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Murder in Paradise – The Brutal Beauty of Dovedale

August 25, 2024 George Kitching 14 Comments

Named for a tragedy & rocked by a murder, serene Brothers’ Water hides its secrets below the majestic cliffs of Dove Crag. I walk up to the Priest Hole and tell Dovedale’s stories.

The northern finger of Brothers’ Water is a perfect mirror, reflecting the willowy trunks of silver birch and their billowing canopies of summer leaves. An impressionist study in myriad shades of green, backed by the silver elegance of the lake and framed by the lofty pyramids of Caudale Moor and Middle Dodd. The third sister in this sorority of steep chiseled hills, High Hartsop Dodd is just hidden by the shoreside trees of Low Wood. A trinity of roughly symmetrical pyramids is a familar sight to anyone ascending Kirkstone Pass from Patterdale, but the common view has Hartsop Dodd assuming the leftmost position. Here at the water’s edge, Hartsop Dodd is over my shoulder and the northwest ridge of Caudale Moor steps from its shadow to assume its position.

A finely rippled plate of polished pewter mottled yellow and green with reflections of sunlit grass and leaf, the cool expanse of Brothers’ Water is a tranquil idyll, but it owes its name to a tragedy. Originally known as Broad Water, it became Brothers’ Water to commemorate the victims of a drowning. Two siblings took a shortcut across its frozen surface, unaware that a thaw had set in, and the ice was no longer thick enough to support their weight.

Gray Crag Hartsop Dodd and Caudale Moor over Brothers Water from Hartsop Above How

According to Harriet Martineau (in her 1855 Guide to the English Lakes), it was a tragedy that played out twice, repeated later with another pair of brothers. An apparent dearth of evidence has led many to assume the story is little more than local folklore, but in his Scafell Hike blog, Raymond Greenhow makes a convincing case that the second set of brothers were John and George Atkinson, who fell through the ice in the winter of 1785/1786. Their father was watching and desperately tried to warn them off, but tragically, they failed to heed his frantic gesticulations. Raymond cites an article dating from the time of their funeral, which suggests the lake was already known locally as Brothers’ Water because a similar drowning had occurred centuries before.

Beyond the lake, the track leads to the oldest building in Patterdale, the sixteenth century farmhouse of Hartsop Hall. From this angle, it looks smaller than it is. Its southwestern wing is obscured by its whitewashed front, replete with narrow windows topped with rounded arches, like those in Norman churches. Two stone-carved rams’ heads above the door give the impression of gargoyles and add to the ecclesiastical air.

In 1835, Hartsop Hall was home to twenty-seven-year-old Thomas Grisedale. This track would have been his walk home after visiting the White Lion pub in Patterdale. On the fateful night of Sunday 8^th March, however, he never made it back. His gravestone in Patterdale churchyard says he was “brutally murdered by an unprovoked assassin”.

In the Penrith Observer on Tuesday 22^nd July 1952, a correspondent relates the story as told to him by the late Mr Nixon Westmorland.

“On March 8, 1835, two Alston men, Joseph Bainbridge and John Greenwell, went to the White Lion Inn, where they had a quarrel with some of the residents. They left the inn and, on the way back to the mine, they cut themselves thick sticks from the hedge to defend themselves against attack from assailants.

While they were doing this they heard footsteps, and Greenwell, thinking it was one of their opponents, rushed forward and, in the dark, stabbed the man who was coming towards them. He turned out to be Thomas Grisdale, who was returning to his home—Hartsop Hall, where he lived with his parents…

Greenwell and Bainbridge were tried at Westmorland Assizes at Appleby. The latter was acquitted, and Greenwell, who was sentenced to death, was later reprieved and transported.

Mr Westmorland’s mother went from Penrith to Appleby to take Greenwell a clean shirt, because the one he was wearing was bespattered with the victim’s blood, and she thought what a serious thing it was for a man to be tried in a blood-stained shirt.”

A beautifully written and diligently researched account of the story on the Grisedale Family History blog quotes an almost identical account penned in 1903 by Rev. W P Morris, Rector of Patterdale, but the blog then goes on to question whether this was what really happened, citing an eye-witness testimony from the court reports of the day. The witness, George Greenhill (Greenhow in some newspaper reports) was with Thomas Grisedale in the White Lion and testified to seeing Greenwell get into a fight with a man named Rothey. Grisedale stepped in to separate the pair. Bainbridge and Greenwell continued to utter threats and boasted they would fight any two men in the dale. The witness goes on:

“The deceased said very good-naturedly, that if it was daylight he would take both of them, and he would then in the house, if anybody would see fair play. After this Bainbridge and Greenwell became so troublesome, that the landlord put them out. In the course of a little time the latter returned, and was again thrust out, but in these matters the deceased did not interfere. In the mean time the witness and two lads went out of the house with the deceased. Soon after, they saw Bainbridge call Greenwell to the end of the house, and they procured each a stick, about a yard long, and a little thicker than a walking stick. They came running towards these three, who ran out of their way for some distance, when the deceased, having not retreated awhile, said, ‘I have not melt (meddled) with them, why should I run away?’ and stopped. The witness ran on about twenty yards further, and then stopped also. On turning his head, he saw the prisoner Greenwell run up to the deceased, and make a push at his belly, and then at his breast near the neck. The deceased seized the prisoner by the collar and pushed him away, and then put one hand to his belly, and the other to his breast, saying, ‘Oh Lord, I’m killed, he has stabbed me’”.

This statement was corroborated by two other eyewitnesses, John Chapman and Thomas Chapman. After the judge had advised the jury that the distinction between murder and manslaughter rested on provocation, they took just ten minutes to decide on a verdict of wilful murder.

The judge sentenced Greenwell to hang at Appleby on Mon 16th March. His reprieve must have come late indeed as the following Saturday both the Yorkshire Gazette and the Bolton Chronicle reported that his execution had taken place. However, eighteen days later, the Cumberland Pacquet announced that Greenwell’s sentence had been commuted to deportation to New South Wales. The judge had been convinced Grisedale’s death was manslaughter and not murder.

His decision may have been influenced in part by the cause of death. The doctor who attended Grisedale, reported that the victim’s bowels were protruding through the wound, and had been “strangulated” by a manual attempt to compress them. Presumably, a well-wisher or even Grisedale himself had attempted to push them back in. The doctor concluded that the resulting injury as much as the original wound may have been the cause of death.

Another factor may have been the reliability of the witnesses. The court report quoted in the Grisedale Family blog is taken from the Annual Register of the Year 1835, published in 1836, but an account of the proceedings in the Kendal Mercury from the week of the trial, attributes much of the detail to John Chapman’s testimony. This matters perhaps only because eleven days later the Chapman brothers were themselves brought before a magistrate accused of raping a girl on the night of Grisedale’s murder, before visiting the White Lion Inn. The magistrate threw out the capital case for insufficient evidence but fined the Chapmans and held them both to bail over their future good behaviour. Indeed, the report of this incident in the Westmorland Gazette on 28^th March 1835 considers it “somewhat extraordinary that the affair did not transpire until after [Greenwell’s trial at] the Assizes at Appleby”.

A third factor might have been the question of provocation. The Kendal Mercury on 21^st March 1835 reported:

“We are given to understand that the recent melancholy transaction in the village of Patterdale had its origin in one of those Lowther Treats which have been given throughout this county. The treat for that district was held on Thursday the 5th inst. on which occasion some friends of the opposite party partook of refreshments at another house. In the evening the opposing parties came in contact, and a fight or two took place. We are not aware that the deceased had any share in those broils, but Greenwell had; and the ill feeling engendered that night continued to exist until the Sunday when Grisedale was killed, most probably having been kept alive in the interval by continued drinking and idleness.”

The Lowther Treats were a series of feasts given throughout the county by Lord and Col. Lowther to shore up political support. They consisted of lavish spreads of roast beef and plum pudding and (presumably copious) quantities of home brewed ale. The Mercury damned such political turpitude as deplorable and insisted those responsible should shoulder moral responsibility for the consequences of the debauchery they promoted, urging all right-thinking people to withdraw their support for the Lowthers.

But a Lowther Treat was not the only reason for widespread drunkenness and local tensions. The weekend in question coincided with a payday for the workers of Greenside Mine. At the time, the miners collected their wages, twice a year, from the Angel Inn in Penrith. Many made the journey on foot. Payday weekends often resembled fairs where all the stresses that had built over six months of hard labour and atrocious on-site living conditions were given full vent. You can imagine the scene: scores of rowdy miners eager to let off steam, with half-a year’s wages in their pockets; Patterdale hostelries keen to take their money; but their local clientele, with far less brass to hand, perhaps a little less kindly disposed towards them. Grisedale’s brutal demise put a stop to the bi-annual pay days in Penrith. After that, wages were paid at the mine.

Beyond the hall, the terrain grows wilder. The path splits and I take the right-hand fork that climbs over the foot of Hartsop Above How. A verdant trod, lined with long-grass and bracken, stippled pink with foxgloves, and overhung with the leaves of ash and hawthorn. The gentle hiss of Dovedale Beck drifts up from the valley bottom. I hear that chatter of chaffinches and the sweet song of a blackbird. If you were to embody tranquility in a place, it would be right here right now. The rowdy violence that led to Grisedale’s untimely demise now belongs to another world—one long departed from Patterdale and especially Dovedale.

Dovedale path over the foot of Hartsop Above How

In 1946, the country received another kind of “Lowther Treat”. At the time, Brothers’ Water, High Hartsop Hall and some of the surrounding fells belonged to the Lowther Estate. Faced with paying death duties for the late Lord Lonsdale, the Estate put the land up for sale. The government took the opportunity to procure it for the nation, placing it under the care of the National Trust.

There is drama here still, but it is of a natural and inspiring kind. Across the beck, the long ridge of Stangs protrudes, green and gnarly like some gargantuan antediluvian crocodile, while above it, the sun spotlights the dale’s crowning glory—the breathtaking precipice of Dove Crag. Eventually, the path crosses the beck and leads up into the feral wilderness of Huntsett Cove, the terrain growing rockier and more mountainous. Here trees give way to large boulders and stone outcrops rise from the foliage like preludes to the sheer wall of cliff that rises ahead. Carved by ice and the passage of imponderable time, Dove Crag is a skyward ascension of pillars and ribbed vaults: temple-like—humbling and uplifting.

The path becomes a rocky ladder climbing steeply beside formidable crags into Houndshope Cove. Just before a tiny tarn, a huge boulder marks the junction with a much fainter path, not much more than a sheep trod, that seems to disappear into the precipitous rocks.

Two of the historic features which Hartsop Hall boasts are: a garderobe, a castle-style privy that suggests the house might once have been fortified; and a priest hole, which suggests that the Elizabethan owners were catholics, prepared to hide priests from the zealous protestant authorities hell-bent on their persecution. The Priest Hole is also the name given to a cave in the cliffs of Dove Crag. It is a natural feature, and its denominational associations are purely metaphorical, although undoubtedly would have made an excellent hiding place for clergymen of the Old Religion.

The cave is where this side path leads, climbing up among the boulders and traversing the steepening slope. After a short while, the way ahead looks blocked by a wall of crag. A narrow scree gully ascends to where a good path traverses above the wall, but the ascent looks steep and loose. Fortunately, straight ahead, there is a breach in the wall. A sketchy semblance of a path heads up to a rock step, which proves easy to scale. It leads to flatter grassier ground and climbs gently to the cave’s entrance.

The Priest Hole is no longer a well-kept secret. It is now a popular wild-camping spot and graces many a bucket list. Sadly, not all its visitors abide by the code and litter can be a problem. It looks magnificent from the outside, a small wall, narrowing the entrance and providing shelter for inhabitants. I approach with a little apprehension, hoping the romantic vision won’t be sullied by detritus. It contains a solitary sleeping bag and a mat, but the neatness of their arrangement suggests they haven’t been abandoned. It’s early yet. Perhaps the owner is about their morning ablutions, or perhaps a climber has bivouacked here overnight and is already scaling the cliff. I hope I’m right. I leave it undisturbed and perch outside to sip coffee and drink in the astounding aspect (half expecting the occupant to reappear at any moment).

The view sweeps down over Dovedale to the southern shore of Brothers’ Water with the steep straight edge of Hartsop Dodd rising beyond. To the northwest, I gaze over the green spine of Hartsop Above How to the slate-grey eminence of Place Fell. In between and hidden from view lie the village of Patterdale and the White Lion Inn. Nestled between Sheffield Pike, Greenside, and Raise, are the old mine workings. Greenside mine closed in 1962, but its heyday was long behind it. When the miners left the valley, its hostelries greeted a new breed of visitor, who came to explore these hills not for their mineral wealth, but for the physical and spiritual rewards exposure to such majestic natural wonders can bring. Many fellwalkers were, and still are, inspired by a set of guidebooks, produced as a love-letter to these slopes and summits—The Pictorial Guides to the Lake District. Alfred Wainwright began work on the first of these, The Eastern Fells in the autumn of 1952, and the very first chapter he wrote was the one on Dove Crag.

Sources / Further Reading

The Grisedale Family blog gives a beautifully written and diligently researched account of the Grisedale murder.

https://grisdalefamily.wordpress.com/tag/patterdale

Raymond Greenhow provides fascinating account of the truth behind the story of how Brothers’ Water got its name.

https://scafellhike.blogspot.com/2015/11/brothers-water-monument-in-landscape.html?m=1

Wainwright Archivist, Chris Butterfield tells the story of Wainwight’s first Pictorial Guide, The Eastern Fells.

The Eastern Fells

Richard Jennings provides a great step-by-step guide to this magnificent route to the top of Dove Crag, and talks about some of the industrial features that can still be spied among the rocks and undergrowth. Richard’s route carries on over Little Hart Crag and High Hartsop Dodd. I went the other way over Hart Crag and Hartsop Above How. Both provide fine Dovedale circulars.

Route 24 – Dove Crag, Little Hart Crag and High Hartsop Dodd

Fell Walk, General, Ghost Story, History, Lake District, Legend, Mountains

Yard of Tin – the Poet & the Romany Queen

June 23, 2024 George Kitching 17 Comments

From Stone Arthur to Seat Sandal

The romance of the Mail Coach, a Lake Poet’s brush with death, a lost Celtic crown, and a Romany Queen’s prescient prediction. I walk from Stone Arthur to Seat Sandal with a head full of stories from one of Lakeland’s finest forgotten writers, W. T. Palmer.

The Yard of Tin

As the first solitary sunbeam breaks through the white pillows of cloud that stipple the sky like salmon scales, it gilds the shoulder of Helm Crag, turning its dead bracken golden. Astride the grey crags that crown the summit, those rocky outcrops, named the Lion and the Lamb, keep their eternal vigil over Grasmere, as the village yawns sleepily awake.

In his 1945 book, Wanderings in Lakeland, W T Palmer recalls Old Joe, a coachman on the Keswick run, growing frustrated at his colourful tales losing something their lustre under a German passenger’s petulant cross-examination. When she declared, “I never see the Lamb but only the Lion it is”, he quipped back, “M’um, that there’s a British lion, you see; and the lamb is now inside, eaten while you were coming up the pass.”

W T Palmer was a fine writer, and Wanderings… is a fascinating retrospective on a world he had seen change almost beyond recognition. By 1945, motor cars had replaced horse-drawn carriages; the romance they had embodied had been sacrificed for mechanical efficiency, and the rambling wildernesses of the old verges had been cut back for the sake of wider and straighter roads. The thrilling blast of the post-horn, known as the yard of tin, no longer sounded between Ambleside and Keswick, but Palmer remembered it. In his youth, he had witnessed the “coachies” in their striking red coats. He had befriended them and learned their stories.

Wordsworth’s Brush With Death

Elsewhere in Lakeland, the Royal Mail had dispensed with horse-drawn coaches years earlier, favouring the steam drawn variety wherever the new-fangled railways reached. However, the expansion of the tracks beyond Ambleside had been halted in part due to the objections of Grasmere’s most famous resident, William Wordworth. Ironically, a mail coach on this route was very nearly the death of the Lake Poet.

