Recently, as I’ve been walking around the Lake District taking wintry photographs (even though theoretically it’s been Spring!) I’ve been reading more about the geology with a view to getting a better understanding not only of the character of the mountains but also of the ways in which in the centuries before tourism our ancestors extracted a living from this often unforgiving landscape.

Here then are three books on this theme, two of which are specific to the Lake District and the first about British mountains more generally.

I suppose those first three were not truly a miscellany as they all focused on a single theme, and here now are three more that could be thought of as related by the word, ‘portrait’. The first is a portrait of a mountain, Blencathra, or as it has long been popularly known, Saddleback. Next is a portrait of a person, the late great Alfred Wainwright and his mountain walking, whilst the third is a portrait of a region, the Lake District as a whole but with a particular twist, the Lake District in Winter.

And now my final three for today are a genuine miscellany. I’ll let the titles speak for themselves.

I hope you enjoy this selection, or at least some of them, and while I’m thinking of it you might also be interested in a little site I put together rather quickly last week showing some of the pictures I took of wintry Ullswater.

Many people like to take their dogs with them on holiday, and visitors to the Lake District are no exception to this. On our new ‘sister’ site, Lake District Accommodation 4u, there is some useful information about dog friendly accommodation in the Lake District and more will be added over coming weeks.

There are two big challenges in setting up a walking holiday with a dog: finding the right kind of accommodation suitable both for the dog and your own holiday preferences, and then making the journey to the Lake District – not so much of a problem if it’s a short trip but needing careful thought if it is several hundred miles. Here are three books that should help. The first focuses specifically on walks with your dog in the southern end of the Lake District, published early 2013. The other two are not specific to this part of the country and date from 2011 and 2012 respectively.

Countryside Dog Walks – Lake District South: 20 Graded Walks with No Stiles for Your Dogs [Paperback]

Dog-friendly Breaks in Britain (Alastair Sawday’s Special Places to Stay) [Paperback]

Pet Friendly Places to Stay 2012 (Aa) [Paperback]

Recently I introduced an old friend to one of my sites. A day or so later she came back to me on Facebook (by the way here’s my “Around-England” Facebook page) saying, “I’ve bought a book”. Later I discovered that it was a book about Lake District weather; she’d bought “Rainy Days in the Lake District” by Val Corbett.

Val Corbett is an excellent photographer with an eye for the unusual. (I wish I was a quarter as good!) Her earlier (2010) book, Winter in the Lake District, is a beautiful production. With frozen waterfalls, mountain peaks covered in glistening snow and river valleys clothed in pristine white, Winter in the Lake District is a glorious season that attracts both walkers and photographers. But rain?

We have to admit that it does rain a lot in the Lake District; but then, if it didn’t we would not have the rivers and lakes. I’ve often written to the effect that Cumbria’s Lakeland is beautiful whatever the weather, and it truly is, although admittedly it can be pretty miserable if you’re not properly equipped for it. A mountainside downpour when dressed only in t-shirt, jeans and trainers is not a pleasant experience unless you’re a serious meteorological masochist. Of course, mountains should always be treated with respect. We should prepare properly when visiting them and then can look forward with confidence to splendid days out on the fells.

This past summer, though, I’ve found myself rather constrained in my photographic efforts. Although Lake District walking in the rain I could understand and appreciate, the thought of trying to get good scenic shots in the downpours and drizzles of Summer 2012 really turned me off. But maybe I was wrong! What Val Corbett has demonstrated in Rainy Days in the Lake District is that the Lake District is special, especially in the rain that makes it so special – and that a camera can show that. Don’t miss this book.

Looking for a gift for someone who appreciates the Lake District and Cumbria? Here is a miscellany of suggestions, most of them at great bargain prices.

