few other Eden Valley titles.

Walking in Eden, by Ron Scholes (2006)
 
Walking in Cumbria’s Eden Valley, by Vivienne Crow (2011)
Short Walks in the Eden Valley and North Pennines, by Dennis & Jan Kelsall (2004)
Eden Valley (Walking Country) by Paul Hannon (2009)
 
Discovering the Eden Valley (In Old Photographs), by Charlie Emett
A Year in the Life of the Eden Valley, by Val Corbett
Come Back to Eden: Memories of the Eden Valley, by John Hurst
Eden Valley and North Pennines, by W.R. Mitchell
From Hellgill to Bridge End, by Margaret Shepherd
Portrait of the Eden Valley, by Graham Uney
 

Appleby in Westmorland

The Flag of Westmorland

 
The Horses of Appleby Fair, by Heidi M Sands
 
The Story of Appleby in Westmorland, by Martin Holdgate
 
 

Lake District Walks - A Selection of Guidebooks

I recently showed on this blog several slimline economy-priced Lake District walking guides of the kind that are easily slipped into a pocket for an afternoon out. Today the selection is more substantial, more for slipping into a rucksack pocket than a jacket. Three guides (or series) are illustrated above, and don’t forget Wainwright’s ‘Pictorial Guides to the Lakeland Fells‘.

Lakeland Fellranger Guides from Cicerone

The Lakeland Fellranger series from Cicerone provides excellent up to date descriptions of walks on the high fells of Lakeland. Each is copiously illustrated with route maps, colour photographs, sketches and panorama diagrams with text by Mark Richards. Introductory pages give information about the specific area and also important general points about fell-walking. The series is arranged into volumes corresponding to eight geographical divisions of the Lake District. Click on the appropriate link below for further details on each volume. All are available at well below cover price. (Have you seen the Lakeland Fellranger Bus)

Pathfinder Guides to Lake District Walking

Pathfinder Guides are another excellent series of walking books, each containing around two dozen walks in about a hundred pages. Some of the walks are very energetic, especially those in the High Fells volume, whilst others are less so. Good information is provided to help choose the right grade of difficulty for the people involved. Maps, photographs and guidance notes are well presented. Below I have included also “Lake District Short Walks” from the same publisher, although not strictly part of the Pathfinder series. Click on a volume label below for further details. Once again, prices are very attractive.

AA – 50 Walks in the Lake District

The Lake District edition of the AA’s “50 Walks” series contains walks to suit all abilities – from the occasional stroller to the experienced fell-walker. Walks are described in detail and there is background information on the history and wildlife of the area. Included also are pointers to places of interest in the landscape such as villages, churches, country houses and museums. Typical of most AA publications there is also good information on facilities such as restaurants and public houses. Details of distance, time, gradient, level of difficulty, type of surface and access, dog friendliness, parking and public toilets are also provided. Please note that the illustration here is of the updated edition. Click here: The Lake District (AA 50 Walks Series)

Other Posts and Pages on Lake District Walking Books:
Lake District Maps
List of posts referring to Lake District walking books
Wainwright Books – guides, maps, biography and more

There are many guides to walking in the Lake District, and they come at a fairly wide range of price-levels in both paperback and hardback editions.

Elsewhere on this site we have some of the more popular “full-size” guides to Lake District walks, such as the Wainwright Guides and the Fellranger series, but on this blog post I’m focusing on some inexpensive, but extremely useful publications of the kind that can easily be slipped into a pocket.

The examples I show here are for Ullswater walks (and the area close by) but there are equivalents for other parts of the Lake District.

The “East Rambles” series of Lake District Walks, from Questa

This series is typically around 50 pages with a concise but highly informative general introduction to the area including history, geology, landscape, flora and fauna. For each walk (ten of them in the Patterdale & Ullswater walks issue) there are detailed instructions, sketch maps and informative comment on areas passed or viewed from points on the walk. At a cover price of only £3.99 this series provide exceptional value. Click on the cover illustration here to purchase from Amazon. Other titles include:

• Easy Rambles around Keswick and Borrowdale
• Easy Rambles around Wasdale
• Easy Rambles around Ambleside and Grasmere
• Easy Rambles around The Langdale Valleys

The “Walks around …” series, from Dalesman

The “Walks around …” series from Dalesman also gives sets of ten short walks in the Lake District (up to six miles) with instructions, description, sketch maps, and interesting snippets of information about the places passed. With 32 pages each and cover prices of £2.99 they are amazing value.

Once again click on the cover illustration here to purchase the Patterdale & Ullswater walks guide from Amazon or click below for other titles, which include:

• Walks Around Ambleside
• Walks Around Windermere
• Walks around Coniston and Hawkshead
• Walks Around Keswick

Pocket Walking Guides, from Hallewell Publications

The guides in this series are the smallest in size and number of pages yet contain larger number of walks, 25 walks in 32 small pages. There is little detail but there is enough to help follow a route – and at only £1.95 they are very cheap; if you’re leading a party you could easily buy one for each person without breaking the bank.