On Saturday 28^th November 1840, The Monmouthshire Merlin carried the following account:

“The worthy and highly-esteemed bard and his respected son were riding in a one-horse gig, and had just reached Ruffa-bridge, about three miles from Keswick, on the Ambleside-road, when they observed the mail coach, coming upon them at a rattling pace. Owing to the sharp turn in the road at the top of the ascent which leads down to the bridge, the mail could not be seen until within seventy or eighty yards of that dangerous place, but in the few moments’ notice they had of its approach, the Rev. gentleman succeeded in drawing his horse close up to the side of the road, which is only narrow, but nevertheless wide enough for the coach to have passed in safety under ordinary circumstances. It unfortunately happened, however, that the off-side wheeler, which was in the habit of holding the bridal bit in his teeth, and resisting the utmost exertions of the driver, was at the moment of meeting indulging in this dangerous practice, and refused to obey the rein. Owing to this circumstance the coach came with great violence against the gig, which it sent against the adjoining wall with such force that both the horse and gig and the two riders were thrown, with part of the wall into the adjoining plantation! Fortunately the traces and shafts of the gig both broke near the body of the vehicle, which set the animal at liberty, and it was no sooner on its feet than it leaped over the wall, and, having regained the road, set off at a frightful pace, with the gig shafts attached to the harness. The escape of Mr. Wordsworth and his son was truly providential.”

Palmer recounts the story from the coachmen’s perspective:

“The vehicle and pony were knocked through the wall, and one of the gentlemen picked himself up, and said, in a solemn way, ‘I shall have this matter thoroughly investigated.’ David Johnson, the driver of the mail, pulled up sharp, with face pale as death-‘Good God! It’s Master Wadsworth.’

“Wordsworth was not much hurt; as David said when recounting the episode, ‘No, sir; thank Heaven for that! But I never heard a body’s tongue sweer gladlier though, for I thowt we’d kilt the poit’.”

Arthur’s Chair

The Lion and the Lamb are not the only outcrops keeping watch over Grasmere. To the northeast, over trees still naked of leaves, rise clay-red slopes, steep and smooth to a slate grey eminence of pointed rock, an organic fortress standing proud and defiant like the stronghold of mythical Celtic king. But its apparent independence is a sham. As Wainwright suggests:

“Without its prominent tor of steep rock, Stone Arthur would probably never have been given a name for it is merely the abrupt end of a spur of Great Rigg although it has the appearance of a separate fell when seen from Grasmere. The outcrop occurs where the gradual decline of the spur becomes pronounced and here are the short walls of rock, like a ruined castle, that give Stone Arthur its one touch of distinction.”

Like many, I have visited Stone Arthur on a short detour from the course of the Fairfield Horseshoe, but to do so is to deny it that touch of distinction. From above, it is just one of several rocky outcrops on the descent from Great Rigg, distinguished only as the superior viewpoint. To understand why it has earned its name, you must view it from Grasmere and ascend from here. Technically, the name Stone Arthur belongs to the ridge. The outcrop resembling a ruined castle is Arthur’s Chair, a flight of romantic fancy, imagining a link with the One and Future King. It is a title it shares with Blencathra, which some have claimed translates as Arthur’s Seat.

The ascent is no Sharp Edge or Hall’s Fell Ridge, but it is steep enough to command a little respect. A footpath branches off the road that runs behind the Swan Hotel, and soon comes to a junction of ways. Straight ahead climbs to Alcock Tarn, left climbs to Stone Arthur. Above a small copse, an outcrop of rock contrives to make you think you’ve made the ascent in record time, but as the path veers east, away from it, common sense prevails, and you realise Stone Arthur is another 500ft above. Soon the path turns north to handrail Greenhead Gill, and Wainwright’s ruined castle comes into view.

To the west, a panorama of iconic Lakeland peaks pierces the skyline: Wetherlam and Wet Side Edge, Pike O’ Blisco, Crinkle Crags, Bowfell and Harrison Stickle. Good stone pitching eases the steepest section, and soon I am crossing green spring grass to Arthur’s Chair.

The top is a panoramic viewpoint. Below rocks streaked yellow with maritime sunburst lichen, the shadowed waters of Grasmere gleam like a teardrop of polished Onyx. Beyond, distant Coniston Water is a silver glimmer among charcoal hills, and to the left, nestled in the greening slopes of Heron Pike, Alcock Tarn is a tiny white shimmer.

Grasmere and the Coniston Fells from Arthur's Chair — Grasmere and the Coniston Fells from Arthur’s Chair

Looking north-east, any pretence at independence is punctured, as the spur continues, more gently now, to the summit of Great Rigg. If Stone Arthur plays second fiddle to Great Rigg, Great Rigg itself is overshadowed by its loftier neighbour, Fairfield. Too often, it is seen as a stepping stone to that greater summit, a mere waypoint on the horseshoe to which Fairfield gives its name. Yet Great Rigg too is a superlative viewpoint. Southward over the downward line of the horseshoe’s western ridge and the lower summits of Heron Pike and Nab Scar, Windermere and Coniston Water stretch out in divergent directions toward a thin band of silver on the horizon, barely distinguishable from the white sky, the merest hint of the Irish Sea. Above, the quilted blanket of white cloud is beginning to break, expanses of deep blue appearing at its receding edge, its fringe turned a brilliant ethereal white as the strengthening sun endeavours to break through.

Windermere, Coniston Water and Grasmere from Great Rigg

Coniston Water, Grasmere and the Coniston Fells from Great Rigg

The Lost Crown

I fall in step with a lad walking the Horseshoe, and we chat as far as Fairfield, where he heads towards Hart Crag. I look north at St Sunday Crag and recall the airy ridge that links it over the slender spike of Cofa Pike.

But no ridge runs out to Seat Sandal. Its ascent requires a steep and loose descent down an eroded path to Grisedale Tarn. It is worth every careful step. The thrill as the tarn hones into view is hard to suppress for this is one of Lakeland’s most mysterious and atmospheric spots. Grisedale Tarn inspired my first ever walking tale. The guidebook I was carrying hinted at the legend of King Dunmail’s lost crown, but frustratingly neglected to tell the full story. The tarn had an Arthurian air—I could imagine the Lady of the Lake holding forth Excalibur from its dark and inscrutable waters—so I was keen to know its story. A little research yielded the myth, and it inspired me to retell it in my first ever blog, The Stuff of Legend. I have retold it again since, but it would seem as remiss as that original guidebook to omit it here. So, this time, I’ll let W T Palmer recount it.

Seat Sandal and Grisedale Tarn from Fairfield

“That first ladder of boulders which starts above the great hawthorn on Dunmail Raise is famous. Up here, says the legend, rushed the bearers of King Dunmail’s golden crown on that disastrous day nine centuries ago when the monarch of old Cumberland was killed by the invading Saxons.

‘I will lead again,’ he breathed, as the bright circlet was lifted from his brows. The warriors climbed the gorge and dropped the crown into Grisedale tarn across the mountain, then melted into the boiling mist, where they await his summons. And once a year, the story goes, they become impatient and return to the earth.

“They arm themselves, lift the crown from the deep water, and bear it down to the mighty tumulus under which the King’s body is buried. Thrice does the leader strike the stones with his spear, but each time has come the answer-‘Not yet, not yet; wait a while, my warriors.’ And so the phantom army disappears into the whirling mist and darkness once again.”

A biting breeze swept the top of Fairfield but Grisedale Tarn shelters in the lee of a trinity of mountains: Fairfield, Seat Sandal, and Dollywagon Pike. As I reach its shore, I feel summer-like warmth instead of wintery bluster. The sunshine has burned off any veils of mist and Dunmail’s spectral soldiers must have melted away with it, but the waters themselves are midnight blue and hold fast to their air of mystery.

Seat Sandal and the Romany’s Reading

The pull to the top of Seat Sandal is a stiff climb following a broken wall. When I reach the top, the sun has freed itself of cloud, and the cold fingers of receding winter have given way to sun-kissed touch of spring. I sit behind a boulder to eat lunch, gazing out over Grasmere to the south and the tip of Ullswater to the north. A fine grassy ridge leads down to the west. I will descend back towards Grasmere with Tongue Gill to my left, but a right fork leads to Dunmail Raise, where the legend insists that Dunmail’s body lies under the large cairn on the grassy island that separates the two carriageways of the A591.

Grasmere and-Coniston Water from Seat Sandal

In the days of the coaches, Romany children from a nearby camp would frequent the Raise to cadge money from well-heeled passengers. W T Palmer once rescued a young child who had fallen into the path of an on-coming coach. He was rewarded with a grumpy diatribe from the driver as to what a nuisance these bairns were, and some praise for his bravery from a German lady, but his act did not go unnoticed by the gypsy folk.

“There had been a volley of shouts to and from the gipsy camp, and now I was the centre of some chattering Romany men, women and children. It was soon borne in on me that I was accredited with a deed of no small importance. Different men, one a big, burly chap fit to eat me, took my elbows, and with gentle force I was conducted to the central tent of the group. I don’t remember hearing much English nor, when I made out the presence of an ancient crone, smoking a short black pipe in the back of this tent, was I greatly impressed. But the others talked hurriedly and apparently to the point in Romany, their remarks cut into by her whip-like queries, and then the old lady deigned to address me. My bodyguard side-stepped, and I was allowed the full force of her shrill but apparently benevolent remarks.

“The situation was not without its humour. The old lady, seeing that I didn’t understand a single word, screamed something loudly, and the chatter behind me instantly ceased. A gorgeously dressed lady of a younger generation (by the way, she was smoking a small black cheroot) came to the front and began to act as interpreter.”

The younger lady explained that the child Palmer had saved was the seventh child of a seventh child, which made them a particularly important member of the family, and the family wanted to reward Palmer for his bravery. When he refused to accept the pile of yellow coins they poured on to a red handkerchief, the matriarch offered to read his fortune instead.

The old lady, who he was given to understand was a Romany Queen, descended from someone biblical (Lot’s wife, or Eve, or possibly the Queen of Sheba), made the following prediction:

“You may hope to live long, for the days of ill-health are behind. You may hope to rise in the world, but it will be slowly, for you have too much pride and will not bend where you should. You never will be lucky in money matters, picking up money which you have not sown, but you will never be without money or dis-hon-our-ab-ly in debt. Whatever you want, you will have to work for and work hard for, but you will get it in good time. Hills and rocks and mountains, mountains and rocks and torrent-sides will be your pleasure and your fortune, but not for gold, not for gold.”

Fairfield with St Sunday Crag behind and Grisedale Tarn to the left from Seat Sandal

Fifty years on, Palmer would reflect on how remarkable accurate the Romany Queen’s reading of his character and fortune had turned out to be. It seems pretty close to my own too, but as I descend Seat Sandal in glorious spring sunshine after several hours of time-out from the tumult of “civilisation”, I’m infused with a feeling of supreme contentment, and I ask myself, “who needs gold, when you have hills and mountains, and rocks and torrent-sides?”

St Sunday Crag Place Fell and Ullswater from Seat Sandal

Fell Walk, General, History, Lake District, Natural History, Nature

North of the Fateful Sands

April 7, 2024 George Kitching 27 Comments

A Cartmel Peninsula Round & The Perilous Past of Morecambe Bay

The Cartmel Peninsula with its ring of outlying Wainwrights boasts a landscape rich in contrast, but ever close are the perilous sands of Morecambe Bay. In the mid 19th century, they claimed 23 lives in just 11 years . I mark the summer solstice with a 24 mile round and recount the victims’ stories.

In 2020, lockdown did me an immense favour. It woke me up to where I live. With the mountains out of bounds, I grew to appreciate what was right on my doorstep, and when restrictions were sufficiently slackened, I began to explore the Cartmel Peninsula with a new-found fervour. I found a landscape rich in contrast: open fell, woodland, grazing pasture, salt marsh, limestone pavements, and of course, the expansive watery desert of Morecambe Bay. Even after Mountain Rescue had given the green light, I was slow to return to the high fells—too eager to keep exploring my home turf. The Cartmel Valley, with its ring of outlying Wainwrights, quickly laid claim to my heart. I developed favourite routes and favourite haunts: Dixon Heights, Hampsfell, Humphrey Head, How Barrow, Bigland Tarn, Bigland Barrow, and slowly I kindled a desire to join them all up—a grand 24-mile Cartmel Valley round. What better time to embark on such a long local ramble but the Summer Solstice—the longest day of the year.

I book the day off work and spend the preceding week cursing the weather forecast for predicting thunderstorms. At the eleventh hour, it relents and announces an outlook of dry, settled weather with sunny spells and gentle summer breezes. Ideal.

I leave the house at 6am and follow the road to Low Newton. Opposite Yew Tree Barn Architectural Antiques, a track skirts a farm and follows a right-of-way into a wood. Just past a gate, the path divides, and I take the left fork that climbs through bracken, under hawthorn and crab apple, to open fell. Newton Fell forms a long low spine, which runs from Lindale all the way to Gummer’s How above Windermere. In his book, The Outlying Fells of Lakeland, Wainwright splits it into two, Newton Fell North, Saskills—its true summit—and Newton Fell South, Dixon Heights—its southern tip. He gives short shrift to the part in between. In his day, it was private ground with no rights of way, but this section, Bishop’s Tithe Allotment is now access land, and Wainwright was remiss to dismiss its rugged charm.

Jagged outcrops of lichen-clad rock rise from a green sea of bracken, stippled purple with peals of foxglove bells. From the top, I look northwest to the grey silhouettes of the Coniston Fells, and north to Red Screes, Caudale Moor and the Kentmere Fells. Closer to hand, to the northeast, Whitbarrow Scar rises across the Winster valley, and to the southwest lies Hampsfell. They form part of a ring of low limestone hills into which Newton Fell intrudes, an older imposter, formed of Silurian mudstone. This prominence of sedimentary rock, risen over millennia from the seabed, now overlooks the tidal waters of Morecambe Bay.

The Ruined Tower on Dixon Heights from Bishop’s Tithe Allotment

The ground drops away abruptly to the col with Dixon Heights. In the hollow nestles Tom Tarn, a watering hole for the goats and fell ponies which graze the grassy slopes beyond. The drystone wall that divides the two enclosures runs right through the middle of the water. Beyond, a grassy ramp affords a passage to the top of Dixon Heights, up slopes stoutly defended on either side by craggy outcrops and dense thickets of hawthorn. The summit is crowned by the ruin of an old tower, known to locals of certain age as The Colour Pole. Old pictures show a tall turret with a flag flying from the top. Its purpose has been lost in the mists of time. Some speculate it was an observatory, though whether for the stars or smugglers in the bay remains open to debate.

Ruined tower known as the Colour Pole on Dixon Heights

I return on the lower path through the wood, fragrant with dog rose and oxeye daisy, follow the road under the dual carriageway and do battle with bramble and nettle down an overgrown bridleway, lined with meadowsweet, then I cross farmland to the foot of Hampsfield Allotment, the lightly wooded slope that leads to the top of Hampsfell. Hampsfell’s crowning glories are its magnificent limestone pavements and its panoramic views of the Lakeland fells, the high Dales fells, and of course the vast expanse of Morecambe Bay. When the tide is out, the silver sands stretch as far as the eye can see in a hypnotic dance of spiralling patterns and glistening reflections.

Dog rose in the wood at the foot of Newton Fell

Meadow Sweet on the bridleway to Hampsfell

On the summit stands the Hospice, a squat stone tower, built by Thomas Remington, the vicar of Cartmel in 1834 as a gesture of thanks for the beauty he beheld here daily. Stone steps lead up to the roof and a viewfinder with a key listing the names of all the visible fells. Hampsfell is another Wainwright outlier. Indeed, Wainwright suggests its magnificent views of the mountains make it an ideal destination for the ageing hill walker whose legs can no longer negotiate the higher summits. A place to come and relive past glories. To the south lies a third Wainwright outlier, Humphrey Head, the jutting promontory that forms the southerly tip of the Cartmel Peninsula.

The most direct route is via Allithwaite and a section of the Cumbria Coastal Way, but I shall return along that section before striking westward, so I opt instead to descend beside Eggerslack Wood into Grange-over-Sands, not only because, in Higginsons, the town boasts the finest pie shop known to humanity, but in a walk of contrasts, I want to experience the period charm of its Victorian promenade. In 1857, the coming of the railway saw Grange prosper as popular seaside resort. However, its name dates back to twelfth century and the founding of the priory in neighbouring Cartmel. The monks crushed and burned limestone from the fell for use as a fertiliser and built a grain store for their harvests at Grange. Its name derives from the French for granary.

In Victorian times, the River Kent flowed past the the mile-long Prom, providing a stately contrast to the ornamental gardens that line the civic side, but over the years, it has changed its course, leaving the Promenade bordered by a sprawling expanse of salt marsh, and turning it into the frontline between ordered Edwardian elegance and the encroaching wild. Where the Prom ends, a footpath leads below gardens to Kent’s Bank. En route, formal planting gives way to bindweed and thistle, and a railing and the railway become the dividing line between civilisation and coastal wilderness.