• Winter in the Lake District
• List Price: £20.00
• Prices from: £12.11
• Read Reviews

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• The English Lakes: A History
• List Price: £25.00
• Prices from: £9.90
• Read Reviews

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• Gardens of the Lake District
• List Price: £25.00
• Prices from: £12.72
• Read Reviews

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• Great Mountain Days in the Lake District: 50 Great Routes: 50 Classic Routes Exploring the Lakeland Fells
• List Price: £17.95
• Prices from: £9.71
• Read Reviews

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• Houses of the Lake District
• List Price: £30.00
• Prices from: £18.05
• Read Reviews

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• Keswick and Workington Floods: 19-20 November 2009
• List Price: £5.00
• Prices from: £3.00
• Read Reviews

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• The Horses of Appleby Fair
• List Price: £9.95
• Prices from: £4.37
• Read Reviews

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• A Year in the Life of the Eden Valley
• List Price: £16.99
• Prices from: £5.04
• Read Reviews

There are different kinds of Lake District map. Which is the “right” one depends on how you intend to use it. There are “horses for courses”, to borrow an old saying from the title of my previous maps article back in January. While mentioning that article I should say that I don’t apologise for more or less duplicating what I wrote there. It is so important. A walker’s guidebook, even of the best such as the Wainwright Guides or the Fellranger series, although very valuable is no replacement for a map. Toward the end of this article I’ll also refer to the importance of a map and compass combination.

Types of Lake District Map

Illustrated here is the Lake District issue in the British Mountain Map series published by HARVEY in collaboration with the British Mountaineering Council. Its big advantages are:

• it is waterproof, being printed on a tough polyethylene;
• almost the whole of the Lake District is shown on a single map
• major climbing, and walking, areas are shown at a larger scale on the reverse side.

This map get excellent reviews, although many users say they would use it in conjunction with the relevant Ordnance Survey 1:25,000 “OS Explorer Active” map with its greater detail (and also available in weatherproof version). One reviewer says that this is a map “specifically designed for walkers rather than general purpose OS map. It leaves out some the clutter on OS maps and highlights features useful to the fell walker.” Another, however, writes: “I’d take this map on a walk but would plan it on an OS map. But if I was going to walk off-path the OS map would be essential,” suggesting the two together as a good combination.

Lake District Maps – Ordnance Survey

Although to cover the Lake District takes four OS Explorer maps due to their larger scale (and in my experience the area I want almost always seems to be at the junction of two!) it is true to say that the vast majority of experienced Lakeland walkers rely on these. The level of detail is unsurpassed, and they are available alternatively on traditional paper or weatherproof laminate.

The OS Landranger series is at around half the scale of the Explorer maps and is perfectly adequate for walkers who do not venture into more remote areas away from well-trodden tracks. It should be noted, though, that it still takes three maps to cover the Lake District more or less fully.

Lake District Maps For Motorists

The Landranger series may also be appreciated by people whose walking largely consists of shorter distances from the car as following the roads is easier at this scale.

An excellent alternative, though, if you’re not likely to venture far from the roads, either on four wheels or two, is the Lake District OS Travel Map or Tour Map as it is sometimes called. This one includes tourist information, town plans and scenic areas in addition to roads, rail and cycle routes (not that there’s much rail left!). Don’t expect it to show every small lane, but as one reviewer on the Amazon site puts it, “If you want an introduction to the area and the whole area on one sheet for less than a fiver, this is the one for you!”

“Map and Compass Go Together”

In the opening paragraph I promised to mention the importance of a compass along with a map. On very clear days you may not need one, but one characteristic of the Lake District weather is that what starts as a sunny morning can quickly become a misty afternoon. If you’re going up high you should have a good compass in addition to your 1:25,000 scale map.

You may not want to go to extent of a top notch expedition quality instrument such as the Silva Compass Expedition 15TDCL, but a good mid-range model such as the Expedition 4-360 model illustrated above should give excellent service for many years. It gets great reviews from many experienced walkers. For example: “I use the Silva primarily for hill walking using 1:25,000 OS maps. Before I purchased, I did some research into the features you need on a compass (and those you don’t) … and the Expedition 4 fits the bill perfectly.”

Finally, a word on GPS. Some people think that a GPS handheld is a replacement for map and compass. This may be true in some places. In the Lake District it is not! Due to the terrain reception varies considerably. You don’t want to be caught out in a remote place with no map and shouting up at the clouds to send a signal. By all means have one as a second string (and I’ve shown a modestly priced version, the Garmin Dakota 10 Handheld GPS, here) but please,

Don’t venture out on the Lakeland fells without a suitable map

The Mountain Rescue people have quite enough to do without anyone else adding unnecessarily to their activites.

