Category Archives: Literature

Whitecoats: On the Path of the Plague Dogs, Part I

Raven Tor, Levers Hause and Seathwaite Tarn.

In Richard Adams’ 1977 bestseller, Plague Dogs, Rowf and Snitter are two dogs subjected to cruel experiments in a vivisection lab. When an unsecured catch and a loose bit of wire afford a means of escape, they find themselves in the Coniston Fells. Adams describes the landscape in vivid detail, and original editions of the book are illustrated in characteristic part sketch/part map style by one of Lakeland’s greatest apostles. Inspired by the story, I put on my boots and set off on the path of the Plague Dogs.

I’ve never read Watership Down. I was seven when it was published, but it didn’t cross my radar until the film of 1978. By then I was thirteen, and I’d just discovered Black Sabbath. I had long hair and a full-length leather coat from Oxfam, which I thought made me look like Geezer Butler. My mum had a different take. It was only after a year of people telling me the same thing that I came to accept that she might actually be right: the padded shoulders, pinched waist, faux fur collar and the particular arrangement of buttons meant it was unquestionably a woman’s coat, and if it made me look like anyone, it was Bet Lynch.

My teenage tunnel vision dismissed Watership Down as a cartoon about rabbits, soundtracked by Art Garfunkel and clearly aimed at girls; not the sort of thing a pimply, pubescent Prince Of Darkness should be watching, even if he was unknowingly experimenting with cross-dressing.

Eventually, I ditched the coat but never recovered sufficient good sense to read the book or watch the film. Now, at the tender age of fifty-two, I’m desperate to put that right because I’ve been utterly bowled over by The Plague Dogs.

Plague Dogs by Richard Adams
Plague Dogs by Richard Adams

The Plague Dogs was Adams’ third novel. It tells the story of Rowf and Snitter, a big black mongrel and a little fox terrier who escape from a vivisection laboratory and make for the hills. At first, they incur the wrath of local farmers whose sheep they kill in an attempt to stave off starvation, but when an unscrupulous tabloid journalist, with a remit to embarrass the Secretary of State, gets involved, the story snowballs into a national furore, inflamed by an unsubstantiated allegation that the dogs could be carrying the bubonic plague. Questions are asked in the House, and the army is despatched to assassinate our innocent canine heroes.

It’s a rollicking adventure, an emotional rollercoaster and a biting political satire, but it’s also a passionate anti-vivisection statement. The cruelty and utter pointlessness of the procedures beggars belief, yet in his preface, Adams confirms that “every ‘experiment’ described is one which has actually been carried out on animals somewhere”.

It’s not a wholly one-sided picture, however. No sooner do we sense that Stephen Powell, a young scientist at the lab, is becoming increasingly uncomfortable with his work than we learn his young daughter is suffering from a terminal illness. It’s Powell’s desperate hope that animal research will yield a breakthrough before it’s too late to save her.

And yet the experiments are as barbaric as they are futile: Rowf has been subjected to a succession of near drownings, repeatedly submerged in a tank of water and only revived once he goes limp and sinks to the bottom. He has never known men other than the “whitecoats”. Despite his traumatic experiences at their latex-sheathed, disinfected hands, he still wants to be a good dog and please his masters; but he can’t face another day in the immersion tank. Snitter’s story is even sadder as he remembers a blissfully happy home life before his beloved master was knocked down by a lorry—an accident for which Snitter blames himself. The details are incoherent because the whitecoats have cut open Snitter’s head and rewired his brain to confuse the subjective and the objective. As a result, he suffers disorienting confusion and bouts of vivid hallucination. In his lucid moments, however, he’s smart. Smart enough to notice an unsecured catch and a loose bit of wire. Smart enough to figure out how he and Rowf might escape. When they do, it’s into a landscape very familiar to lovers of Lakeland.