Titles in the series relevant to walking in the Lake District are:

• Walks: Grasmere, Ambleside and Windermere
• Walks: Coniston and the Southern Lakes
• Walks: the Western Lakes
• Walks: Keswick and the Northern Lakes
• Walks: Ullswater and the Eastern Lakes

If you’re looking for something more comprehensive on Lake District walking take a look at either of the following:

Alfred Wainwright’s Pictorial Guides to the Lakeland Fells

For the Lakeland Fellranger series by Mark Richards click on: Lake District Walking Guides.

This morning I was reading about Mongolia, and it reminded me of Coniston. Why? Because the news report was about the world’s largest still-undeveloped deposit of copper, and the Coniston copper mines were once an important source of that vitally important metal.

Today, of course, the world’s known reserves of copper are vastly greater than anything that was understood in the days of Elizabeth I. Mines in Chile, Peru, USA and Canada are massive, as are those in Indonesia and Australia, but 450 years ago those lands were scarcely on the map so far as Europeans were concerned.

The Romans had mined much of their copper in Cyprus (from which eventually came the Cu symbol for the chemical element). When they arrived in Britain they found significant deposits in Cornwall, and there is evidence of Roman mining in Cumbria. It was the sixteenth century, though, in the days of Elizabeth the First, before copper mining was developed at Keswick and Coniston by the Company of Mines Royal. Early mining is known to have taken place on a significant scale in areas around Borrowdale, the Newlands Valley, Buttermere and the Caldbeck fells as well as on Coniston Old Man and Wetherlam. In places mining continued into the 20th century.

The Coniston copper mines had what can only be described as fluctuating success over the three hundred years from the Elizabethan age, becoming substantial producers only in the nineteenth century. They then became nationally significant for some decades, and brought a generation or two of prosperity to the area, but with steadily increasing discoveries internationally of larger and easier deposits they could not compete. By the end of the nineteenth century they were doomed.

More on Coniston Copper + mines elsewhere in the Lake District

On one of my other sites I wrote more on the history of Coppermines at Coniston a year or so ago. Others far more knowledgeable than I have written much more extensively, for example:

• Peter Fleming, on his excellent Cumbrian Industry website, Copper.
• Eric Holland, Coniston Copper Mines: A Field Guide to the Mines in the Copper Ore Field at Coniston in the English Lake District.

On other mines in the Lake District see these books by Ian Tyler, owner of the Keswick Mining Museum and a leading authority on this subject.

• Goldscope and the Mines of Derwent Fells (copper and lead).
• Seathwaite Wad And The Mines Of The Borrowdale Valley (graphite and copper).
• Roughton Gill And The Mines Of The Caldbeck Fells (lead and copper).

The links above take you to Amazon.co.uk. If only expensively priced secondhand copies are available there try doing a search here for the title, or in the case of Ian Tyler’s books contact the Keswick Mining Museum direct.

Today we have a new walking guide , an excellent companion to Cicerone’s earlier volume, Walking in Cumbria’s Eden Valley. Then we have a new Lake District map, this time not one designed to give detailed information while out and about, such as the various types of map we discussed some weeks ago, but rather to show the contours in a special 3D effect.

The Lune Valley and Howgills – a Walking Guide is a welcome new addition to the Cicerone selection of walking guides covering areas of the North of England, and especially walking in the Lake District. Strictly speaking, of course, The Lune Valley and Howgills are outside the Lake District National Park, but we include them because they’re within the Lakeland county of Cumbria and northern Lancashire. This volume contains forty walks well away from the tourist hotspots, varying from short strolls to more demanding days of ten miles or more. Cover price: £12.99. Amazon.co.uk price (22/02/12): £9.71. Check latest price

Lake District Map in 3D

Also published at the beginning of this year is a great 3D map of the Central Lake District from Deepmaps. It is in fact flat, but printed in such a way as to be 3-dimensional to the eye. Click on the link above or on the image for more details and to buy from Amazon.co.uk.

If you prefer a genuine physically three dimensional Lake District map take a look at this one: A Lake District Raised Relief Map, in a Light Wood Frame

This book, The Big Walks of the North, is not specifically about walking in the Lake District but as some of the long distance walks included here involve parts of Cumbria I decided we could stretch a point, especially as the Independent has listed it at number three in its “10 Best Walking Guides“.

The author, David Bathurst, does his research well and pays attention not only to the landscape but also to the history of the areas walked. Another useful feature is that he does not assume that his readers will want to tramp an entire long distance walk but identifies the rambler’s equivalents of “bite-sized chunks”.

The North East and Scotland are represented (for example The Cleveland Way and The West Highland Way) and the Hadrian’s Wall Path, The Pennine Way and the Coast to Coast are all here so enthusiasts for Lake District walks will find much of interest relating to the fringes and the nearby surroundings of the National Park.