In contrast with yesterday’s more leisurely book about historic houses (Houses of the Lake District) today we have two for the more energetic among us. I admit that I’m not qualified to judge myself but recently I gave Mountain Biking in the Yorkshire Dales as a birthday gift to a younger family member. He was delighted with it so I thought I’d put up here the Lake District volume in the same series.

To quote from its description on Amazon, Mountain Biking in the Lake District has “24 exciting, original routes for all abilities, arranged by difficulty, from Kendal to Cleator Moor in the far north-west and Keswick to Winster in the Lyth Valley. … Routes are graded for distance, difficulty, ascent, time or how much of the route goes off road.”

The second book here is Lake District Mountain Biking – Essential Trails, the 2nd edition of this bestselling guidebook. It has 26 of the best mountain bike rides in the Lake District, between 12km and 60km in length, suitable for all levels of mountain bikers. There are rides around Walna Scar, High Street and Borrowdale, as well as lesser-known routes.

So then, if you’re young enough, or older and still fit enough, here are two great helps to planning your next visit to what the National Park people now call the “Adventure Capital” of England. Personally I’ll stick to the combination of car and two feet and will watch with admiration as you, or others like you, force your two wheels up the rocky slopes.

Christopher Holliday’s 2011 book, Houses of the Lake District, is surely a “must” for anyone either interested in the Lake District and its history or planning to incoporate historic house visits into a Lakeland holiday. Equally it will provide a splendid reminder of places visited in the past and an encouragement to return.

In just over two hundred pages the author looks at twenty one houses, dividing them into three groups – Historic Houses, Writers’ Houses and Victorian Houses – although I must say that the split seems a bit arbitrary as several of them could fit well into more than one category.

Geographically the houses are spread from Sizergh, Levens and Swarthmoor in the south to Muncaster in the west and Hutton-in-the-Forest to the northeast. Some are now hotels, but most are open as tourist attractions, and tastefully so. Two examples are:

“Houses of the Lake District” will make an excellent gift as well providing several hours of informative enjoyment to yourself.

Anyone who enjoys this book might also like: Gardens of the Lake District

Today’s book was published last year, but I don’t recall coming across it until yesterday when I bought a copy in the tea room at Brough Castle during one of my Eden Valley photographic expeditions.

This is a remarkably well produced local history. In fact, as a devourer of local history works for more than forty years I would go so far as to say that I’ve rarely come across a book that combines quantity and quality of research with readability to quite the extent of Margaret Gowling’s, The Story of Brough-under-Stainmore.

One might imagine that a place like Brough would have little to report. Nowadays it features on main road signs chiefly because it’s at a road junction – and the roads themselves, in the manner of modern dual carriageways, don’t any longer go through either Market Brough or Church Brough. People driving down the long incline from the Stainmore Pass on the A66 en route to their Lake District holiday, shortly after crossing the Durham/Cumbria county boundary might catch a glimpse of the ruined castle. A few might then decide to investigate but there is at first sight little to attract.

This is unfortunate, for as I’ve said elsewhere a visit to Brough Castle is well worth the time … and the ice cream’s good too! Similarly an armchair visit to Margaret Gowling’s history of the area is well worth the time and money (unlike the castle, it’s not free!).

Anyone at all interested in the history of Northern England will surely enjoy the hours spent exploring past centuries under Stainmore. From national politics, popular uprisings and border warfare to local land feuds, gypsy fairs and metal mining this book has it all. It’s so well written that on arriving home yesterday it pinned me down in my chair when there were many other things I ought to have been doing.

The Story of Brough-Under-Stainmore, by Margaret E. Gowling, 2011, Hayloft Publishing.

More on Lake District and Cumbrian history

Attitudes to history vary widely. For some it is full of fascinating stories whilst to others it seems irrelevant in a world that should be looking forward. By many, though, it is seen as essential to the understanding of our present lives and vital to our thinking about the way ahead – and that’s where I stand, believing that failing to learn the lessons of the past is to court disaster in the future. History is not “bunk”. We should understand where we have come from.