The real Lawson Park was a remote fell farm on the eastern bank of Coniston Water; now it’s an artists’ retreat, run by Grisedale Arts. Never in reality has it been any sort of research lab, but it’s the fictional location of Animal Research (Scientific and Experimental), A.R.S.E. for short—the setting for Rowf and Snitter’s inhumane treatment in the interests of science. When they make a break for hills, they find themselves in the Coniston Fells, which Adams renders in rich detail.

Coniston Fells
Coniston Fells

My friend, Gillian, grew up in Coniston and suggested I should read the book for this very reason. “You could walk the routes and write about it in your blog”, she said. It sounded a fine idea, so I searched for The Plague Dogs on Amazon. I was one click away from buying the current paperback, when a customer review caught my eye.

“Before buying a copy of The Plague Dogs I took out a request from the library and ended up with an older edition. It was a wonderful hardback – the illustrations of the Lake District by the late Alfred Wainwright complimented Adams’ rich, vivid prose perfectly. Sadly though, the illustrations have been removed from this recent (2015) re-issue.”

The original hardback was illustrated by Wainwright? This was the edition I had to have. Google found me a second-hand copy for £1 + £3.99 p&p. It arrived two days later, and it looked wonderful. As well as hatched pencil drawings of the fells, there were eight characteristic route maps, rendered in the same part sketch, part map style, familiar to readers of AW’s Pictorial Guides. Indeed, for Wainwright fans, the book is a welcome supplement.

Page 46
Page 46

Wainwright was also an ardent anti-vivisectionist, and Adams says in the preface, “I seriously doubt whether an author can ever have received more generous help and co-operation from an illustrator”.

It’s in the early hours of a crisp autumn morning that Rowf and Snitter make good their escape. As the sun rises, they find themselves on the wild expanse of Monk Coniston Moor. Snitter is appalled. What have the men done? “They’ve taken everything away, Rowf—the roads, cars, pavements, dustbins, gutters—the lot. How can they have done it?”

The pair head down hill, cross the road and trot along the shore of Coniston Water. Here, Snitter is entranced by how still everything looks beneath the surface. Would his racing mind be as calm if he was in there? Rowf is terrified of the water, however, and remonstrates with his friend not to go in. “You can’t imagine what it’s like”.

Monk Coniston Jetty
Monk Coniston Jetty
Coniston Water
Coniston Water

Buoyed up by the sight of houses in the distance, the fugitives head along the road to Coniston village, but Snitter is overcome by one of his turns and has to lie down. A car stops, and two men get out to help, but when they try to pick Snitter up, Rowf assumes they are trying to recapture him and return him to the lab. He springs forward in attack and frees his friend, and the pair run for the village.

Coniston village
Coniston village

Rowf is understandably wary of men, but Snitter knows they’re not all like the whitecoats. On the streets of Coniston, he remembers shops. In his former life, these were places where people made a fuss of you and gave you treats. They try their luck in a butchers’ shop. The friendly but fastidious proprietor comes over. He means no harm and crouches to greet them, but his hands smell of disinfectant, he’s carrying a knife, and a pair of scissors protrude from the pocket of his WHITE COAT.

The two dogs flee up the walled lane beyond The Black Bull and out into the Coppermines Valley. On page 46, Wainwright documents their route, and on a bright November morning, this is where I pick up the trail.

Track to Coppermines Valley
Track to Coppermines Valley
Church Beck
Church Beck
Track to Coppermines Valley
Track to Coppermines Valley

Above Miners’ Bridge, the Old Man, Brim Fell, Swirl How and Wetherlam are ablaze, lit orange and blue in the first light of morning, just as Adams describes. I follow the track beside Low Water Beck to the Youth Hostel. Here I pause to check the map and imagine the scene. As I do, I hear a faint patter and something soft brushes my leg. It’s a black dog. After a startled double take, I make friends with an excitable border collie, who can’t hang about because he’s just spotted a big stick. His loving owners are laughing as they catch us up, “that’ll be the first of many, today”, the woman grins. Proper masters, as Snitter might say.