Ornamental Gardens Grange-over-Sands Promenade

Kent’s Bank Railway Station is the start for Wainwright’s favoured approach to Humphrey Head. He talks of evading the eye of the station master to shin the wall. These days, no such shenanigans are necessary, a gate leads out on to the marsh and wilder terrain. At Kirkhead End, I leave the concrete parapet at the foot of the railway embankment, and step out on to the mudflats, jumping streams and keeping an eye out for the abundant bird life. On this side, Humphrey Head presents wooded gentle slopes, but on the other, an impressive limestone cliff drops abruptly to the beach, the jutting rocks striped yellow with maritime sunburst lichen and blooming with little crops of foliage and wildflowers.

By the outdoor centre, I take a path that leads up over the gentle grassland above the escarpment to the trig point at the summit. Then I descend to the pointy fingers of low rock that run down to the beach. Humphrey Head is famous for being the spot where the last wolf in England was slain (or so local legend maintains). It has also been prized for centuries for its natural spring waters that have long been held to have healing powers and have attracted everyone from Roman legionaries to lead miners from the Northeast. The sun warms the rocks as I sit and gaze across the spawling sands of the Bay.

Humphrey Head, north of the fateful sands of Morecambe Bay

Until 1974, when they were absorbed into the newly created county of Cumbria, the Cartmel and Barrow Peninsulas were an enclave of Lancashire, known as Lancashire North of the Sands. A county cleft by the tide was reconciled whenever it ebbed, but the exposed sands provided an uncertain passage, imperilled by quicksands and the speed of the incoming tide. Nevertheless, for centuries the Sands were the principal thoroughfare, and a guide was appointed initially by the monks of Cartmel Priory, and later by the Duchy of Lancaster to try and ensure safe crossings.

In 1857, the guide was James Carter. He was on duty from sunrise to sunset and in the habit of remaining later should he be asked. Not that George Ashburner had any intention of troubling Carter on the evening of Friday 30^th May. Why should he? He knew the Sands as well as the Guide and was in the habit of crossing at least three times a week. He even knew of his own ford across the channel. Ashburner was a badger or cadger in local parlance, a cart driver and seller of wares, in Ashburner’s case, these were most likely fish, being as he was in the employ of Mr Benson of Flookburgh, a cart owner and fisherman. Ashburner appeared to be in good spirits when he stopped for a drink in Wilcock’s Kents’ Bank Hotel. The manager, Thomas Ball would later tell the Coroner that he had observed Ashburner standing with his back to the fireplace, singing a song. He also recalled serving a glass of porter to one of Ashburner’s companion’s, John Bell. The tap room was packed, it being the start of the Whitsun weekend, which was traditionally a time for fairs and hirings in Lancashire towns. Ashburner had arrived from Flookburgh with a party of 12 or 13 young men, many of them labourers in the employ of farms on the Holker estates, like Old Park or Winder Hall. They had engaged Ashburner to drive them to Lancaster to spend Whitsuntide with family or look for new work. The party might have been one more. Mr Cowperthwaite, an iron-founder from Lancaster expressed a wish to join them, but Ball dissuaded him—not that Ball envisioned any danger, but he thought the company unfitting for a gentleman of Cowperthwaite’s years. When asked whether Ashburner was intoxicated, Ball could not say, but another witness, John Pedder described him as not drunk but “sharp fresh”.

Ashburner’s cart left at about 10pm by railway time. This should have given them adequate time to cross to Hest Bank before the tide swept in, but Ashburner made a fatal misjudgement. He appears to have attempted a short cut, which took the cart about three-quarters of a mile below the normal coach route, splashing through the shallows in the direct line of Priest Skear, a notorious blackspot on the Sands, about a mile and half from the coast at Hest Bank. Here a projecting rock causes an eddy in the water to form a deep hole.

When hats, and boxes and other belongings washed ashore at Morecambe on the Saturday, John Matthias Maudsley, landlord of the Morecambe Hotel, went out in a boat with James Carter and Robert Cockin. At Priest Skear, they found the overturned cart, the drowned horse, and the bodies of seven of the young men lying in close proximity. An eighth lay 400 or 500 yards away. Others were later discovered further up the coast. In the absence of more specific evidence, the Coroner returned a verdict of “Found drowned”.

Some papers suggested Asburner set off too late, but this appears to have been a confusion of railway time with local farmhouse time. Until the mid-1800’s, British towns kept their own time based on local sunrise and sunset times, but the advent of the railways necessitated standardisation, and by 1857 most public clocks were set to railway time (although this would not become law for another 23 years). The stopped watches of the victims were set to local farm-house time, however, which was about half an hour or so later. Ironically, the coming of the railway to Grange and Ulverston in 1857 made crossing the Sands by coach largely redundant, but the trains came just too late to avert what was, until then, the Bay’s biggest tragedy.

After a paddle in the shallows beneath the colourful cliffs, I follow a section of the Cumbria Coastal Way to Allithwaite and pick it up again beyond Templand and Birkby Hall. This section boasts a leafy canopy bathing the wide track in dappled sunlight. It cuts through the Holker Estate, beside fields that would have been worked by some of the victims of the 1857 drowning. Young men like Thomas Hardman, Thomas Robinson, Henry Parkinson, Richard Houghton, and John Williams. I leave the track and take a faint path that climbs to the summit of How Barrow and rest awhile, looking back over the valley and the Bay.

Leafy avenue Cumbria Coastal Way approaching How Barrow

From here, the view of the Sands is of the western stretch than separates the Cartmel Peninsula from the Barrow Peninsula. Prior to the railways, travellers from Lancaster to Ulverston would have to make a second perilous crossing over this section. Just eleven years before Ashburner’s fatal journey, this stretch of the Bay claimed its own tragedy, which is remarkably similar in detail.

On 13^th June, 1846, the Westmorland published this solemn report:

“It’s our painful duty this week to have to record the loss of the greatest number of lives ever remembered upon Ulverston Sands. It appears that the unfortunate persons, nine in number, were returning from Ulverstone fair on Thursday, the 4th instant, in a cart belonging to Thomas Moore, fishmonger and badger, of Flookburgh, and it is reported that he was at the time worse for liquor, and had entrusted the reins to one of the persons in the cart not so well acquainted with the Sands; they, however, got safe over the channel, during the crossing of which they were observed by others following in the same direction, who on a sudden lost sight of them, when it appears they had got into a hole called Black Scarr, and without any alarm whatever having been made, all, as also the horse, had perished. Had the least cry for assistance been made they might have been heard from a great distance, the night being calm but no doubt in a moment all were swamped by the upsetting of the horse and cart.”

Unlike the 1857 tragedy, where the victims were itinerant labourers, hailing from a variety of Lancashire and Westmorland towns, all nine victims of the earlier disaster were from the neighbouring villages Flookburgh and Cartmel. Their joint funeral and burial in Cartmel churchyard drew a crowd of 1200 to 1500, on what must have been a bitterly sad day for the parish.

Cumbria Coastal Way entering High Stribers Wood

I follow the spine to Spiel Bank, where I again pick up a section of the Cumbria Coastal Way. It takes me up through High Stribers Wood to Bigland Heights and the tranquil elegance of Bigland Tarn. From here, I make my way to the final Wainwright outlier—the panoramic viewpoint of Bigland Barrow. It has been a journey rich in visual contrast: pastoral valley, wild salt marsh, open fell, period seaside elegance, and distant mountain drama; but the one constant has been the expansive view over the shimmering, spiralling sands of the Bay, a beguiling but deadly muddy bronze desert.

The Awesome Power of Pillar Rock

November 19, 2023 George Kitching 17 Comments

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

“You see yon precipice—it almost looks
Like some vast building made of many crags,
And in the midst is one particular rock
That rises like a column from the vale,
Whence by our Shepherds it is call’d, the Pillar.”
William Wordsworth

Mariner’s Mourning

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

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

Shepherd’s Delight

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

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

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

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

The Patriarch of The Pillarites

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

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

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

Pillar Rock from the path to Pillar summit

Hallowed Ground

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

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

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

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

Out of Bounds

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

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

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

Pillar Rock – The Mountain Cathedral

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

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

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

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

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

Walker’s Gully

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

The Old West Route (as a Spectator)

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

“Are you going up?” I ask.

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

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

Slab and Notch

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

Looking down to the Slab and Notch route

Mountain Memorials

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

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

James Jackson's Memorial Cross (photo by Jen Hellier) — James Jackson’s Memorial Cross (photo by Jenny Hellier)

Hand to Rock

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

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

Scrambling up to the start of Slab & Notch

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

Graham climbing up on to the Slab — Graham climbing up to the Slab

Jen and George on the Slab - photo by Graham — Jen and George on the Slab (photo by Graham Uney)

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

Jen after being lowered into Jordan Gap — Jen in Jordan Gap towards the end of our adventure

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

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

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

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

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

Jen on the rocky staircase to the summit

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

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

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

Info / Sources / Further Reading

Find Graham Uney on Facebook at:

https://www.facebook.com/grahamuneymountaineering

… or through his website:

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

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

https://payhip.com/b/ghKFq

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

Click to access Journal-1923.pdf

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

Footless Crow:

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

Scafell Hike:

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

Fell Walk, General, Ghost Story, Lake District, Legend, Literature, Mountains

Troubled Waters – The Unquiet Graves of Coniston

September 24, 2023 George Kitching 12 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

The Giant and the Bower Maiden

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

The Lonely Dell of the Tarns (Tarn Hows)

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Spirit of a Smuggler

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

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

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

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

Black Crag Trig Point and Coniston Water

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Druid and the Immortal Raven of Dow Crag

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

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

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

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

Fell Walk, General, History, Lake District, Literature, Mountains, Natural History, Nature, Scramble

The Savage Temple at the Heart of Scafell

July 23, 2023 George Kitching 26 Comments

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

Cults of Nature

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Krampus

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

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

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

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

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

The Roaring Silence

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

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

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

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

Wainwright: an Apostle of the Sublime

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

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

Scafell Crag and Shamrock from across the scree of Hollow Stones

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chris and Richard pause for breath by the boulders at the top of the 1st section of Lord's Rake — Chris and Richard pause for breath by the boulders at the top of the 1st section of Lord’s Rake

Richard leads the way onto the West Wall Traverse below the towering Pinnacle – photo by Chris Butterfield

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

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

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

The Pinnacle and Pisgah Buttress from the ground above Deep Gill — The Pinnacle and Pisgah Buttress separated by the Jordan Gap

Deep Gill Buttress rising from the depths of Deep Gill

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

The summit of the Pinnacle from Pisgah Buttress

The author on Pisgah Buttress – photo by Richard Jennings

The Savage Temple and the Roof of England

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shades of Winter – a Highland Mountain Adventure

June 4, 2023 George Kitching 12 Comments

When winter bared its teeth for its last bite of the year, I went over the snowline in the Scottish Highlands to put winter skills into practice with Lakeland’s Hayley Webb Mountain Adventures.

The snow is soft and powdery. The first slope presents no problems for the car, but the second is slippery, and I lose momentum. I change down into second, but the wheels spin, and I start to slide backwards. In reverse gear, I regain control. Safely at rest at the bottom, I deliberate my next move. After a minute or two, a 4×4 appears. It’s Hayley. Hayley Webb is a winter mountain leader and organiser of the winter skills course I’ve been attending for the last three days, here in Glencoe.

“Can you pull in a little? If I can get past, I’ll go first, and you can follow in my tracks. If that doesn’t work, I’ll tow you.”

But Hayley only just manages the top herself, and my attempt to follow results in a backward slide off the road. I come to rest with a back wheel balanced precariously above a ditch. Hayley rings a local garage, who will be about an hour, and suggests I walk back to the Youth Hostel, which has been our home for the last four nights and wait there.

An hour later, my car is sandwiched between two Highway Agency vans, who have suffered the same fate. But the snow is now starting to melt, and the Highway Agency guys have found a grit bin. They have shovels and sacks, and I help them grit the slope. When I look at my car, most of the snow around the wheels has gone, and with a push from the guys I manage to get it back on the road. But there’s another problem. A pick-up coming from the opposite direction is stuck at the top. We wander up with refilled sacks of grit to help free it. It’s the man from the local garage. One of the Highway Agency blokes roars with laughter when he twigs. He turns to me and says, “so he’s come to recover you, but you’ve recovered yourself, and here you are with a shovel, helping to recover him!”

It sums up the morning, and after about half an hour more of teamwork and two more calls from Hayley to check I’m OK, we’re all free to move.

“Are you on your way to work?” My new friend asks.

“No, on my way home. I’ve been here on a winter skills course.”

“Any good?”, he enquires.

“Absolutely brilliant”, I reply. “Apart from yesterday, which was great, but…”

“But what?”

“There wasn’t enough snow.”

He’s still laughing as he climbs into his van and leads our little convoy up the hill and out on to the main road, which thankfully is clear. With the danger over, my mind is free to re-live a tremendous three days.

We arrive in Glen Coe on Friday. Rob, Simon, and Helen all battling snow drifts in Yorkshire to get here. Hayley has booked the whole hostel to accommodate our large group of sixteen or so, plus five mountain leaders. After supper, and much convivial chatter, she divides us into groups based on experience. Bryan will take Roger ice-climbing. Hayley, Gemma, and Jules will take the beginners to learn basic crampon and ice-axe techniques. Those of us who have done that tuition before will go with Johnny to put those skills into practice on Aonach Mor. It means an early start, as to begin the day above the snow line means catching the ski gondola which is only open to climbers and hikers for a short window at 8:00 am.

As the Gondola lifts us above steep grassy slopes to where the snow starts, we learn a little about Johnny Walker. He’s a highly experienced winter mountain leader, who taught Hayley and who is close to completing his third round of all the Munros. Twenty years ago, he was made redundant from his job as a sales manager at Sainsburys and decided to turn his mountaineering qualifications into a business. It meant a drop in salary, but his quality of life improved immeasurably. His family quickly noticed his surge in energy and the full throttle return of his sense of humour. A persistent stomach complaint disappeared overnight. It’s a striking illustration about the nature of negative stress. The relentless treadmill of arbitrary, ever-shifting targets can grind us down, yet facing genuine danger, and taking responsibility for shepherding others through potentially perilous conditions brings us alive. It’s something we respond to positively, if like Johnny, we’ve learned the skills and techniques to negotiate the challenges.

Helen, David, Rob, Johnny, Kerry, and Caroline on the Nid ridge

The snow line appears, and I’m buzzing with excitement. Keen to learn from this man.

“I’m pernickety”, he warns, like an amiable sergeant major. “I’ll pick you up on every little thing you do wrong”.

Good. That’s what I’m here for.

He turns to me with a beaming grin. “For a start, you’ve got your gaiters on the wrong legs.”

As we emerge from the Gondola station, Johnny shows us the avalanche forecast for this side of the mountain. It’s moderate, meaning there should be no naturally occurring avalanches, but avalanches triggered by human activity are a possibility. The risks lie in the sheltered areas where snow has been allowed to drift. He points to a hollow between two ridges over to our right. It’s loaded with softer snow. We’re heading for the exposed ridge to our left where the snow will be compacted and frozen, and highly unlikely to shift.

As we climb towards the ridge, the slope steepens, and the snow becomes firm. It’s time to don crampons.

“Uh uh, no sitting”, orders Johnny. “Stand with the crampon placed uphill from you, and step into it. Make sure your toes are right in then step down into the heel with your full weight to make sure you’re in the crampon not on it. Otherwise, it’ll come off.”

This happened to me last year on Cairngorm, so I heed the warning although faffing with the straps is harder in this position. After inspection and adjustments from Johnny, he turns our attention to our ice axes.

“Who remembers how to walk with an ice axe?” he asks.

“I do”, I offer, and demonstrate a zigzag, keeping the ice axe on my uphill side by swapping it and my single trekking pole over when I change direction.

“Well, you’re doing that all wrong”, says Johnny with a smile. “You must never take your hand of the ice axe. If you slip, it’s there to save you, but only if your hand is on top.”

He demonstrates tucking a pole under a shoulder, placing one hand on top of the other over the axe, before withdrawing the bottom one, and retrieving the pole. Then to reinforce the point he demonstrates a slip. As his back foot shoots out and he falls, his forearm straightens along the shaft of the axe, his top hand pulling it down deeper into the compacted snow, while his bottom hand grasps the shaft, anchoring him securely. It’s so rapid and sudden, it’s highly convincing. He kicks in with his crampons and stands up.

“That’s why you must always keep a hand on the ice axe”, he says. “That slip wasn’t intentional, by the way.”

