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. Here was the story of someone 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. And as any reader of his Guides will expect there are many typically blunt comments about fell-walking malpractice accompanied by 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.