Books on Lake District history that have been featured here in recent months include:

• The English Lakes: A History by Ian Thompson
• The National Trust in the Lake District
• The Lowther Family, by Hugh Owen

Today I’m highlighting three more books on different aspects of Lake District history.

The first takes us way back into the past, where all we have to go on are physical remains of long-gone communities. Stone circles and burial mounds give rise both to well-informed theory as to their origins and also sometimes to wild speculation. In just short of 160 pages Tom Clare’s 2007 book, Prehistoric Monuments of the Lake District, gives descriptions of over a hundred prehistoric sites, and as a former county archaeologist of Cumbria the author is well-placed to provide authoritative information that doesn’t merely repeat what others have said before.

Philip Nixon’s, Exploring Cumbrian History, conducts us on a journey through the millennia in which prehistoric settlers, Romans, Saxons, Vikings and Normans have contributed to the history of the county leaving their marks in structures ranging from stone circles to massively fortified castles. He reminds us also of the county’s past industries – fishing, coal, steel, slate, and mining for graphite, gypsum, copper, iron and lead – long before most of the county became devoted to tourism.

Finally for today we focus down on a very specific aspect of history, that of our buildings. It is good to have a paperback reprint of R. W. Brunskill’s excellent book, Traditional Buildings of Cumbria which for a generation or more has delighted readers with his descriptions of farms, cottages, barns, chapels and more, and how they grew out of the landscape using materials ready to hand.

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 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

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: A History – Over 300 pages of authoritative content.
• 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, former owner of the Keswick Mining Museum (now sadly closed) 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).

The links above take you to Amazon.co.uk. If only expensively priced secondhand copies are available there (or if you don’t find any at all) try doing a search here for the title or author. Ian Tyler, for example, has written many others most of which are now out of print but may be available 2nd hand.

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 Available Volumes in the “England’s Landscape” Series

• 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

Today I’m looking briefly at books featuring two rivers in the Northwest. The two rivers are very different in scale, and one of them is a bit outside normal geography for a site dealing with Lake District books, but both have a fond following among people who love the North of England countryside.

The River Kent

The River Kent rises, as the name of the Westmorland valley suggests, in the fells high above Kentmere. By the time it reaches Kendal (Kent-dale) it has been joined by the Mint, the Sprint and the Gowan as well as many lesser streams, and then progresses through the lower lands to its estuary, merging with the joint estuary of the Leven and the Crake as they all flow into Morecambe Bay and the Irish Sea.

Catherine Rothwell’s book, which although published in 2005 I had not seen until recently, is based on years of walking this countryside with her husband and includes fascinating snippets of information about villages along the way. For me it has personal connections as my grandfather was born close to the Kent in Staveley, my great-grandfather farmed by the source of the Mint in Bannisdale, and his father for many years looked down from Swinklebank to the Sprint in Longsleddale, so this feels like ancestral countryside.

I suppose my slight disappointment is that there is not more about the rivers upstream of Kendal, but that’s a personal thing, and is more than compensated for by coverage of the river’s passage down past Sedgwick to the estuary at Arnside, along the way being joined by the Bela, Gilpin and Winster. The author also diverts from time to time to look at places like Kirkby Lonsdale in the Lune Valley and to Windermere and Furness.

The photographs (black and white) are excellent, many of them dating back to the early 20th and late-19th centuries. Anyone fond of south Westmorland, Lonsdale and Furness is sure to enjoy this book: Along the River Kent, by Catherine Rothwell, Sutton Publishing, 2005.

The River Ribble

For my second book today we go back almost another twenty years to The River Ribble, by Ron Freethy. I’ll refer to it only briefly although this is by far the bigger river. In contrast to the Kent’s twenty or so miles the Ribble flows down from the Yorkshire Dales region of Ingleborough, Whernside and Pen-y-ghent across Lancashire to the sea near Preston, covering almost four times the distance. On its journey it picks up the Hodder (to my mind possibly the most beautiful river in the North), the Calder, the Darwen and the Douglas. Freethy’s book explores them all.