With the gradient stiffening, Johnny shows us different techniques for ensuring our crampons give optimum bite. French technique or flat footing involves keeping your foot flat with the surface of the ice or snow and stepping down firmly to ensure all points on the crampons dig in. It is easiest when the gradient is gentle, but when walking on a zig zag across a steep slope you must roll your ankle downhill to keep all spikes in contact. Austrian technique or front pointing tackles the slope head-on, kicking in with the front four spikes of each crampon. American or hybrid technique combines the two, front pointing with one foot while flat footing with the other.

There’s a lot to think about and safety hinges on getting it right. Luckily, we have two pairs of expert eyes checking our progress. While Johnny leads, Kerry walks last, watching from behind. Kerry is an engineer, who is up in Scotland working on a new hydro-electric dam, but she is an experienced mountaineer and a long-term friend of Johnny and Hayley, and she has come along to help out.

“Keep your foot flat”, she advises. “Remember to roll your ankle”.

“To front-point, make sure you are kicking in with four points of your crampon, not just the front two”, Johnny instructs from up ahead. Then, when my head is swimming with the minutiae of foreign technique, he says, “just think about where you’re placing your foot”.

And with that the brain fog clears. This is not a series of elaborate dance steps, it’s common-sense. Just look and think. By the time we reach the ridge, it is starting to come naturally. It’s just as well, as here the gradient is more challenging. We are walking on névé or snow ice: snow that has started to melt and then frozen again, becoming hard and compacted. Here, technique really counts.

At first, we ascend on diagonals, but then Johnny has us tackle a section head on, kicking in with our crampons and daggering with our ice axes. It’s hard work, but the tools and techniques do their job, and no-one goes hurtling off down the slope toward Loch Lochy, which glistens like blue crystal in the distance.

At the top of the Aonach an Nid ridge, we reap rich awards for our strenuous exertions. Ahead, a sparkling snowfield snakes round to the summit of Aonach Mor. Eastern slopes drop away abruptly, loaded with driven snow and crowned with elegant cornices. The sky is ridged with fluffy white clouds like ethereal salmon scales. Below, sparse wisps of cirrus float like spray on a sea of cerulean blue, and the horizon is a band of warm yellow, gilded with sun. Behind us, the landscape below is a winter canvas of umber, chocolate, and cinnamon; rolling hills frame languid stretches of cool blue where Loch Linnhe and Loch Eil touch toes.

With wind chill, the mercury would read below minus ten. I am wearing slim liner gloves to avoid getting too hot and sweaty during the stiff climb. I had planned to swap them for heavier duty alternatives now the gradient is becoming more forgiving, but my hands are still warm, and Johnny gives some interesting advice.

“If your fingers or toes start to get cold, throw on another layer. If your body senses that your core is cooling down, it concentrates your blood flow around your vital organs, leaving less to warm your extremities. Keep your core warm, and blood flow to your fingers and toes is greater. The real trick, though is to keep moving.”

And with that, the prospect of a rest before we strike on for the summit evaporates. It proves sage advice, however. I never do swap my gloves, and my fingers are never less than toasty.

As we approach the top, a sweeping vista of the Mamores unfurls to the south. A multitude of cobalt peaks poke through frozen cloaks of white. Cotton wool clouds kiss the tops likes puffs of steam. Closer in, the summit of Ben Nevis rises like a colossal Sphinx’s head, hewn from snow-streaked granite, and in the foreground, like a pair of white lions-couchant, is the CMD arête.

From the summit, we descend to the col and tackle the stiff climb up to the higher summit of Aonach Beag. Ice climbers are negotiating frozen waterfalls on its western crags. I suffer a shiver of nervous anticipation. Rob and I are due to go ice-climbing with Bryan on Monday. I hope he has something a little gentler in mind, that looks extreme! On top, Caroline is beaming to have bagged another Munro as she is well on her way to completing her first round. We are all feeling beatific now with the exertion, the satisfaction of new skills starting to click, the crystalline sparkle of sunlight on snow, and the staggering expanse of Scottish Highlands stretching out in every direction.

But we cannot bask in the glow of elation too long. Aware that in reality, we are cooling down rapidly, and we have the last gondola to catch, Johnny spurs us on to begin retracing our footsteps. Back down to the col we go, and back up to the summit of Aonach Mor, though mercifully, we return to the Gondola station down a slightly more forgiving slope than the Nid ridge. En route, I get chatting to Helen. Like me, she lives for the outdoors and days on the hills. She has teenage children she is loath to uproot, but when the opportunity arises, it is her dream to forego urban living and move somewhere more remote, perhaps up here. Having made a similar move to the Lakes, twenty-five years ago, I assure her that she will not regret it. I later learn Helen is something of an Instagram influencer; as @thatSoberHiker, Helen’s stunning photographs and inspiring posts about nature as a means to maintaining good mental health have won her thousands of followers.

The next day a turbo thaw sets in and the group as a whole braves rain, sleet, and brutal winds to climb Stob Coire Raineach. The path is treacherous, and while it may lack yesterday’s picture postcard winter conditions, learning how best to negotiate a mix of bare rock, sheet-ice, and slush hiding ice is every bit as valuable. The wind really kicks in at the col, and Roger’s fifteen-year-old son, Owen, who has already won widespread popularity with his gregarious nature and warm humour, leads something of a revolt.

“Why would anyone do this for pleasure?” He exclaims with a grin. “It’s horrendous”.

Hayley laughs but takes it as a cue to offer to split the group. “This is why we have more than one mountain leader. If anyone has had enough and wants to go back, come and stand over here with me. Anyone who wants to continue to the summit, stay there with Johnny”.

Owen walks towards Hayley and nearly all the group follow. Owen had simply voiced what nearly everyone was thinking. A hard-core quartet of Simon, Roger, Johnny and I are left to bag another Munro.

On the drive back, I ask about the vandalised cottage in an idyllic mountain setting up in the pass. It looks so out of character to have suffered that fate—boarded up and daubed with graffiti, when everything else, even an old stone barn, looks cared for.

“Oh, don’t you know?” Replies Johnny. “It was Jimmy Saville’s house.”

The thaw and the burgeoning winds put paid to our hopes of ice-climbing on Monday, and with no prospect of activity on the tops, Hayley takes us on a gentle walk to An Steall, Scotland’s second largest waterfall. We brave a precarious wire bridge to get up close. With the spray from the thunderous cataract on our faces, I turn to see Owen beaming in wonder.

“It’s quite something isn’t it,” I say.

“It’s magnificent,” he utters, awestruck. If yesterday was “horrendous”, today has him bowled over with the sublime majesty of this elemental force of nature. Roger did well to bring him. He will not forget his first trip to Scotland.

And I’ll not forget this trip either. Magnificent scenery in inspiring company; shared passions, and warm humour; new skills learned, existing ones honed; and on Saturday, the most perfect of all winter mountain days.

You can find Hayley Webb’s Mountain Adventures page on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/HayleyWebbAdventures/

Fell Walk, General, History, Lake District, Natural History, Nature

Whiskey Man: Lanty Slee – a Legend of Langdale

March 19, 2023 George Kitching 16 Comments

Wainwright described the square mile between Tilberthwaite and Langdale as “one of the loveliest in Lakeland”. In the 1800’s it was home to a notorious bootlegger, famed for his ingenuity, audacity, and ability to outwit the authorities. I walk from Rhunestone Quarry, over Holme Fell, to Tarn Hows on the trail of Lanty Slee.

Mountain Dew

Over Little Langdale Tarn, Lingmoor extends a long flank, dressed in the earthy tones of winter scrub—ochre, umber, and maroon. Where its slopes fall to Blea Tarn, the shadowy Langdale Pikes rise like rough-hewn turrets, carved from the bedrock by elemental forces. To the northeast, low-lying cloud conspires to paint the curve of the Fairfield Horseshoe as the rim of a mighty volcano, plumes of white mist belching from its crater like ash and steam.

The illusion is fitting as these ancient hills were indeed spewed from the vent of a submarine volcano somewhere in the vicinity of the Scafells, then transported, submerged, compacted, pressured, exposed, and sculpted by the relentless effects of tectonic shifts, ice, and water over hundreds of millennia. As Ian Jackson explains so well in his book, Cumbria Rocks, it was this very journey that formed the rippling patterns which make Coniston green slate so alluring. They are the swirling imprint of tides and waves, the watermarks of the deep Ordovician ocean that once covered these hills.

Two centuries ago, quarrying here in Tilberthwaite was rife, excavating fellsides already peppered with copper mine levels, and creating the landscape that Wainwright described as “pierced and pitted with holes—caves, tunnels, shafts and excavations”. But these scars are not a blot. To quote Wainwright again: “Wetherlam is too vast and sturdy to be disfigured and weakened by man’s feeble scratchings… The square mile of territory between Tilberthwaite Gill and the Brathay is scenically one of the loveliest in Lakeland (in spite of the quarries) and surely one of the most interesting (because of the quarries)”.

Behind me, Rhunestone quarry on Betsy Crag has gouged a long gully in the fellside. After decades of disuse, nature is slowly reclaiming this cross-section, softening its splintered sides with speckles of lichen and sprouting foliage from its fissures. A grass walkway divides the gully into two distinct pits. The crumbled remains of buildings nestle beneath walls of stacked spoil, and a long flat slab provides the roof of an arch, the gateway to the higher reaches of the upper pit. But it’s this pit’s lower reaches that have drawn me here, for during a short spell in the mid 1800’s, they produced more than slate. I scramble down a grassy bank, and climb with care down a loose and shifting bed of slippery spoil, damp with morning dew. And I smile at the thought, because Morning Dew (or Mountain Dew) had another meaning here.

In the very bottom, lies a small opening, a cave entrance, crowned with mossy grass and overhung with the spindly branches of a rowan. It’s pitch dark inside, but torchlight reveals a sunken floor submerged in emerald water. In times gone-by, any water collected here would have been distilled into something altogether more potent, for in the tight confines of this cave, Lanty Slee made Mountain Dew.

Lanty Slee was a notorious bootlegger, and Mountain Dew or Morning Dew was slang for his whiskey—although to place an order you supposedly had to enquire whether he’d had a good crop of “tatties” (potatoes). He started operating in a small way in the early 1820’s, and by 1840, he was producing 400 to 500 gallons a year and supplying a good many residents of the Langdale, Tilberthwaite, Yewdale, and Colwith area—much to the consternation of the excise men whose duty it was to shut him down. To evade their clutches, his whiskey-still was constantly on the move, and several quarries and cottages in the area claim to have hosted it for a while.

Little Langdale and Fairfield Horseshoe over Lanty Slee's Cave — Little Langdale and Fairfield Horseshoe over Lanty Slee’s Cave

Tee-total in Tilberthwaite

Indeed, last year as I was returning from a fell walk and approaching one such cottage, a scene reminiscent of Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner unfolded—a gentleman with a “long grey beard and glittering eye” stopped me with a quizzical expression and engaged me in conversation. His was not a dark story of superstition and ancient curses, however, he was extremely convivial and excited to know which peaks I had visited. As a former fellwalker and quarryman, he was full of warm nostalgia for the higher ground, and when I admired his cottage, the conversation got really intriguing.

“Oh, I’ve had those history types round,” he said. “They reckon it’s where Lanty Slee had one of his stills. See those steps over there. There were pipes and all sorts under there, and the floor’s been concreted, but you can tell it’s moved. I’d love to know what used to be down there.”

In 1841, a similar cottage gave up its secret. On the 2^nd October, the Kendal Mercury reported:

“On Tuesday last the Exciseman, having received information of a still being at work, proceeded with the Hawkshead police to a lonely cottage at Tilberthwaite, five miles from Hawkshead, the residence of Lancelot Slee to search for a hidden store, and after a careful examination they discovered the place of the works in a vault excavated under the stable, the entrance to which was by a trap-door at the head of the stall, under the horse’s fore feet.

The stall was kept well filled with straw, and if Lanty had occasion to go in or come out, he had nothing to do but to call the horse by name, and repeat the necessary word, and the docile animal would instantly stand off, or rise up, for the free ingress or egress of his master. The flue of the boiler was ingeniously carried underground into the chimney of the cottage.”

According to the Westmorland Gazette:

“All the traps were hoisted off to Ambleside, whiskey and all; and it is supposed that there were some of the strongest spirits that ever were made, for those that only smelled were sent half sensover. It is said that a Tee-total Society is going to be commenced by the mountaineers, for they say that they can be as good temperance chaps as any when Lanty’s whiskey is done, and he must make no more.”

Whatever they told the reporter, the dalesmen had other ideas. When the seizure of another Lanty’s stills made the papers, twelve years later, The Gazette’s Sawrey correspondent recalled what had happened previously: “A few years ago, when the worm and the still had been taken, and were lodged at Ambleside, a party of dalesmen went by night, broke into the warehouse that contained the apparatus, and, on the proprietor returning from a six month’s sojourn at the tread-mill, he was presented with his much-loved and valuable engines.” Another report suggests this pattern of events had happened at least three times before.

Hodge Close and Holme Fell

From Rhunestone quarry, I double back to the Tilberthwaite/Langdale track and take the footpath that skirts Moss Rigg Wood, detouring into the trees to take a look at Moss Rigg quarry. This is the rumoured location of another of Lanty’s stills. Great walls of chiselled slate rise like cubist sculptures from a deep pit lined with spoil. A screen of garnet and ginger twig—larch and silver birch—softens the angular stone, as nature, here too, reclaims what’s hers.

Beyond the wood, the path brings me to Slater bridge over the Brathay, which Wainwright describes as “the most picturesque footbridge in Lakeland, a slender arch constructed of slate from the quarries and built to give the quarrymen a shorter access from their homes”.

Two thirds of a mile from Stang End, I come to Hodge Close, where old quarry buildings have been repurposed as holiday lets, the Old Riving Shed still named for its former function. Here quarried boulders, known as clog, would be split along lines of weakness, called bate, by rivers working with hammer and chisel.

A few yards further on, the ground drops away dramatically to Tilberthwaite’s most celebrated and visited quarry pit. Sheer walls of slate, iron-red with haematite, plunge to a deep pool of copper green. A charcoal grey tunnel opening sits just above the water line like a huge skeletal eye socket. This feature has given rise to the name, Skull Cave, for when photographed along with its reflection in the water and the image turned on its side, the scene resembles a skull. The resemblance doesn’t stop there. From inside the cave, another opening, less prominent from above, resembles a second eye socket, and the narrow pillar of rock dividing them becomes a nose, giving the impression of standing inside a giant stone skull. No doubt these macabre illusions helped in the cave’s selection for location filming in Netflix serial, The Witcher.

Beyond the pit, a path leads up through the trees, past disused reservoirs, to the flanks of Holme Fell, its lower contours feathered with auburn-branched larches and tinted ginger with rusted bracken; its craggier tops are dressed in chocolate waistcoats of winter heather, like the fleeces of Herdwick yearlings. Norman Nicholson once described the Yewdale Fells as “vicious crags, not very high, but fanged like a tiger”. The image extends to their next-door-neighbour. Holme Fell’s southern face plunges to Yewdale in a series of steep rocky drops: Raven Crag, Calf Crag, Long Crag, and Ivy Crag; but if these are the bared teeth of an alpha predator, the gentle approach from the north is a stroll up the soft nape of its neck. The top of its head is the finest of viewpoints for a landscape washed in the earthen tones of winter: clay red, ochre, russet and charcoal, and hatched grey with spoil. Coniston Water snakes southwestward like a sliver of molten silver; the Langdale Pikes are a slate-grey castle, conjured from Middle Earth; and the old reservoir sparkles like a sapphire amongst the scrub.

Herdwicks and Mrs Heelis

A scramble down the summit rocks leads to the subsidiary peak of Ivy Crag, and a descent to Yew Dale Tarn, nestled below the trees of Harry Guards Wood. I pass Yewdale Farmhouse, with its seventeenth century spinning gallery, used for drying Herdwick wool. The farm was bequeathed to the National Trust by Herdwick Breed Association President-Elect, Mrs Heelis, better-known beyond these parts as Beatrix Potter.

Across the road, a path climbs through the trees beside the crystal cascades of Tom Heights—a hypnotic dance of wood and waterfall. At the top is Tarn Hows, landscaped by the Marshall family in the 1800’s. Along with Yew Tree Farm, it was part of the Monk Coniston estate, which Beatrix Potter bought from the Marshalls on behalf of the National Trust. Once the Trust had raised sufficient funds, it purchased part of the estate from her, but kept her on as estate manager, which led to some colourful clashes with their land agent. Beatrix bequeathed them the remainder in her will. Today, Tarn Hows is one of Lakeland’s top attractions, but for all its serene waters and arboreal splendour, it’s not my primary destination this afternoon. I’m still on Lanty’s trail and a little further up the Cumbria Way lies High Arnside Tarn. Its waters are a draw for anglers, but around 1853, they may have had another use too.