Miners' Bridge
Miners’ Bridge

Church Beck waterfall
Church Beck waterfall
Border Collie, Coniston Youth Hostel
Rowf?

The main track swings right along the lower slopes of the Black Sails ridge, but I turn left towards the quarry, its marbled face, a dark daubed cubist canvas below the tufts of russet scrub. The road is blocked by a gate. It’s padlocked, but perhaps only to vehicles. Beyond, the word “Footpath” has been scrawled on a slate. I climb the bars and start up the faint grassy trod to which it points. Above the spoil heaps, I join the path from Crowberry Haws. Two slate cairns stand guard, and a Herdwick grazes unperturbed.

Quarry, Coppermines Valley
Quarry, Coppermines Valley
Quarry, Coppermines Valley
Quarry, Coppermines Valley
Wetherlam from Boulder Valley
Wetherlam from Boulder Valley

I cross the footbridge into Boulder Valley and pause by the Pudding Stone. The path continues to Levers Water, but immediately above, Brim Fell towers, craggy and intimidating. Anxious to escape the reach of man, it’s up these steep slopes that Rowf and Snitter start. I feel duty-bound to follow, although perhaps not strictly in their paw steps. They have me at a disadvantage: for one, they’re dogs—replete with four legs and a low centre of gravity; and two, they’re fictional, so they have the intrinsic power to do whatever Adams’ imagination invents. He has them climbing on the line of Low Water Beck, clambering up its boulders, skirting its shallow falls and splashing through its brown pools. His co-conspirator, Wainwright, plots the path. But from where I’m standing, the beck is an angry cascade, crashing down a severe ravine. I see no way up for a meagre middle-aged mortal.

Low Water Beck ravine
Low Water Beck ravine

In his Pictorial Guide, Wainwright advocates a mildly more man-friendly route, which climbs a grassy rake on the opposite side of the crag. I detect what might be a path leading to the crag’s foot. It proves something of a mirage, and I’m quickly off piste, but I track around the bottom of the rocks toward the strip of mossy green. A brief scramble provides a short-cut, and soon I’m clambering up steep and slippery grass. It’s hard going, requiring hands and feet, and I can see why AW advises against it for descent. But it’s not far from the beck, so I feel I’m being as true as I can to the plot, and besides, I’ve always wanted to try this ascent, AW promises it furnishes a fuller understanding of the fell’s true structure.

Simon's Nick, Coppermines Valley
Simon’s Nick, Coppermines Valley

I reach an old mine level, where the curled ends of rail tracks protrude like vestigial limbs. Here a path of sorts emerges; it’s a steep rocky staircase, skirting a river of loose stone, but the going is firmer than before, if no kinder on the calves. Eventually, the gradient relents, and I’m confronted with a vision that fills Rowf with dread—the limpid corrie tarn of Low Water, a pool of primeval tranquility, a dark oasis of serenity below the plunging slopes of the Old Man, but to poor traumatised Rowf, a huge, menacing immersion tank.  He races away up the slope to the summit of Raven Tor. I sip coffee, catch my breath, and just as Snitter does, I follow.

Looking back down from Brill Fell ascent
Looking back down from Brill Fell ascent
Raven Tor
Raven Tor

Beyond the summit, the ground drops abruptly to Levers Water. Strangely, despite its larger size, the tarn holds no fresh dread for Rowf. It’s just as well because Snitter spots a line of sheep by the western shore. They’re being pursued by two border collies and a man. The man is whistling and calling to the dogs, encouraging them to chase the sheep, and the dogs are listening and responding. Man and dog, working as a team. Here at last is a proper master. All he and Rowf have to do now is bound down the fell side and join in. If they chase the sheep too, perhaps the man will give them a home, and food, and a happy life away from the whitecoats.