Sadly it’s not always easy to find a presentable copy of Freethy’s The River Ribble these days, but you can click on the picture below to see what secondhand copies are available on AbeBooks.co.uk. Also shown are two more recent books on the Ribble; click on the graphics to buy these through Amazon.co.uk.

In recent weeks mountain rescue organisations have been appealing to walkers to go out better prepared into the hills. In particular they have called for people to stop over-relying on technological gadgets (phones or otherwise) with digital maps and GPS. There is nothing wrong with this type of technology. We provide an image link to a popular model here and it can be helpful for many purposes, but GPS does not yet replace traditional map and compass when walking in what can be very dangerous hill country.

Lake District mountains can change from benign to malign in minutes. Unless you want to become yet another mountain rescue statistic go out with the essential equipment. That includes a good map – and the ability to read it. The Ordnance Survey produce maps for many purposes. We need to ensure that we’re carrying the appropriate one for our activity.

Lake District maps come in many varieties. The map here, an Ordnance Survey “Travel Map” is not what you need if you’re going far from the beaten track. It is excellent for finding your way around the Lake District roads, but is only a little larger in scale than one inch to two miles. Keep this one handy in the car, but for serious walking it simply will not do.

Next up in scale is the “Landranger” series. Since going metric these replace the old one inch to a mile maps that many of us knew in our youth. For low-level walking they can be very good. Roads and tracks are marked clearly, and if you are mainly going to walk the lanes they will do fine. A set of four covers the Lake District (Nos. 89, 90, 96 & 97) while another (No. 91) extends eastward to Appleby and the Eden Valley.

We must go much larger in scale to help with walking over footpaths and bridleways, and to be able to navigate our way over open fells and mountainsides. This is where the “Explorer OL” series comes into its own. At two and a half inches to the mile (4cm to 1km for those who prefer metric) these are an essential companion for the fellwalker. Don’t go out without the one for the area in which you’re walking. Four maps (OL4, OL5, OL6 and OL7) cover the Lake District National park and more. OL19 covers the Howgills and the Eden Valley.

The sometimes uncomfortable fact is that the Lake District’s rivers, streams, tarns and meres rely on water coming down from the heavens. And it does come down, often in considerable quantities and unexpectedly. We must be prepared for wet weather walking. The map links above are all to paper editions. For serious outdoor use the Ordnance Survey also produce the OL series in laminated waterproof versions and these are strongly to be recommended.

Other Lake District Maps

There are other map publishers in addition to the Ordnance Survey but we’ve emphasised these here as the most comprehensive range for our purposes as walkers. It would, however, be remiss of us to omit mentioning the maps of Alfred Wainwright. In addition to the widely known “Wainwright Guides” there is a map series based on the small snippets of sketch mapping in his guides. At the same time it must be emphasised that these are for enjoyment only, and not to be used in the field. Link here to the “Wainwright maps“.

See also the Lake District Maps section in our store.

This morning I pulled from my shelves a copy of the 1953 edition of Country Life’s Picture Book of The Lake District. I was interested to find out how many of the photographs were taken by W. A. Poucher, having just spent some of my Christmas/New Year relaxation reading Roly Smith’s biography of him, A Camera In The Hills. Roughly a quarter of the collection of fifty nine images in the Country Life book were Poucher’s, indicating his stature among landscape photographers of the period.

W. A. Poucher’s black and white photography is nowadays sometimes looked down upon as basic and “unartistic”, and to my mind the greatest flaw in Smith’s biography is its rather patronising introduction. The fact is that in his day Poucher brought the grandeur of mountain regions to the eyes and minds of many who had never seen them “in the flesh”, and did so very effectively.

I found Poucher’s story interesting on several levels and especially enjoyed the fact that he was not a professional photographer. He was a chemist in the cosmetics industry. No, that’s an inadequate description. In the interwar years he was almost the chemist of the cosmetics world, writing the internationally recognised work in his field, an updated edition of which was published as recently as the 1990s. Photography, however, took up a very large slice of his life and book after book emerged from the presses, in a sense anticipating Wainwright guides as he marked his photographs with white lines to indicate recommended routes.