Contraband in Colwith

That year, the seizure of another of Lanty’s stills again made the papers. On Saturday 26^th of March, the Westmorland Gazette reported:

“A remarkable discovery of a cave containing an illicit still and all the appurtenances for the illegal manufacture of whiskey was made on the 12th inst. by Mr. Bowden, officer of inland revenue of this town. The locale of this discovery was on the farm of Mr. Lancelot Slee, High Arnside, Colwith, Little Langdale, about five miles from Ambleside and six from Coniston. The secluded character of the place, and the crafty concealment of the cave, renders it a matter of some wonder how Mr. Bowden contrived to discover and find access to it.

The cave has been evidently hollowed out entirely by labour. It is situated near the edge of a somewhat precipitous bank, the abrupt natural fall of one field of the farm into another. The access to it is not at the side, but perpendicularly through a hole at the surface, covered with a flat stone or flag. This aperture, which no doubt did the double duty of a chimney as well as a door, was covered carefully over with brackens. On descending it was found that the sides and floor and roof of the cave were all flagged, the flags of the roof overlapping each other quite in a clever workmanlike style, so as to throw off the water towards the bank above-mentioned. Strong posts and rafters made this subterranean retreat secure from any danger of falling in. The size of this underground apartment is about three or four yards long by two or three yards broad, and at the end where the contraband work was transacted a man could stand up-right. The mode by which that indispensable requisite, water, was supplied for the distilling process formed part of the ingenious adaptation of the place. A little mountain rivulet was contrived, by a small dam about twenty or thirty yards from the cave, to aid in the illicit production of ‘mountain dew’. When it was wanted the little stream found its way to the cave under a covering of turf and brackens, and having done its office this Alpheus of the whiskey-still sank underground and re-appeared about four or five yards from the cave like any ordinary drain. When not wanted for distilling a stone just shifted at the dam turned it off to another field, as though for the simple purpose of irrigation.”

Local historian, Phil Burrows has made it his quest to seek out the locations of Lanty’s stills, and with the help of the current residents of High Arnside Farm, he thinks he has found the spot where Mr. Bowden triumphantly uncovered this cave. Without a full archeological dig, he cannot prove it, but if he’s right, the stream that Lanty so cunningly diverted would have been an outflow from High Arnside Tarn.

In 1897, The Lakes Herald reported the passing of exciseman, Mr. D. Flattely, and reminisced about the cunning of the bootleggers he’d made a career of chasing. Chief among them was Lanty, who it was claimed could produce a bottle of his whiskey within 5 minutes, anywhere within a 20 mile radius of his home. Indeed, one magistrate was foolish enough to believe he’d got the better of Slee on this score:

“It is related that upon one occasion when Lanty had been in durance over night, and appeared in the justice room next morning, one of the magistrates—I think it was Dr. Davy—said to him, ‘I am told that you are able to furnish your friends with a glass of spirit at any time when desired, but I think we have broken the spell this time.’ Considerable was the merriment as Lanty produced a full bottle from his capacious coat pocket, and holding it up replies, ‘Mappen’ ye’r rang. Will ye hev a touch’.”

While the excisemen occasionally uncovered his stills, they never found where Lanty stashed his bottles. And despite his best efforts, neither has Phil Burrows. In a landscape so potted with holes, perhaps it’s not surprising, but maybe, just maybe, everyone has been looking in the wrong place.

Matters of the Spirit

In 1916, Jonathan Denwood and John Denwood published a book called Idylls of a North Countrie Fair, in which they documented, in dialect, a series of recollections, stories and conversations with colourful local characters at Cumbrian fairs. The 8^th August edition of the Penrith Observer carried a review. The reviewer is a little sniffy at the coarseness of some of the language used, concluding, “The introduction of these words and phrases—there are many of them—mars the pleasure of the reader, and will not let him leave the book lying about for his women folk to read.” However, some of the sketches are so entertaining that he overcomes his prudish distaste:

“the best of them is the account of Lakeland smugglers… This purports to be the reproduction of a ‘crack’ Mr. J. M. Denwood had more than twenty years ago with an old resident of Little Langdale, who professed to know Lanty Slee, a noted smuggler of his time; at any rate he told some capital stories about him which are chronicled in most readable style.

Then there was Whisky Walker, a Borrowdale quarryman, who was an adept both at distilling whisky, in illicit fashion, and in disposing it. He is described as a man who was ‘weel behaved, weel larned, an’ far travelled.’

Then there was this little dialogue about one of the characters of Lakeland whose supposed merits have often been written about, and quite as frequently discounted:

“Was he [Whisky Walker] any relation to Wondeful Walker, the famous Wasdale priest, John!

Ah couldn’t tell ye that.

Did you know Wondeful Walker, John!

No, but Ah knew his dowter at was weddit on t’lanlword at Cunniston, an Ah’ve hard it said he was wonnerfal oald scrat, ‘at nivver did a turn for any of his neighbors widoot he was weel paid. He hed a laal kurk, a laal salary, an’ a big lot o’ barnes, but he mannished to seave a fortun ‘at when he deid com to mair nor his wages he’d iver eddled.

(I knew his daughter who was married to the landlord at Coniston, and I’ve heard it said that he was a wonderful old penny-pincher, that never did a turn for any of his neighbours without being well-paid for it. He had a little church, a little salary, and a big lot of children, but he managed to save such a fortune that when he died it came to more than all the wages he’d ever earned).

Did he aid and abet the smugglers, John!

Ah’ll nut say that, but t’ meast of t’ kurks in them days war used as hidin’ pleaces by t’ smugglers an’ whisky makkers. Ah know a family vault in a country kurkyard ‘at Lanty Slee an’ me hev sleeped in an’ hidden stuff in mair nor yance or twice, fra daybrek till t’ neet fell again.

(…most of the churches in those days were used as hiding places by the smugglers and whisky makers. I know a family vault in a churchyard that Lanty Slee and me have slept in and hidden stuff in more than once or twice, from daybreak to nightfall.)

What, beside coffins, John!

Aye, it t’ wick fwok we war flate on, nut t’ deid uns.

(Aye, it was the living folk we were wary of, not the dead ones.)

Did the priests connive at your doings!

Weel, they war niver agean takkin owt they could git for nowt, nor agean buyin’ a sup spirits on t’ cheap.”

Never let it be said that the 19^th century clergymen of Borrowdale and Langdale were anything less than dedicated to all matters of the spirit!

Sources/Further Reading

All these newspaper reports are available through the British Newspaper Archive, but for those without a subscription, local history writer, Raymond Greenhow has done a fine job of collating all the detail and more into a chronological portrait of Lanty, rooted in fact.

https://scafellhike.blogspot.com/2020/06/lanty-slee-and-his-mountain-dew.html

Phil Burrows has made an intriguing and highly entertaining video about his quest to uncover all of Lanty Slee’s hideouts and his theories about High Arnside Tarn. Well worth a watch:

Ian Jackson’s book, Cumbria Rocks is a fascinating guide to the geology of Cumbria, written by an expert but aimed at walkers. Accessible and readable, it is packed full of brilliant photographs and profits go to the Cumbria Wildlife Trust. It is published by Northern Heritage and available from their website:

https://www.northern-heritage.co.uk/product/search/cumbria-rocks-60-extraordinary-rocky-places-that-tell-the-story-of-the-cumbrian-landscape

The following modern day interview on sirgordonbennett.com gives fascinating details insights into to the process of riving slate:

Coniston Stonecraft Interview

Fell Walk, General, Ghost Story, History, Lake District, Legend, Literature, Mountains, Natural History

Thorstein – A Viking’s Adventure In Lakeland

December 11, 2022 George Kitching 10 Comments

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

Legends of The Northmen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Saga of the Northmen in Lakeland

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

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

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

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

W. G. Collingwood

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

Coniston Mountains across Blawith Common

The Giant’s Demand

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

Beacon Tarn from Wool Knott — Beacon Tarn, Blawith Common

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

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

Thorstein Finds the Mere

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

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

Blawith Common – Home of the Celtic Fell-Folk

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Battle for Cumbria

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sources/Further Reading

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

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

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

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

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

Owain and the Battle of Brunanburh, 937CE

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

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

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

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

Fell Walk, General, History, Lake District, Literature, Mountains

Sailor, Spy: The Revolutionary Roots of Swallows and Amazons

October 9, 2022 George Kitching 33 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

“As you get out of the train, you find yourself on a vaulted platform, with a large round arch at the terminus end. Through the arch, looking so near that you feel you must be staring through binoculars, are the Yewdale Crags, along the flanks of Wetherlam. These are vicious crags, not very high, but fanged like a tiger, with slaverings of scree and bright green whiskers of larch and rowan. You walk forward and the arch widens and you see farther up Yewdale, with Raven Crag at its throat, and the road winding beneath Tom Heights on the way to Ambleside. All this is volcanic. Then you step through the arch, and Coniston village is below you, a row of villas and a neat wire fence leading to the lake. And beyond the lake, the wavy, unemphatic moors of Silurian rock behind Brantwood. The lake itself is of a dull, drab green, like the paint on the railings of Sunday-schools, and it looks uncomfortably damp—the lakes of the Silurian country always look damp. Down the lake you see a quiet pastoral country, greener and more hospitable than the Brantwood fells, full of dimples and hollows, and little misty trees and farms. Wooden railings step out into the water like children hand-in-hand, paddling. Nevertheless, the Brantwood shore, which looks so dull from this side of the lake, is full of woods and ferns and birds and little sykes with golden saxifrage among the stones.” .
(Cumberland and Westmorland, 1949)

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

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

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

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

Wetherlam Lad Howes ridge from the Brantwood shore

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

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

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

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

Eastham writes,

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

Coniston Water, inspiration for Swallows and Amazons — Coniston Water

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hugh also revealed that Evgenia did not leave empty handed:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yewdale Fells above the Methodist Chapel

Low Water and Levers Water from the Old Man summit

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

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

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

Sources / Further Reading

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

Available from Fletcher Christian Books:

https://www.fletcherchristianbooks.com/

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fell Walk, General, Lake District, Mountains, Natural History, Scramble

Over The Edge: The Soaring Majesty of Pinnacle Ridge

August 21, 2022 George Kitching 21 Comments

Pinnacle Ridge on St Sunday Crag is a head-rush of wonder and adrenaline, but as a grade 3 scramble, I had long imagined it beyond my capabilities. Then something happened, and I found myself on belay on one of Lakeland’s most dramatic arêtes.

“Somewhere in an old guide-book, published more than fifty years ago, I remember reading: ‘St. Sunday Crag IS the Ullswater mountain,’ and, when you come to think about it, it’s not a bad description. For St. Sunday Crag dominates the western reach of Ullswater far more dramatically than Helvellyn and, in a sense, commands the whole length of the lake better than any other mountain”. So wrote Harry Griffin in The Roof Of England in 1968. He expresses surprise at how walkers and climbers have long overlooked “this long line of crag, as big as several Napes Ridges crowded together” when, “the Grisedale face of the mountain, which drops nearly 2000‘ in half a mile is one of the most dramatic fellsides in the country… Rock climbers had missed it for years and only started making climbs there 12 years ago”.

These days, walkers are a more regular feature thanks in no small part to a book published eleven years before Griffin’s: Alfred Wainwright’s, The Eastern Fells. Wainwright completists now regularly discover St Sunday Crag by way of Birks or Arnison Crag, or by Deepdale Hause from Grisedale Tarn or Fairfield. Few brave its most dramatic ascent, however, as that lies within the liminal realm where walking ends and climbing begins. Pinnacle Ridge is a grade 3 scramble, much celebrated by those who have experienced its airy drama, but in Wainwright’s view, the grade 1-classified Jack’s Rake on Pavey Ark is “the limit” for fellwalkers, and like many others, I had long imagined Pinnacle Ridge to be beyond my capabilities.

Then something happened. On the evening of April 1^st, I spotted a Facebook post by Graham Uney Mountaineering offering fellwalkers, who want to step up a level, a guided and roped scramble over this iconic arête. Underneath was a comment from Nikki Knappett saying, “that looks amazing”. I know Nikki. We’ve been Facebook friends for a while but finally met in February when we both attended a three-day winter skills course in the Highlands. Having braved the frozen slopes of Cairngorm together, climbing Pinnacle Ridge seemed an appropriate next step. The offer was for two fellwalkers who would be roped together and share a climbing rack. It would be well outside my comfort zone, but sometimes you have to seize opportunities when they arise, and I was pumped full of Dutch courage, courtesy of a glass or two of Rioja, so I replied, saying, “I’m up for that, if you are”. Nikki messaged me almost immediately to say “Are you serious? YES!!”, and we emailed Graham before either of us could chicken out.

Our initial date of May 10^th had to be abandoned due to high winds and persistent rain. We rescheduled for June 27^th, which just gave me longer to contemplate whether this snap decision had been the act of a colossal April Fool. But now the morning has arrived, excitement holds sway over nerves.

We meet Graham in the car park of the Patterdale Sports Club. He has asked us to bring big rucksacks to accommodate the climbing gear, and promptly hands me a harness and 30m of rope to stow. He offers me a helmet, but I’ve brought my own. It’s currently acting as a makeshift lunch box, but my utilitarian packing is soon disrupted when the heavens open, and I dive to the bottom of my bag for waterproof over trousers.

The author and Nikki (photo by Graham Uney)

Nikki roars with laughter as my Gore-Tex over trousers are still patched with pink duct tape replete with unicorns, courtesy of misstep with a crampon on Cairngorm, and trusting Hayley Webb, a Winter Mountain Leader with a wicked sense of humour, to “fix” them for me. No sooner are they on than the rain stops. Such is the power of the pink unicorns. Now, Graham and Nikki won’t let me take them off.

We walk through Grisedale to the end of the Elmhow plantation, then leave the main path to zig zag steeply up hill, roughly following a beck. As we approach Blind Cove, the gradient eases and we track right below the crags. Across the valley, the east ridge of Nethermost Pike rears sharply upward to meet the summit plateau. Just a little further south, the Tongue makes a similar upward thrust to the top of Dollywagon Pike. These are stiff ascents: I’ve made both in recent weeks to try and build fitness in preparation for today. Each is rich in wild mountain drama, yet from each, my eyes wandered across the valley trying to pick out Pinnacle Ridge. I failed on both occasions. Graham assures me this is not unusual. The ridge is hard to spot from a distance, and the initial challenge that faces most scramblers is finding the start.

In his classic book, Scrambles in the Lake District: North, Brian Evans instructs you to cross two small scree shoots and then a larger one, then look out for a rowan tree about 45m up on the right hand side. Graham tells me the rowan tree blew down some years back. Furthermore, what counts as a small scree shoot seems somewhat open to interpretation. We all agree when we reach the larger one but depending on your definition, we’ve crossed anything from zero to about eight of the smaller kind. Luckily Evans’ final landmark, “a prominent gun-like block higher up the ridge” is a more reliable clue. Graham points it out, and we walk up to a small grassy ledge below a wall of blocks and boulders. To the right, the ground banks down into a gully.

The climb to the start of Pinnacle Ridge

Here, rope and harnesses are retrieved, and Graham talks us through the gear we’ll be using: slings, nuts, and cams or friends will provide temporary means of attaching carabiners to the rock to create belays for the rope which he now ties to our harnesses. Graham will lead and create these secure anchors. When he shouts, “you’re on belay”, that is our cue to move. Nikki will go second. I will go last and remove whichever nut, cam or sling we were hitherto attached to, twist it to compact, and clip it to my harness, then return it to Graham when we next converge. He will inspect my work like a sergeant-major offering the slightest of nods if it passes muster or a rueful, “that’s a right dog’s dinner” if I present him with a tangled mess.

He shows us how to tie a clove hitch in the rope to attach to a carabiner, providing a secure hold when taut, and easy adjustment when slack. Then he cheerfully exclaims “this way” and disappears into a groove in the wall of boulder, his head emerging seconds later a few feet higher. Nikki and I hasten into the breach to see where he’s putting his hands and feet. He disappears over a parapet and a minute or two later, we hear, “You’re on belay”.

Nikki smiles then turns to face the rock, but there’s a problem. Nikki has much shorter legs than Graham and can’t reach the footholds he used. At first, she laughs, but after three or four abortive attempts, she turns to me with a look of genuine concern and whispers, “I’m not sure I can do this”.