Levers Water from Raven Tor
Levers Water from Raven Tor

My descent is more circumspect. The slopes below the col look precipitous. In his Pictorial Guide, AW shows a route beside Cove Beck. I follow a narrow trod over the spine of Gill Cove Crag, in the shadow of Brim Fell’s summit, and as the contours diverge, I descend through increasingly soggy ground. Eventually, I hear the sound of running water, and the beck appears, a narrow scar trickling elusively through scrubby moorland.

Beyond, a cairn marks the path up to Levers Hause. Between here and the waterline, Rowf and Snitter make their ill-fated attempt to gain a master by chasing his sheep. Luckily, his sheep dogs reach them first and vent their anger in broad Cumbrian:

“Art out of the minds, chasing yows oop an’ down fell, snappin’ an’ bitin’?”, fumes one. “Wheer’s thy farm at? Wheer’s thy master?”.

When Snitter explains, “we haven’t a master. We want to meet yours”, the answer is unequivocal: “He’ll fill thee wi’ lead”.

I turn and follow the forlorn fugitives’ escape route up steep rocky steps to Levers Hause. Here, the dogs ruefully acknowledge they’ll find no welcome in the world of men. They must become wild animals. Still stoked from the chase, Rowf attacks a mountain ewe. He makes the kill, but takes a fair battering in the process. With his hunger satiated, exhaustion takes hold, and the big black mongrel lies down in the bog myrtle to nurse his injuries. Meanwhile, Snitter despairs at the bleakness of their prospects. As his synapses start to misfire, he scampers down the steep slopes to the Duddon Valley in a firestorm of neurotic confusion.

Levers Water from Levers Hause path
Levers Water from Levers Hause path

A right of way runs from Levers Hause to the far shore of Seathwaite Tarn. Or at least it does on the map. There’s little sign of a path on the ground, and the gradient is frightening. I’d have to be as mad as Snitter to attempt it, and yet somehow, I do. I climb down a little way to test the going, stepping sideways from grassy tuft to stony shelf. Emboldened, I soldier on. Part way down, I imagine a path, but it’s just a loose spray of scree, too shallow to offer much support. Zigzagging avoids the severest sections, and earlier than I’d reckoned, I’m approaching the tumbling waters of Tarn Beck.  Here, the ground grows marshy; the valley bottom is a quagmire, red with reed beds as it reaches out to Seathwaite reservoir. I keep to a contour to stay out of the worst. The sun is streaming over Dow Crag, bleaching the fell sides and blinding me with its glare.

Seathwaite Tarn from Levers Hause
Seathwaite Tarn from Levers Hause
Tarn Beck
Duddon Valley and Seathwaite Tarn
Duddon Valley and Seathwaite Tarn

Here, Snitter does what I decline to do. Lured by the fevered machinations of his scrambled mind, he breaches the beck and splashes through the boggy ground on the other side. The kindly man in the brown tweed coat that he imagined was there is an illusion, but as the fit passes and the world comes back into focus, he spots something else. Something welcome. Something real. Just shy of the reservoir he finds a small spoil heap:

“On top was a levelled space of turf and small stones, perhaps half the size of a lawn tennis court. It was completely empty, but on the further side, where Great Blake Rigg, the south face of Grey Friar, rises like a wall was a symmetrical, dark opening, lined and arched with stones”.

I’m looking at it now (through binoculars).  It’s an old level of Seathwaite copper mine, and in the book, it becomes a temporary home for Rowf and Snitter. Here, they meet the tod, a wily fox, well-versed in the ways of the wild.  His savvy, calculating instinct for self-preservation contrasts markedly with the dogs’ innocent loyalty. He’s appalled by their naivety and sees them as a liability, likely to draw the attention of farmers and their shotguns. Yet, in Rowf he also sees a valuable asset: there’s not many a wild Lakeland beast can bring down a full-grown ewe.  The dogs might have their uses after all, and an uneasy alliance is formed.