Poucher’s black and white era was his greatest but in later life he moved into colour, and some of the later books show how he made the transition. To many, though, the height of his work is encapsulated in the 110 images of the 1948 volume, Over Lakeland Fells, even though subsequent books with a new publisher gave better print quality.

Wainwright with a camera

After all that about W. A. Poucher, why does my title include Wainwright? Maybe it’s not so widely known that the man famous for decades as the author of “Wainwright guides to the Lakeland fells” and for his skill with paper and ink had another side to his talents, photography.

For many years Wainwright paid little attention to his photographs, using them simply as an aid to his memory when back at his desk and drawing or editing the maps and sketches for which his guidebooks are so famous. Fellwalking With A Camera was published just over three years before his death. Its dedication is to “Ken Shepherd, a photographer friend who applied his skill to my indifferent snapshots, gave them life and revealed in them a merit I had not suspected.” He tells more of the story in the book’s Introduction.

The pages are not numbered but I would estimate that there are well over two hundred, maybe two hundred and fifty, black and white images showing how Wainwright in addition to his sketching photographed both the familiar and the obscure places he visited as he tramped the Lake District fells.

Buy secondhand copies of books mentioned above at Amazon.co.uk

• W. A. Poucher, 1948, Over Lakeland Fells

• A. Wainwright, 1988, Fellwalking with a Camera
  Check the list carefully; it tends to mix paperback and hardback

See also our Wainwright catalogue section.

This beautifully produced book was published last year by Bloomsbury (ISBN 978-0-7475-9838-1) and is truly a “must” for lovers of the Lake District. From ancient geology through to Wainwright and the National Park the author follows the story of this most beautiful corner of England. The illustration is excellent. Indeed one might almost buy the book for the double-page photographic spreads.

If I were to criticise it would be to say that more prominence seems to be given to the three Ps (poetry, protest and protection) than to the genuine need of the local population to extract a living from their mountains – and yes, they were “theirs” long before they came to be seen as belonging to the rest of the nation. There is a tendency here to see the Lake District’s past through the eyes of outsiders and offcomers rather than to follow the experience of the native population battling to survive in a beautiful but frequently hostile terrain.

I wrote the last two paragraphs before re-reading the Introduction and highlighting (but not literally!) the author’s acknowledgement of the irony that the Lake District has become “in the eyes of many, a place to escape the ravages of industry, when in truth it had already been an industrial site for centuries.” Nevertheless I still sense the bias, and this tension will probably (must inevitably?) persist as the priorities of Cumbrian home versus visitors’ playground pull in different directions.

The English Lakes: A History is a superb book. Buy it and devour it. Then, to gain an even more comprehensive picture of the area and its history, read also The Lake Counties from the 1830s to the mid-twentieth century by Marshall and Walton.

Today I scarcely need to write anything to explain the subject of the books I’m listing. The National Trust is such a vital part of Lake District life, and has been for many decades, that it surely needs no introduction.

Bruce Thompson was for many years between the two world wars the agent for National Trust properties in the North of England. In 1945 he published these 223 pages of the history of the Trust’s involvement in the Lake District, with their agreement but also with freedom to express his own opinions.

Then in 1987 Elizabeth Battrick covered the next forty years. Her 185 pages describe each of the properties in eleven different areas of the Lake District, and in addition there are pages on other nearby properties elsewhere in Cumbria and also in Lancashire.

Click on the book images to find copies on Amazon.co.uk.

Recently I mentioned Michael Ffinch’s book, Portrait of Kendal and the Kent Valley. Here today is another from the same series published by Robert Hale in 1985.

From Greystoke to Temple Sowerby and from Lowther to Lazonby, not missing out the central town “Market Penrith”, the middle reaches of the Eden Valley and its tributories are described with great fondness and attention to detail. As with most of the books on our blog it is out of print but, unlike many of the titles I list, in this case it is usually quite easy to find a very nice copy secondhand. Check here on Amazon.co.uk.