I try to sound encouraging when I say, “of course you can”, but I needn’t have worried. Before the words have left my lips, Nikki’s expression hardens into a steely determination, and she looks again, this time spotting less-obvious options. She can’t get her foot over the parapet like Graham did, but she can get a knee on to it, and it’s enough purchase to haul herself over.

Nikki and Graham starting up the jumbled blocks

The rope between us goes taut, and I’m reminded of the obvious: when Nikki moves, I must move too. I feel a guilty relief that the holds aren’t quite such a stretch for me. As we converge, Graham grins and asks, “what kept you?”. Nikki laughs and exclaims indignantly, “I’ve only got short legs!” It’s an exchange that will become something of a refrain.

Learning to move in synch has its teething problems. I have to anticipate when Nikki’s next move is going to be successful (which it usually is), or when she’s going to step back down and reconsider. My initial failure to do so results in an inadvertent kick in the head. Nikki apologises profusely and reminds me she only has short legs. The mistake was all mine, but thanks to Graham’s insistence on helmets I scarcely felt the knock. With my attention duly sharpened, I read the next abortive attempt correctly and move my fingers before they get trodden on. Nikki succeeds on her third attempt, and suddenly I’m obliged to move quickly to avoid pulling her back down.

As we reconvene at the top of the step, the ridge opens out before us, and we survey the scene with a head-rush of wonder and adrenaline. The next section is an erratic jumble of blocks, rising like toppled dominos to the gun-like boulder we spotted from below. Beyond, the ridge tapers to a slender spine above the plunging cleft of the gully. The spine is spiked with pinnacles, like the plates on the back of a stegosaurus.

Graham climbing the jumbled blocks on Pinnacle Ridge

Under Graham’s supervision, Nikki ties us on to the carabiner and we watch Graham pick a route up over the blocks and boulders. Once on belay, we follow his line. Our next resting point affords a vista over the foot of Ullswater, an “L” shaped oasis of muted blue amid the forest green of its banks. The dappled fells are lighter shades, a dancing ephemera of sunlight and shadow.

When we reach the top of the jumbled blocks, it looks as though the onward path is barred. The pinnacles sit atop a castle wall of rock. It looks unbreachable. Graham leads on and stops at the foot of a chimney which looks as unassailable as the walls we have passed. This is what Evans calls The Crux, and this is where he advises the use of rope even to those with climbing experience. Earlier, Graham had explained how climbing grades like Diff (Difficult) and V Diff (Very Difficult) are considered relatively moderate these days, but they were named by early pioneers who lacked the equipment we have now. Pioneers like Owen Glynne Jones, whose book, Rock climbing in the English Lake District did much to popularise the sport. Indeed, Jones’s book is illustrated by the Abraham Brothers’, who produced iconic photographs of Victorian climbers standing proudly atop Scafell Pinnacle or Pillar Rock in nailed boots and tweed suits. Apparently, there was a surge in demand for “grippy” tweed to tailor such garments. Nikki looks up at the Crux and exclaims, “we could do with grippy tweeds!” Graham laughs and says, “It’s funny you should say that as at one point in his book, O G Jones says, ‘imagine a foothold that isn’t there, and put your foot on it’. That’s what we’re going to have to do here!”

He points to a crack in the wall, and then to a couple of small footholds on the wall opposite. Using these as a springboard, he jams a fist into a fissure in the sidewall, steps across the gap and places a foot into the crack. It doesn’t appear to be resting on anything, but it supports him well enough to pull himself up an over the crest. When he gives us the go-ahead, Nikki attempts to follow.

Such is the height of the wall in proportion to the length of rope separating us, that I must follow too before she reaches the top. Nikki can’t reach the fist jam that Graham used but throws her weight across the gap and relies on momentum to carry her across to the foothold that isn’t there. It works well, and as she gets a handhold over the parapet, I follow suit. The crack must narrow inside as the toe of my left boot finds a secure hold. I want to push up and use the momentum trick to get my belly over the top of the wall, but Nikki has stalled. Her short legs are struggling to reach the higher footholds that Graham used to propel himself over. I’ve nothing to hold on to, so I lurch right getting my fingers over the ledge and the sole of my right boot balanced on the slightest of rocky knuckles. I have an uneasy sensation of being suspended in mid air. At this point, Nikki asks if I can take a step back. It’s impossible from this angle with no other handholds, and a worried silence ensues. We appear stuck in a stalemate where neither of us can move.

Then, that look of steely determination returns to Nikki’s face. She looks up and shouts, “have you got me, Graham?”

“I’ve always got you, Nikki, you’re tied to my rope”, comes the reply, but Nikki hasn’t waited for it. From nowhere, she summons a burst of upward energy that carries her knee over the top. There’s a lot of grappling around, but she’s laughing now and asking if she looks like a “graceful walrus”. Soon she’s over and safe, and it’s my turn to worry. I’m not in the ideal position to push off, but, inspired by Nikki, I just go for it and happily, it works. I pull myself up, getting my right knee over the edge and my left foot onto a rocky spur which gives me the purchase I need to complete the move, albeit no more gracefully.

Contemplating the Crux (photo by Graham Uney)

We’re now on top of the castle wall, below which the grassy bank drops abruptly into the gully. The next challenge is to negotiate the crenellations. Graham grins, “You’ve done the hardest part, all of you have to do now is walk along the top of the pointy bits.”

The Pinnacles on Pinnacle Ridge — The Pinnacles

It’s easier than it looks, yet just as exhilarating. Graham was slightly economical with the truth, however, in suggesting that all the hard bits were over. The spine culminates in the largest pinnacle and we regroup on top. The way off lies down a sloping slab which looks a little too smooth for comfort. There’s a large drop to the right. To ensure we are all secure during this traverse, Graham says we must change the order. I will go first, still belayed from the pinnacle. He’ll feed out just enough rope to get me over while negating the risk of falling far should I slip. He then hands me a sling to place over a boulder at the other end so we can belay him.

Just walk over the pointy bits (photo by Graham Uney)

We survey the slab together. Graham points out that the direct route down to the rocky platform at the base is over the smoothest part of the slab, but by veering right, the rock is more broken and a couple of angled boulders act as steps off the face and on to the platform. There is no room for error here, however, as this way lies right above the chasm.

I turn in and, gripping tight with both hands, start to down climb, feeling around with my feet for holds. They prove hardest to find above the boulders. Persistence discovers the slightest of ledges, but the last reach backward on to the boulder is uncomfortably far, and I’m filled with the uneasy feeling of stepping off the rock into the void. After seconds that feel like minutes, my foot reaches the reassurance of solid rock, and I step down on to the boulder. From here, a simple sideways step gains the platform.

Nikki has watched and concluded that the boulder is a step too far for her, so she opts instead to tackle the smooth face head on. She must have donned her imaginary grippy tweeds, either that or the rock face is more finely ridged than it looks, as she affects what amounts to a very well controlled slide. Graham is impressed, and once we have secured the sling, he follows her route.

Between here and the top is another tower of irregular blocks, but hand and footholds abound, and the exposure is less extreme. This final section feels like child’s play compared to what we have just done.

At the top, I look back over the spiky magnificence of the ridge, rising like a fossilised dinosaur from the gully, and a warm radiance of elation washes over me. I have always thought the phrase, “conquering a mountain” reeks of misplaced arrogance, but I get it now. It’s not the physical mountain we are conquering, but the mental one born of our own doubts and misgivings. With expert guidance and shared know-how, with technique, teamwork, a little trial-and-error, and the invaluable assistance of imaginary footholds and grippy tweeds, such conquests are possible. Even for those with short legs, which apparently includes Nikki, although she can’t remember whether she’s mentioned it.

The final blocks – Nethermost Cove as a backdrop (photo by Graham Uney)

More Info / Further Reading

Find out more about Graham’s courses at:

https://www.grahamuneymountaineering.co.uk/

… or find him on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/grahamuneymountaineering

Read about our Cairngorm adventures, learning Winter Skills with Hayley Webb Mountaineering:

Walk Out To Winter: New Skills

Fell Walk, General, Ghost Story, History, Lake District, Legend, Mountains, Natural History

Loweswater Gold: the Remarkable Mysteries of Mellbreak

May 22, 2022 George Kitching 8 Comments

Beguiling lakes, stiff scree slopes, a champion ale, a superlative waterfall eulogised by a Lake Poet, and a tragedy with a supernatural twist, I go in search of mystery and majesty in Loweswater.

Loweswater Gold

I’m heading for Loweswater. I have heard tell it is a magical realm where the lake is filled with a golden ale, as fine as any ale to have passed the lips of mortals. Ancient enchantments ensure the lake looks (and tastes) like water, but as it is magically syphoned into cellars of the Kirkstile Inn, it is transformed into the aptly named Loweswater Gold, crowned Champion Golden Ale of Britain in 2011. If I fail to return, do not mourn me. Be assured I died happy…

Mellbreak

The Kirkstile Inn sits beside the church (or kirk) in the village of Loweswater, and nestles in the shadow of Mellbreak, which rises like a rough-hewn pyramid beyond. Graphite grey in early morning shadow, Mellbreak’s tapering profile and plunging declivities suggest a mountain of Alpine proportions, but this is an illusion. The fell is a meagre 1676 feet high, and neither is it a pyramid. Behind its northern façade of Raven Crag and White Crag, Mellbreak stretches into a ridge with a wide summit plateau; it is shaped like the hull of an upturned boat and sports two summits.

Such knowledge does little to diminish the daunting profile which its north face presents. It looks unassailable. I’m hoping this too is an illusion; for to experience the true magic of Loweswater Gold, it is necessary first to complete a quest in the form of a fell-walk, and today, that quest is Mellbreak.

The Direct Ascent

Wainwright advocates the direct route of ascent, straight up the stiff scree to the right of Raven Crag. As I approach along the track from Kirkgate farm, the prospect loses none of its intimidating countenance. The slope looks severe, but this is the way Wainwright deems the grandest, so with blood already pumping in anticipation, I climb over grass to where the rivers of cinnamon scree snake steeply upward through chocolate heather to the steel-grey crags above.

Calves soon convulse in sharp pangs of protest, and the loose shale punishes hard-won progress by forcing feet to slide back one step for every two gained. A little way up, the path forks, the left-hand route makes a few wise zig zags before disappearing below the face of White Crag. I’m not entirely sure where it emerges. Keeping on ahead looks the tougher proposition, but at least the outcome is clear: it enters a steep sided gully, which Wainwright calls the “rock gateway”. Footing becomes firmer within the gateway and before long, I am climbing out on to Wainwright’s “first promontory”, a rocky shelf which provides an edifying view back over the blue iridescence of Loweswater, shaped into an elongated heart by distortions of perspective and the green incursion of Holme Wood on its western shore.

Blake Fell and Loweswater from Mellbreak

Loweswater is remarkable for being the only lake in Lakeland that does not drain outward towards the sea. Instead, its outflow, Dub Beck, empties inwards into Crummock Water, whose blue expanse comes into view a little further up the slope. Whiteless Pike, another charcoal pyramid, casts a perfect dark reflection on Crummock’s ripple-free sheen, cobalt blue under clear April skies.

Rannerdale Knotts over Crummock Water and Buttermere

Twin Peaks

Above the crags, the going is easier, and the north summit is quickly gained. This is the more satisfying of Mellbreak’s twin tops, capped with a triangular cairn and ringed with heather. From here, the aspect over Loweswater comes into its own, hemmed by the steep flanks of Blake fell and Burbank fell to the south-west, and the twin summits of Darling Fell and Low Fell to the north-east. Straight ahead, beyond the water, stretches a flat expanse of coastal plain, eventually merging into a hazy wash of blue, the merest hint of the Irish sea.

Loweswater from Mellbreak's north summit — Loweswater from Mellbreak’s north summit

The south summit is marginally higher. It lies two-thirds of a mile away across a scrubby depression, straw yellow with winter grass still awaiting spring’s rejuvenating touch. Yet, across this featureless plateau, the skyline is a feast of mountain drama: to the north-east, Whiteside, Grasmoor and Whiteless Pike rise like a holy trinity of primordial might, angular and dark, cocoa-dusted with winter ling. Red Pike and High Stile rear in response, and over Hen Comb, Great Borne is a mossy dome above plunging northern crags.

Buttermere and Crummock Water

In 1802, Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote to Sarah Hutchinson, “Conceive an enormous round Bason mountain-high of solid Stone / cracked in half & one half gone / exactly in the remaining half of this enormous Bason, does Buttermere lie, in this beautiful & stern Embracement of Rock”. Mellbreak’s south top rewards with a view that does full justice to such a description: Buttermere occupies the bottom of a rocky corridor, flanked by High Snockrigg and the Newlands fells on one side and the High Stile range on the other. At the far end, Fleetwith Pike supplies the south-eastern wall. Yet from here, it looks as though the basin is complete, with Mellbreak itself forming the northern flank. With descent, the illusion is punctured, as the end of Crummock Water comes back into view, and you realise how the valley sweeps round to hug the eastern flank of Mellbreak rather than terminating at its foot. A small strip of farmland separates Buttermere and Crummock Water; similar meadows divide Crummock Water from Loweswater; and you sense how these remote communities are connected by their lakes.

Buttermere from Mellbreak's South Summit — Buttermere from Mellbreak’s South Summit

A Supernatural Tale

In her book, Life in Old Loweswater, Roz Southey recounts the closest thing Loweswater has to a ghost story. On the 22^ndof December 1774, the Cumberland Pacquet reported a story of a mysterious death with supernatural associations. The victim was an apprentice to a shoemaker who lived in Buttermere. The paper withheld names, so Roz calls the boy, Will, and the shoemaker, Pearson. Mrs Pearson had sent Will on an errand to deliver shoes to farmsteads around the three sibling lakes. The rain was relentless, and as Will covered the long miles home in the fading light, he started to worry that he had lost his way. Eventually, he glimpsed a familiar humpbacked bridge and hurried to cross, elated to find he was not far from home.

In his haste, he stubbed his toe and fell to the ground. As he nursed his foot, he was nearly blown over the edge by a horrendous gust of wind that seemed to come from nowhere. The river was in spate, and white water gushed ferociously over the rocks below. Will clung to the parapet for dear life. Eventually the freak gale abated enough for him to crawl back off the bridge and on to the track, where suddenly, there was no wind at all, nor the slightest hint that there had been one. Afraid that some malign force was at play, Will added three miles to his journey home to avoid crossing the bridge.

When he arrived at the shoemaker’s, Mrs Pearson berated him for his lateness, and laughed in disbelief at his preposterous tale. She sent him upstairs to change and fetch his fellow apprentices for supper. When Will failed to join them, she sent one of the other boys to look for him.

The stricken lad swore to the coroner that he found Will sitting on the stairs, strangled by the crupper of a saddle that hung above. The coroner was baffled as to how anyone could have got himself into such a position, especially by accident (and all who knew him testified to Will’s joyful love of life). The inquest returned a verdict of accidental death, but Mrs Pearson’s had her doubts. Her suspicions were dark and intangible.

Scale Force and Hen Comb

I descend south to where Black Beck flows east to Crummock Water, through a narrow funnel of land between Mellbreak and the opposing slopes of Gale Fell. I follow the beck to a footbridge below Scale Knott. Ahead, Crummock Water is a dark pool transformed into gleaming azure where it escapes the shadow of Rannerdale Knotts. I turn off the path and cross the footbridge, walking in the footsteps of Coleridge, following Scale Beck up to a ravine on the flank of Red Pike, which the Lake Poet described as “a dolphin-shaped peak of deep red”. Here, the beck comes thundering off the mountain in the mighty cataract of Scale force, “the white downfall of which glimmered through the trees, that hang before it like the bushy hair over a madman’s eyes” (Coleridge). At 170ft, Scale Force is Lakeland’s highest waterfall, and it is utterly beguiling.

The Lake Poet continued his journey west past the foot of Mellbreak and the head of Mosedale. This is the way I go too, as far as Hen Comb, whose steep grassy southern slopes I start up. The summit is another fine viewpoint for Buttermere and Fleetwith Pike.

Buttermere and Fleetwith Pike from Hen Comb

At the top, I sit in the sunshine and watch a man rambling up the long northern ridge from Loweswater. When he reaches the top, he beams at me and exclaims, “What a perfect day for doing this. Cap it all with a pint of Loweswater Gold at the Kirkstile Inn”. He must have read my mind.

Walk Out To Winter: New Skills

April 17, 2022 George Kitching 14 Comments

Winter Skills in the Cairngorms

I head for the snow-capped majesty of the Cairngorms to learn winter skills and meet some remarkable people with inspiring tales of courage, devotion, and survival. (Although, the less said about the pink unicorns, the better.)