Rowf and Snitter's new home

Rowf and Snitter’s new home

Short winter daylight hours dictate that here, for now, I must take my leave. But as I make the day’s last ascent out of lonely Dunnerdale and up to Goat Hawse, the peace is broken by an alarming bark, fuelled with feral bloodlust. A chilling chorus of murderous howls swells into an amplified echo, and on the lower slopes of Grey Friar, I make out a swarm of white dots moving fast across the fell.  With binoculars comes comprehension: fuzzy points resolve into a pack of foxhounds. They’re coursing an aniseed trail. It’s profoundly unsettling because it’s a scene straight from the book. In all my years on the fells, I’ve never witnessed this, yet later in the story, Snitter sees the self-same thing.  Only this time, it’s not aniseed they’re hunting… it’s the tod.

To be continued…

Read the second part of my journey along the path of the Plague Dogs here:

Here’s where the story ends


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    In My Time Of Dying

    Haystacks and Wainwright.

    As a teenager, my overriding aspiration was to move to the city and form a band. It was the start of a journey that would take me from the clubs of Newcastle to the pages of the NME and the very cusp of success, only to change direction and drop me in the wilds of Cumbria. En route, Jimi Hendrix would make room for a Borough Treasurer from Blackburn who disliked music, didn’t much like people, but loved the hills and whose writing opened my eyes to a whole new world. I pay tribute to this unlikeliest of heroes on top of Haystacks, the heather-clad hill where his ashes are scattered.

    From Hendrix to the Hills

    My heroes were all musicians: Jimi Hendrix, Pete Townshend, Gram Parsons, Paul Weller, Black Francis… I could go on.  I grew up in the country among the gentle hills of Wiltshire, but when I was 18, it wasn’t higher fells I craved, it was the city. Somewhere with nightlife and a thriving alternative music scene; somewhere I could join a band and play loud electric guitar in dark, sweaty, smoky clubs.

    I secured a place at Newcastle University but my studies came second to my musical aspirations. After some false starts and a few years learning how to make noises other people might deign to listen to, I found friends with the right collective chemistry and we formed a band that was half decent.  We were called Hug, and together we achieved most of our teenage ambitions.  We toured the country in a transit van; played support to some of our heroes; we secured a record contract and released three e.p.’s and an album. We recorded sessions for Radio 1; and, at the start of 1991, the New Musical Express named us, alongside the Manic Street Preachers and Ocean Colour Scene, as one of their top tips for the coming year.

    Hug 1990
    Hug 1990. Photo by Sandy Kitching
    Hug 1990
    Hug 1991. Photo by Sandy Kitching

    Unfortunately, we were the exception that proved the rule. While others on the list shot into the arena of international stardom, our journey stalled at the perimeter, performed a three-point turn and deposited us back at the Gateshead DHSS, where our hopes of evading more traditional employment were unceremoniously quashed.

    I signed up for a course at Newcastle Poly or Northumbria University, as it had just become (supposedly an eleventh-hour name change, after some bright spark on the committee realised that rebranding it, “The City University of Newcastle upon Tyne” wouldn’t abbreviate well). I was to learn about IT, a far cry from my original vision of a career, but one that might, at least, earn me a living.

    I hadn’t long qualified when my wife, Sandy was offered a dream job in Cumbria. I urged her to take it and set about seeking opportunities for myself, eventually securing a role with a small company developing medical software for managing people on dangerous drugs (the prescribed, not the proscribed kind). It seemed an interesting and worthwhile use of my new skills and we settled in the South Lakes.

    Our first house was on the edge of a wood, right out in the sticks. It took a few weeks to adjust.  I’d never really understood the term, “the roaring silence” until then.  When you live in a city for any length of time you stop hearing the constant hum of traffic, but it becomes a vaguely hypnotic backdrop; a subliminal reassurance that the buzz of human activity continues as normal. To have it suddenly removed was disconcerting.  I remember lying awake, acutely aware that I could hear absolutely nothing. Then a barn owl screeched outside the open window and I nearly shot through the ceiling.  A few months later, I heard the bark of a stag for the first time and thought the Hound of the Baskervilles was coming through the wood.