In addition to The Big Walks of the North David Bathurst has written similar books on other areas of the country, including:

• Big Walks of the South
• The Big Walks of Great Britain
• Walking the South Coast of England
• Walking the Disused Railways of Kent

Coming soon is:

• Walking the County High Points of England

Walking in the Lake District

For books specifically about Lake District walks see:

• The walking section of our catalogue, and of course,
• The Wainwright Guides to the Lakeland Fells

This book, England’s Landscape: The North West by Angus Winchester and Alan Crosby was published in 2006 by English Heritage. It is No. 8 in a series covering the regions of England and includes chiefly the three historic (as distinct from current administrative) counties of Lancashire, Westmorland and Cumberland.

This is a comprehensive coverage of landscapes of many types. The region is blessed with an enormous diversity. The two main lowland areas of North Cumbria and West Lancashire could scarcely be different from the mountainous massif of the Lake District and the high moorland of the Pennines.

In addition to the rocks and rivers the human activity around them is surveyed, we read of men extracting coal and minerals from deep under the earth and leaving their mark above it in what we now see as fascinating industrial heritage. Buildings – houses and castles, churches and chapels, mills and mines – are all part of this story and their existence all flowed from the nature of the rock and earth beneath them.

The growth of agricultural villages, both lowland and upland, is explored and so is the more recent (ie. two hundred years or so) spread of industrial towns and cities based on iron, coal and plentiful soft water, along with the west coast ports and the development of the region’s extensive transportation networks – roads, canals, railways and back to roads.

England’s Landscape: The North West is beautifully illustrated with colour photography and also with maps, charts and diagrams to help the reader understand the way that the region has developed over the years through human settlement, economic activity and, more recently, conservation – of both the natural and built environment.

This is a book to be read by all who are seriously interested in the North West. How can we think constructively about our future if we do not understand how we came to be where we are?

Other Volumes in the “England’s Landscape” Series

• England’s Landscape (2) – East Anglia
• England’s Landscape (3) – The South West
• England’s Landscape (4) – The West
• England’s Landscape (5) – The East Midlands
• England’s Landscape (6) – The West Midlands
• England’s Landscape (7) – The North East

More on the Landscape of the North West

I recently borrowed a copy of Alfred Wainwright’s autobiographical Memoirs of a Fellwanderer from the local library. It was difficult to put down, especially as I found parallels with my own experience. Here was Wainwright’s story of growing up in a Lancashire industrial town (as I did myself, although 35 years later when conditions had vastly improved) and learning to love the Lake District hills during short visits (although I did have the benefit of a Westmorland and Furness family background with frequent visits from early childhood). Wainwright later had the immense privilege of furthering his professional career in Lakeland – and at this point the partial parallels cease.

His productivity in walking, photography, drawing and writing was an incredible achievement demanding an immense capacity for focus and commitment. I found it almost impossible to break off from reading the story of how the famous “Wainwright Guides” came to be produced – even when insistently called to re-rail Scalectrix cars for the 3-year-old grandson I was supposed to be minding. As any reader of his Guides will expect there are many typically blunt comments about fell-walking malpractice, including his plain instruction on avoiding accidents: “Watch where you’re putting your feet” – which, come to think of it, would also be good advice for a 3-year-old playing with Scalectrix!

Memoirs of a Fellwanderer draws heavily on two of Wainwright’s earlier books and especially, Ex-Fellwanderer: A Thanksgiving, produced “to commemorate the author’s 80th birthday” which can often be found secondhand.

I have a copy of this smaller 1987 book, bought at the time, and in spite of having read it in the past still thoroughly enjoyed rereading the passages imported into the later posthumous volume in 1993 with the cooperation of his widow, who contributed the Foreword. But now I ask myself, which of the two would I most treasure if I owned my own copy of both? Without a doubt it would be the 80th birthday volume. Here were his freshly written reflections on decades of walking in the Lake District as he entered on the stage of life when he could do so only with the eyes of memory.

What about the other earlier book from which parts of Memoirs of a Fellwanderer were taken? To the best of my knowledge I’ve never seen a copy, but decided to search online for secondhand copies. Yes, they are to be found. Go back another 20 years and take off the “Ex-”, and Fellwanderer, The Story behind the Guidebooks was published in the same year as the seventh guide. (By the way, this link is not to Amazon but to the AbeBooks UK site; one advantage of ABE site is that the dealers on it usually provide good descriptions of both book and cover condition; they’re generally very reliable and I’ve never had to return a book in many years of buying through this channel).

These, then, are the main autobiographical writings of Alfred Wainwright but I should add one other title before closing this post. Fell Walking with a Camera was mentioned in a previous post on this blog, Lakeland in Black and White. It shows his great skill with the camera, which reminds me that one aspect of Memoirs of a Fellwanderer that I liked was its arrangement of photographs and line drawings adjacent to one another on the same page so that we can see the way he interpreted a scene in his sketches, often picking out features that are less obvious in the photograph.

Other Wainwright Books

Our main Wainwright books listings

2nd (updated) edition of the Lakeland Wainwright Guides