The High Road

Beyond Perth, the landscape changes. The sprawl of human conurbation melts into the rear view mirror as the road handrails the River Tay and enters the Craigvinean Forest. Slender trunks of silver birch, white as winter ghosts, fan into filigrees of garnet twig, and dark towers of Scots pine wear tam o’ shanters of Caledonian green.

The road climbs out of the woods and into the hills, lightly flecked at first, but slowly, steadily, the snow line creeps lower, until up ahead, rises a pure white winter peak. A tremble of excitement. This is what I’m here for.

Winter’s touch turns our green hills into Alpine mountains and amplifies our wonderstruck response. But it introduces new levels of treachery. An understanding of winter terrain and its inherent hazards, together with the tools and techniques required to navigate it successfully are vital. Microspikes can only get you so far, so I’m heading for the Highlands to learn some winter skills.

Hayley Webb

It’s taken longer than the miles on the map suggest. I’d booked on to a day-long course on Helvellyn in February 2020, but Storm Dennis put paid to that. It was rearranged for March 16th, but due to an administrative cockup, no instructor turned up. I climbed Helvellyn anyway with another would-be pupil, Matt Napier. Matt turned out to be a sound-engineer who had just returned from Paris. The events he was due to work had been cancelled because of coronavirus. “Anyone I might have heard of?” I asked. “Madonna, “ he relied. “I’m Madonna’s monitor engineer”. I learned lots about life on the road with Madonna, and Roger Waters, and Kylie, but we learned no winter skills. We wouldn’t have anyway—there was no snow.

I arrived home to the announcement that we would be going into lockdown and a very apologetic email from the course organiser offering a refund or a rebooking, although it was uncertain when. I had a little rant on Facebook, and Hayley Webb got in touch.

“I’ll teach you”, she said, and she sent me details of a course she was planning in the Cairngorms for 12 months’ time. It was three full days on the mountain, which sounded far more substantial in terms of what I’d learn. Hayley taught me to navigate so I know what a good instructor she is. What’s more, in a former life, Hayley was a chef, and she would be doing all the catering. Well this would be the icing on the traybake. I would have to wait a year, but 2020 would be a year when all our lives were put on hold. This would be something to look forward to when it was all over.

COVID

Only it wasn’t all over. By February 2021, we were back in lockdown, and the rules in Scotland were even stricter. Hayley was forced to postpone all her bookings, and this being weather dependent, it would mean waiting another year. I signed up straight away.

It was a terrible time for mountain leaders, as it was for anyone trying to keep their own business afloat. Hayley took a job at Sainsburys, packing orders for home delivery. There, she met Gemma Grewar, another mountain leader, who had taken a job as a delivery driver.

On Radio 6, I heard Tom Robinson recount a conversation with an Amazon driver. She told him his gig at the Barbican, two years earlier, had been one of the best she’d seen. She was young. Not typical of his normal audience demographic, so out of curiosity, he asked her why she had attended. “I was your sound engineer,” she replied. I thought of Matt Napier and hoped he was keeping his head above water.

Lagganlia Outdoor Education Centre

COVID still isn’t over, but the latest Omicron variant is proving generally less severe, and life is taking tentative steps back to normal. This morning, the Facebook Messenger group, which Hayley set up to keep us all looped in, was a flurry of negative test photos and excitable examples of overpacking—we were bonding in our desperate bids not to leave anything behind. Now, we are all about to meet for the first time.

As I turn off the Aviemore road at Kincraig and cross the bridge over the River Spey on the edge of Loch Insh, a frisson of anxiety creeps in. I’m minutes from Feshiebridge, the Lagganlia Outdoor Education Centre, and Caeketton lodge, which will be our home for the next four nights, and I realise just how insular I’ve become as a result of all the restrictions. I have a gregarious, outgoing side, but also an introverted side, which has grown to dominate of late. Now, the thought of spending four nights and three whole days with a group of total strangers (Hayley excepted—although we’d only met once) feels intimidating.

That feeling evaporates the second I walk through the door to the warmest of welcomes. The room is already buzzing with convivial conversation and filled with enticing cooking aromas. Hayley shows me to the four-bed bunk room, I’ll be sharing with Rob, a police community support officer and fellow guitarist with a gentle sense of humour and a passion for wild-camping. We are two of only three men on the course. The other is Andy, but Claire has already bagged him. Which is fair enough considering they are partners, although she made that deliberately unclear in her mischievous message to the group earlier, where she raised one or two eyebrows by insinuating she that was getting first dibs. This soon proves typical of Claire’s wicked sense of humour, perfectly matched by Andy’s dry wit. In the course of conversation, I learn they are seasoned long-distance walkers, veterans of several national trails, but Claire has an aversion to steep descents, a fact she discovered recently on Striding Edge, which she ended up crossing on all fours. She has booked a one-to-one course with Hayley in April to try and overcome it, but in the meantime, the next three days hold obvious concerns. That she is here, ready to confront her fears, shows genuine courage.

Kit

After supper, it’s kit inspection—to check we all have suitable ice axes, and crampons, and compatible boots. I award myself Brownie points for having purchased the same ice axe as Hayley, but she tells me my crampons are really designed for boots with a slightly stiffer sole. They’ll be OK, but I should be vigilant in case they pop off.

My boots are three-and-a-half season boots, that will take a flexible crampon. Winter boots are better as they have a stiffer sole, but the added stiffness makes them less comfortable to walk in all year round. If you want boots you can use in all seasons, you are looking at a comprise. Three-and-a-half season boots make the compromise in favour of comfort, while B1 winter boots make it in favour of rigidity. If I am to get serious about walking in full winter conditions, I would be best investing in a pair of B2 boots, which are optimised for crampon use and insulation.

Hayley introduces Gemma, her fellow Winter Mountain Leader and Sainsburys veteran. Gemma is here to assist in case they need to split the group or work on specifics with individuals. This comes as a relief to many of us who are worried about our fitness levels.

Finally comes an appraisal of the weather. Researching conditions and adjusting plans accordingly is key. Wind speeds upwards of 60 m.p.h. are forecast for tomorrow, so we’ll not be going anywhere near the summit of Cairn Gorm..

As we all turn in, Hayley and Gemma study maps to determine where we are likely to find snow at safe altitudes, while keeping as far as possible in the rain and sleet shadow.

Loch an Eilein

In the morning, we stuff sandwiches and delicious homemade tray bakes into our rucksacks, stow ice axes and skiing goggles, don gaiters and waterproofs, and set off for Loch an Eilein.

Ahead of the storms, the air is crisp and dry, the sun extending fingers of white gold around the hems of soft grey cloud pillows, turning tranquil waters to liquid silver. Loch an Eilein means Loch of the Island, and the island in question hides a castle in a copse of trees. The castle started life as a fortified tower built by a notoriously ruthless grandson of Robert the Bruce, known as the Wolf of Badenoch. A curtain wall was added in the 1600, ninety years before the castle was besieged by defeated Jacobites fleeing the Battle of Cromdale. In 1745, it hid fugitives from the Battle of Culloden. A snapshot of Scottish history in a setting unfathomably older. The castle is now home to ospreys.

As the path snakes between the tall pines of Forest of Rothiemurchus, mossy woodland aromas fill our nostrils; and twigs sprout white beards of reindeer lichen. Hayley tells us the woods are home to capercaillie. From the Gaelic, capall coille, meaning “horse of the wood”, the capercaillie is a black, turkey-sized member of the grouse family. They can be aggressive if cornered, and have been known to harass dog-walkers. All the same, I’d love to see one.

Avalanche Awareness

We’re ascending, so when we emerge from the woods we hit the snow line, and the learning starts. We’re surrounded by high hills, and Hayley has us observe how the eastern faces are snow-laden, while western faces are sparse and potentially icy: the prevailing wind was from the west last night, blowing the snow over the ridges to create loaded eastern slopes. We look for cornices, overhangs of compacted snow that could break away causing avalanches. The risk is heightened when fresh powdery drift settles on top of hard, compacted snow, but the top can freeze creating a crust and giving the illusion that all is firm. Hayley demonstrates on the bank by the side of the path. The snow is crunchy, but she excavates a section with her axe and reveals soft powdery stuff beneath, ice below that. She jumps on top and stamps down with her boot. The snow cracks into a tile and slides off.

Winter Skills in the Cairngorms — The party en route to ice-axe training. Photo by Hayley Webb.

Self Arrest

We find a knoll with a reasonable gradient and walk to the top, using our boots to kick steps in the yielding snow, sinking deeper with each step. It’s tiring, and Hayley bids us remember this when planning winter walks—add extra time, don’t be over-ambitious with distance. From the top she has us slide down on our bums, following each other’s line until we create four compacted slippery runs with soft, gentle, rock-free run offs at the bottom. It’s time to don helmets and learn how to self-arrest with an ice-axe.

The Ministry of Funny Walks. Photo by Hayley Webb

We’ve already learned how to hold the axe—hand over the top and the pick end facing backwards—to use the shaft and spike like a short trekking pole, but that grip also allows a rapid lift to the chest if you feel yourself slipping. The idea is to nestle the blunt adze into the hollow beneath your clavicle, then turn as you fall, driving the sharp pick into the snow, with your full weight on top of it. You grab the other end with your free hand and look down the shaft to optimise your position. Oh, and remember to lift your feet into the air, so that if you’re wearing crampons, they don’t dig in and catapult you head over heels down the slope. It’s a lot to remember in the split-second panic of a slip, and if you’re ever to use it in anger, it would have to be second nature. We practice over and over, safe in the knowledge that failure here meets a soft landing. Hayley marches round like a Strictly Come Dancing instructor, barking orders on body-line and position. It’s exhilarating and exhausting.

Rob daggering with an ice axe & kicking steps

Gemma notices Claire hanging back and quietly, unobtrusively, takes her aside for a one-to-one counsel.

Meanwhile, black clouds have been moving up the valley. When the wind whips up and horizontal sleet stings our faces, we don ski goggles and begin the long tramp back down.

I chat to Nikki, a solicitor who’s been a Facebook friend for a while, but this is the first time we’ve met. She’s every bit as warm, loud, chatty, and full-of-fun as I imagined. And every bit as passionate about mountains—although after a year dogged with bereavement, injury, and a recent bout of COVID, her fitness has waned and she’s found today a struggle. Not that anyone else would notice.

And Andrea, who works freelance, teaching kids about nutrition and cooking and a host of other stuff that sounds richly rewarding. She was in the army and was stationed for a while in Herford, Germany, where my Dad was posted in my mid-teens. We reminisce about Herforder Pils, Gluhwein, and Christmas markets.

In the evening, after a hearty meal, we learn to read avalanche forecasts and determine which faces will be safe and which hazardous for us to tread in the morning.

Cairn Gorm

The next day we decamp to the ski centre car park, and with the Met Office predictions of kinder weather holding true, we start up the slopes of Cairn Gorm. We learn to kick snow steps with our boots, and to cut them with our axes. When our feet no longer sink in, we don crampons. “Walk like John Wayne,” says Hayley, “because you have sharp spikes sticking out the sides of your boots, and you don’t want to rip the bottom of your waterproofs. Rob forgets and nicks a small slit in his over-trousers. A little further on, I do the same.

Winter Skills on Cairn Gorm — Daggering with ice axe and kicking in with front points of the crampons. Photo by Hayley Webb

Once we have the hang of things, Hayley and Gemma have us running down a slope to appreciate the grip the crampons afford.

“How are you feeling, Claire?” shouts, Hayley.

“Great!” replies Claire, raising her ice axe in triumph before joining the downward race, her demons conquered.

Point 1141

A steep ridge leads up to Point 1141 (higher than Scafell Pike, yet unnamed). On this slope we find névé, snow that has partially melted and refrozen to form a hard, compacted surface. With the crampons’ teeth biting hard, and no more sinking, the going becomes easier despite the gradient.

As the ridge narrows, Gemma counsels us to keep 10m or more from the north eastern edge, where the slopes are loaded. If a cornice breaks, it takes a significant amount of snow from the ridge top with it, and it will take you too, if you’re too close.

A rocky path is mostly free of snow, and Hayley insists we walk some of the way on it to get use to the feel of crampons on rock, uncomfortable, but sometimes necessary in mixed terrain.

As we approach the top of the ridge, the cloud is beginning to break. Loch Morlich appears in the distance, a sliver of duck egg blue in a nest of forest green. Rob looks down the long line of the ridge and observes that you really couldn’t afford to make a mistake if you were practising ice-axe arrests here.

“Oh I dunno,” quips Andy, “you’d stop moving by the time you reached Inverness”.

Loch Morlich from Cairn Gorm — Looking over Loch Morlich

Point 1141 sits 104 metres below the summit of Cairn Gorm and is marked by a large cairn. It is enveloped in clag, but as we rest, the mist dissipates and unveils an astonishing view. Across a corrie, the buttressed mass of Fiacaill Ridge tapers to a jagged arête above plunging precipices, rendered in monochrome by streaks of snow, exposed black rock, soft sun and heavy shadow. It’s as if we have stepped into a finely hatched pencil sketch, an ink drawing, a sublime larger-than-life etching. Hayley is seldom lost for words, but here, she falls silent in wonder.

Fiacaill Ridge, Cairn Gorm — Fiacaill Ridge, Cairm Gorm

Hayley lost in wonder. Photo by Lesley Varnham.

Loch Morlich

It’s not the only transcendental moment of the day. On the drive back to the lodge, we pass the shore of Loch Morlich, just as the sun is about to set. Through the trees, we spy an onyx sheen illuminated with mirror images of the mountains. Hayley pulls over, and we run to water’s edge to lose ourselves in a tranquil tableau of snow-capped summits, reflected in perfect symmetry.

Shelter on Windy Ridge

The following morning we head up Cairn Gorm’s Windy Ridge. In fresh snow, we follow recent tracks of mountain hare. We cross a ski-slope, its wooden fence bejewelled with glittering formations of wind-ridged ice. We enter a disorienting world of near whiteout, but not quite: the tops of boulders are still visible through the snow. In total whiteout, there is no distinction between ground and sky.

Hayley relays a hair-raising story of being caught in a blizzard here. It came in twelve hours earlier than expected, and with no phone signal, she and her friends were unaware of the revised forecast. They dug deep snow shelters, in which to ride it out, but when it refused to abate, they navigated off the mountain using a compass and pacing techniques, through trenches they carved with their axes. The experience convinced Hayley that she had what it takes to train as a winter mountain leader.

Digging snow shelters is what we do next, using the adze end of our axes. Ours are not deep enough to see out a blizzard (that would take hours) but sufficient to afford temporary respite from the bitter, biting wind.

Rob and I wear gaudy badges of shame for failing to walk like John Wayne. Last night Hayley offered to patch our torn waterproofs with duct tape, without telling us her duct tape is bright pink and sports unicorns. “It’s all I’ve got,” she said with a wicked smirk as she handed them back.

Back in the warmth of the lodge, I chat to Lesley. In September 2019, her young daughter was diagnosed with cancer and underwent several harrowing cycles of chemotherapy. She’s in remission, but until now, Lesley has not left her side. Lesley’s life was put on hold so she could devote everything to caring for her child. This is the first time that she has done something for herself. She is humble and unassuming, and her story has touched all our hearts.

In the morning, I drive Lesley and Charlotte to the station in Aviemore; and as I turn the car around to begin the journey home, I reflect on three inspiring and transformative days of crucial skills, challenging weather, and impossibly majestic landscapes, all spent in the company of some truly remarkable people.

You can find Hayley Webb’s Mountain Adventures page on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/HayleyWebbAdventures/

Fell Walk, General, History, Lake District, Legend, Natural History, Nature

Haweswater and the Lost Kingdom of Mardale

February 27, 2022 George Kitching 25 Comments

When the Manchester Corporation built Haweswater Dam in 1936, they consigned two centuries-old villages to the bottom of a reservoir. Before the flood, the valley had boasted a celebrated inn, a tiny church, and a hall strong enough to resist the explosives of the Royal Engineers. It even had its own monarch. I pull on my boots and go in search of the lost kingdom of Mardale.

The Drowned Valley

Sun gleams off the bonnet of an open top car, a Lanchester perhaps, as a smiling woman steers between the stone parapets of Chapel Bridge. In the distance, where Selside and Branstree meet, the twin ravines of Rowantreethwaite and Hopegill beck form deep folds in the fellside, and the Old Corpse Road climbs steeply out of the valley.

Chapel Bridge - the lost kingdom of Mardale — Chapel Bridge, Mardale Green

A bell is ringing from the tiny church, encircled by old yews taller than its tower, and the jubilant shouts of children travel up the dale from Measand school. A peal of raucous laughter erupts from the courtyard of the Dun Bull Inn, and the sounds of whistles and dog-barks waft down from Riggindale where shepherds drive a flock toward the washfold.

The Dun Bull Inn - the lost kingdom of Mardale — The Dunn Bull Inn, Mardale Green

I open my eyes, and the vision dissolves. Now, all is water. I’m standing at the end of the Rigg, the wooded promontory that juts out into Haweswater, a reservoir constructed by the Manchester Corporation between 1936 and 1941. At its far end stands the dam that raised the level of the natural lake. Pewter waters now cover the valley—the centuries old villages of Measand and Mardale Green have been submerged, a rural civilisation lost less than a hundred years ago.

The Manchester Corporation & Haweswater

My vision was a flight of the fancy, a montage of the imagination, conjured from old photographs and contemporary accounts of life before the flood. One photograph persists in my mind’s eye—that of the woman in the car. On first glance, it appears idyllic, but look closer, and the seeds of doom have already sprouted. A series of small white marker posts line a long pale scar, recognisable to anyone today as the road. But the old road ran on the opposite side of the valley. This is the new one, still under construction. The old road carried villagers to and from their homes, but five or six years on, those homes and the road alike would be lost below the rising waters. The new road would carry walkers, bird-watchers, sightseers, and reservoir workers to the head of an extended lake, in a waterlogged valley, unpopulated but for the new Haweswater hotel. The road opened in 1937, the same year the church tower was pulled down and the Dun Bull demolished. The main body of the church had gone a year earlier, its stones and windows repurposed to build a water take-off tower, which stands roughly in line with the natural head of the lake.

Holy Trinity Church - the lost kingdom of Mardale — Holy Trinity Church, Mardale Green

The Water Take-Off Tower, built with the stones and windows from the church,

“No-one else protested, we were the only ones,” Helena Bailey told journalist and writer, Karen Barden, in 1995. Helena was the daughter of the Vicar of Burneside. Her family had holidayed in Mardale year upon year from 1914 to 1929; she felt like a local. Helena would have been four on her first visit, nineteen on her last. She recounted how she and brothers and sister stealthily followed the surveyors and pulled out every one of those marker posts. But the teenagers were no match for the Manchester Corporation, and few others could muster the fight.

“There had been a world war,” she explained. “The country was exhausted. People just wanted to get on quietly with their lives.”

“And this proposal also meant jobs, for hundreds of men.”

I look north to Wood Howe, once a wooded knott, now a tree-crowned island. Today, a stretch of silver water maroons it from the Rigg. Beneath the surface, lie the remains of Holy Trinity church. The church was built in the late 1600’s, on the site of a much older oratory, supposedly constructed by the monks of Shap Abbey. In 1729, its churchyard was consecrated for burials: until then, the dead had to be wrapped in cloth and carried on pack ponies over the Corpse Road to Shap.

Wood Howe from the Rigg. Holy Trinity Church is below the water.

In October 1935, the bodies of those interred here were exhumed. With ironic precedent, they were nearly all reburied at Shap. That August, the last service was held at Holy Trinity. It drew a congregation many times too large for the nave and chancel, which could accommodate just 75. Everyone else stood outside and listened to the sermon over loudspeakers. It was preached by the Bishop of Carlisle. All joined in a rousing chorus of I Shall Lift Up Mine Eyes to the Hills. Among those present was former Vicar of Mardale, Revd. H. F. J. Barham. This had been his parish for twenty five years. He couldn’t bring himself to enter the church. Helena couldn’t bring herself to attend.

Before the flood, the natural lake had been divided almost in two by a natural promontory formed by Measand Beck. The larger southern lake was known as High Water, and the smaller northern one as Low Water. The narrow funnel connecting them was called The Straits. On Measand Promontory stood Measand Hall, and Measand Beck Farm.

The Last Days of Measand

On Monday 12th October 1936, the Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail reported:

“The Haweswater valley, one of the most secluded and peaceful places in the Lake District, echoed yesterday with the sound of explosions when Territorial offices of the Royal Engineers (East Lancashire Division) blew up three buildings on land which will be inundated. These buildings have been homesteads for five or six hundred years. Measand Hall, tenanted by the squires of Mardale for generations, stoutly resisted a new plastic explosive which was being tested for the War Office. At first only ounce charges were used. These made a great noise and raised clouds of smoke and dust, but the walls withstood them. The charges were increased, and these showed the quality of the new explosive, the walls crumbling to pieces instead of flying into the air. Mr. Leonard Kitchen and his family, who lived 40 yards from the hall at Measand Beck Farm, had retreated to safety so many times when the charges proved ineffective that he decided to go on with dinner. When the hall did collapse Mr. Kitchen’s windows were shattered and plaster fell on his Sunday joint.”

My friend, Richard Jennings, has been researching the valley, and he assures me Leonard’s last name is a misprint. He was a Kitching. I have no credible claim to kinship, but it makes me smile to know that my namesakes farmed in Mardale before the flood.

Measand Hall - the lost kingdom of Mardale — Measand Hall

Richard is here now, with his handsome Border collie, Frankie. We’re going in search of a much older story concerning another venerable Mardale family.

The Lost Kingdom of Mardale

The reign of King John was turbulent. The King fell out with the Church and then the barons. He was excommunicated by the Pope and forced by the rebel barons to sign Magna Carta, the closest thing we have ever had to a constitution. Seven years earlier in 1208, John had a foiled a smaller plot, known as the Canterbury Conspiracy. One of the perpetrators was Hugh Holme, whose ancestor came over with William the Conqueror. Hugh became a fugitive from royal retribution. He fled for Scotland but never reached the border, choosing to hide out instead in a cave in the remotest part of Riggindale, the small valley that forks off Mardale between Riggindale Edge and Kidsty Pike. When King John died, Hugh didn’t return to reclaim his lands. He settled in the valley. The residents prized him for his wisdom and worldly knowledge, and they gave him an honorary title. From then on, the head of the Holme family would always be known as the King of Mardale.

The Holme family were pillars of the community. They built the vicarage and did much to support the church. Some sources have also credited the Holme family with the building of a tower on Wood Howe, but in his 1904 book, Shappe in Bygone Days, Joseph Whiteside claims the tower was the work of an eccentric proprietor of the Dun Bull, named Thomas Lamley. Lamley’s aim was to build a structure tall enough to see over into neighbouring Swindale and Patterdale. Such an ambition would have required a tower nearly 2000 ft in height. Lamley gave up when it reached 20 ft, conceding that perhaps it wasn’t going to work. The tower doesn’t seem to have stood for long, but it does appear in a Thomas Allom print.

In 1885, Hugh Parker Holme, the last King of Mardale, was laid to rest. His death ended a family line much loved and revered in the dale. But what of their arrival here? Is the story of Hugh’s flight from King John true? Even today, the OS map names a spot on the lower slopes of Rough Crag as Hugh’s Cave but is this really where the fugitive baron hid from the King? Richard, Frankie, and I are going to investigate.

Mardale Green and Wood Howe by Thomas Allom -the lost kingdom of Mardale — Mardale Green and Wood Howe (showing the tower) by Thomas Allom

Remote Riggindale

We step around the toppled trunks of larches, victims of the violence wrought by Storm Arwen in November. Deciduous conifers, sparse with winter. Those still standing are feathered with delicate fans of twig, black against the steely grey of the lake, as if sketched in ink. A twilight world in monochrome. Yet as we emerge from the dense canopy of the Rigg, the early morning sky is lightening, turning Haweswater China blue. The silhouettes of broad leaf trees twist into spindly traceries, like woodcuts. Ahead, Swine Crag is a drab olive pyramid, rising from a bed of ginger bracken. Across Riggindale, the graphite slopes of Kidsty Pike dissolve into wispy mist. Overhead, the clouds are duck-egg blue, but above the snow-flecked Straits of Riggindale, the early sun ignites an amber glow—a warm band of ethereal light bathing the valley in primordial mystery.

We pass an old stone barn and handrail a dry stone wall, black as granite in the creeping shadow; we meet Riggindale Beck and fall in step; its hissing waters whisper intangible truths. Rough Crag rears above on our left, untouched by the celestial glow. It is dark and severe, a forbidding wall of tumbling scree and precipitous outcrops, peppered with wiry, twiggy tangles of mountain ash. A place of shadows and secrets, and perhaps a legendary cave.

Hugh’s Cave – Hideout of the First King

Ahead the stream curves into a tiny oxbow. The ground is becoming increasingly soggy, but I resist Richard’s suggestion that we head for the slopes as I have taken a compass bearing from the bend in the beck to where the OS map places the H of Hugh’s Cave. Richard is sceptical of its value, names on maps are often put where they obscure the fewest features and should only be read as approximations. Besides, he is convinced he has spied the cave from Kidsty Pike, a few years back, and thinks we should spot it easily from this distance. As we reach the oxbow, he does. I follow the line of his outstretched finger and pick out the chiselled boulder perched as a lintel above a black hollow. A skeletal rowan stands like a sentinel. I fish out my compass. It lies right on the bearing.

Richard and Frankie set off for Rough Crag

We start to climb, calves twinging in protest at the steepness of the scree. Soon we are scrambling over boulders. Rocky outcrops well up in waves, obscuring our target. I become disoriented, but Richard spots the rowan, and we lock back on course. The cave entrance is hidden but the rowan and lintel remain in view, yet despite our exertions, they seem forever the same distance away.

Eventually we reach a small grassy rake which leads up over a boulder to the rowan and the cave entrance. Only now we’re here, we uncover the deception: there is no cave. The lintel sits atop another boulder that slopes inward, creating a small alcove, which contrives in shadow to resemble an entrance.

Flummoxed but undeterred, we soldier on towards the jutting wall of Riggindale Crag, below Caspel Gate and Long Stile, that rugged stairway to the summit of High Street. Our efforts are unfocused, casting searching glances at rocks in the hope of finding an opening. Eventually, we spot one. Straight ahead, where the crags form into an almost vertical wall, a leaning boulder forms a crude arch over a dark recess, which might—just might—run deeper into the cliff. But alas, we are foiled again. As we draw near, the deceptive shadow dissipates, and reveals nothing but solid rock.

Back at the valley bottom, both boulders resume their illusory forms, and as we track back along the far shore of the beck, past the old wash fold, another deception is unmasked. Richard spots the cave he spied from Kidsty Pike. It is nothing more than a square slab of black rock.

Rewilding

Over the shoulder of Kidsty Pike, we settle on a grassy outcrop overlooking the lake, above the submerged course of the old road. In 1921, Councillor Isaac Hinchliffe of Manchester wrote an article for the Journal of the Fell and Rock Climbing Club in which he painted a fragrant picture:

Hawewater from the Coast to Coast path, above where the old road used to run.

“I hope the new road will be innocent of stone walls and iron railings, with wide margins some three or four yards where possible, with unobtrusive fences hidden by kindly growths which now for the most part fringe the road from Burn Banks to Mardale. Heather and gorse and ivy, blackthorn, holly and mountain ash, wild raspberries and blackberries, honeysuckle, wild roses, the Guelder rose, convolvulous and the meadow-sweet, which now scents the air even to one passing in a motor-car, the primrose, foxglove, and that beautiful and prolific plant, the wild geranium or meadow crane’s bill, to say nothing of the humble daisy and buttercup, or the tiny ranunculus which brightens the mossy wayside pools, the March violet, wild thyme, and a hundred other beautiful plants which now grow wild alongside or near to the present road. Patches of lady’s bed-straw and parsley fern will always relieve the grey monotony of the screes.”

Sadly, the Manchester Corporation did build a wall, and they replaced much of the indigenous flora with commercial forestry. Happily, much of the incongruous conifer has now been cleared—the dense larches on the Rigg are one of few the remaining outposts. The slopes of Selside and Branstree have been sensitively replanted with native broad leaves. In the years to come, the valley may once again resemble the councillor’s idyll.

Rowantreethwaite Beck and the Old Corpse Road (to the left of the ravine)

Richard is disappointed we didn’t find the cave, but part of me is secretly pleased. The romantic in me wants to imagine it is still there somewhere, its mouth hidden under tumbled boulders and filled with scree—a secret guarded by the mountain. I stare south-east across the water to where Holy Trinity lies submerged, then north to where Measand once stood. Perhaps it is better that Mardale keeps its mysteries hidden.

Wood Howe and the Rigg, and the waters covering Mardale Green

Mardale Uncovered

In the summer of 1976, after months of drought, the level of the reservoir dropped so low that the ruins of Mardale Green emerged. It happened again in 1984, and the Westmorland Gazette published a book, Mardale Revisited, by journalist and photographer, Geoffrey Berry. Berry contrasted photographs of the muddy remains with old pictures and accounts of Mardale as it once had been.

The village emerged for the third time in 1995, and the paper published a second edition of Berry’s book with an addendum by Karen Barden, who interviewed Helena Bailey and Joyce Bell. Joyce was four-and-a-half when she attended the final service at Holy Trinity Church with her mother, Lucy. Her parents, like theirs before them, had run the Dun Bull Inn. She remembered her mother’s reaction to visiting the ruins in 1976:

“She was very upset, but not bitter and could pick everything out. It was in a better state then.

“She played war with a couple at Chapel Hill going through the ash heap with a riddle. She said it was sacrilege and they had done more damage than the water.”

“The village had lain forgotten until then. A beautiful valley which had been totally ruined. It would never be allowed now and shouldn’t have happened then.”

Karen’s addendum is short but poignant, sympathetic to such emotional ties, and indignant, angry even, at the unfolding circus:

“They have arrived in their thousands along with ice cream sellers and others keen to make a fast buck from Mardale’s misery.

“An empty packet of 20 Regal lies where once there would have been a tomb. Wrappings from cheese and onion crisps and a Wall’s Cornetto carelessly tossed to a ground, normally over 50 feet under water.”

Mardale appeared again last summer (2021). I didn’t visit. I had done so three years earlier, in 2018, when the village was partially revealed. I chose a weekday evening. There were few people around, and it felt tranquil. Chapel Bridge was still submerged, but I could walk along the old walled track to the remains of the Dun Bull Inn and the farms of Grove Brae and Goosemire. It was fascinating if disquieting to enter the lost village, yet part of me felt I was intruding.

A Sting in the Tail

Looking out over the waters now, I try to imagine how Lucy must have felt; how she must have longed for people to leave this sunken chest of treasured memories to rest in peace. The residents sacrificed their homes and their heritage for the sake of progress. Yet there was a sting in the tail. On 8^th May 1933, Mr. Alan Chorlton, MP for Bolton, addressed Parliament with the following words:

“Looking at the existing condition of supplies in industrial areas, we have the extraordinary position that Manchester years ago before the decline in trade, went in for a scheme of supply of additional water to cost £10,000,000. Since that scheme was started there has been a change in the condition of world affairs which has so reduced the trade demand, that, with the movement of new industries elsewhere, this great scheme is not now called for. In fact there is more than sufficient water from existing supplies in that area.”

The reservoir went ahead regardless. I hope that Chorlton was wrong. I hope the water really was needed. But more than anything, I hope his words never reached Lucy’s ears. It would have been devastating to think that it was all for nothing.

Credits/Further Reading

A big thank you to Richard Jennings for sharing much of his research and furnishing me with some of the stories retold here. Richard’s own website is rich source of local history (as well as a host of great walking routes). It is well worth checking out:

https://www.lakelandroutes.uk/local-history/

Councillor Hinchliffe’s account of Mardale before the flood appeared in the Volume 5, No. 3 of the Journal of the Fell and Rock Climbing Club. It makes fascinating reading. You can find it on-line here:

https://www.frcc.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Vol5-3.pdf

Geoffrey Berry’s book, Mardale Revisited was published by the Westmorland Gazette in 1984, but it is worth seeking out the second edition from 1996 with the addendum by Karen Barden. ISBN: 1 901081 00 1

For more from me on Mardale, Riggindale and ascending High Street by Rough Crag, see:

Manchester, So Much to Answer For

Fell Walk, General, History, Lake District, Literature, Natural History, Nature

Four Great Books About Lakeland or Walking

December 12, 2021 George Kitching 10 Comments

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

English Pastoral by James Rebanks
Along the Divide by Chris Townsend
The Compleat Trespasser by John Bainbridge
Gin, Cake and Rucksacks by Beth Pipe and Karen Guttridge

English Pastoral

An Inheritance

James Rebanks

2020, Allen Lane

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Follow James on Twitter @herdyshepherd1

Next: Along the Divide by Chris Townsend

Pages: 1 2 3 4

Sources / Further Reading

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