    But the countryside had started to work its magic and, before long, I felt the draw of the mountains. I invested in a set of OS maps and some walking guides, including a set of laminated cards, which I still use, although their age is now apparent from the supporting notes, which advise the intrepid explorer to “invest in a pair of walking stockings and a spare pullover”.

    An Unlikely Hero

    As my interest grew, I become acquainted with a name that seemed almost synonymous with the Lakeland fells.  In the Carnforth Bookshop, I chanced upon a second-hand copy of one of his books, “The Southern Fells” and snapped it up to see what the fuss was about.  The pocket-sized tome was a little dog-eared and it had obviously witnessed, first-hand, the summits it described; but it was all the more special for it. Its content, however, was a revelation: a series of pen and ink drawings, part map, part sketch that ingeniously captured the essence of a mountain and rendered it on a 2D page in such a way that the reader instantly understood its character and topography. I had always admired the way artist, David Hockney could convey so much with such an economy of line. Here too, the author accomplished a similar feat; and the accompanying text was pure, heartfelt poetry. It spoke volumes in a few simple paragraphs shot-through with warmth, humour, passion and practical advice.

    Suddenly, Jimi Hendrix and Pete Townshend had to shuffle along to make room for a pipe-smoking, whiskered, staunchly conservative old curmudgeon, who went by the name of Alfred Wainwright. An unlikely coalition to say the least – Wainwright once assured a bemused Sue Lawley on Desert Island Discs that, “music has never played an important part in my life. It’s never been an inspiration to me. Rather an irritation, very often.”

    Born in Blackburn, Alfred Wainwright grew up in relative poverty. His father was an alcoholic, who drank much of what little he earned as a stonemason. The young Alfred was bright and a model pupil at school, where he consistently scored top marks, but he was forced to leave at thirteen in order to support his mother.

    He got a job as an office boy with the Blackburn Borough Engineer’s department, but continued his studies at night school and eventually qualified as an accountant, which enabled him to climb the career ladder and become Borough Treasurer.

    If the young Wainwright’s diligent attempts to better his lot were an attempt to escape the hardships of his upbringing, poverty was not the only thing he wanted to flee. From an early age, he had shown a keen interest in walking and cartography. He produced his own maps and frequently eschewed the industrial urban environment for long days in the tranquility of the countryside.

    At the age of twenty three, Alfred, or AW as he preferred to be known, came to the Lakes for a walking holiday with his cousin, Eric. They climbed Orrest Head, above Windermere, where they witnessed the Lakeland fells for the first time. He described the experience as “magic; a revelation so unexpected that I stood transfixed, unable to believe my eyes”.

    A year later, AW entered into a disastrous marriage with Ruth Holden. Throughout their courtship, Wainwright kept his cap on. When he finally removed it on their wedding night, the sight of his red hair revolted her and both parties rapidly came to regret their decision. Despite the birth of their son, Peter in 1933, domestic relations did not improve and the lure of the Lakes as an escape grew ever stronger.

    Wainwright’s biographer, Hunter Davies is convinced that had AW found happiness in his first marriage, he would have “walked far less and written nothing”. As it was, his trips to  the fells became a weekly pilgrimage and he eventually took a pay cut to move to Kendal in 1941. Eleven years later, he started writing his Pictorial Guides as a “love letter” to the landscape that held him in such rapture.

    That AW sought solace among the summits is abundantly obvious throughout his books. He describes finding “a balm for jangled nerves in the silence and solitude of the peaks” and of “man’s search for beauty, growing keener as so much in the world grows uglier”.

    An intensely private man, he disliked crowds and disapproved of group excursions as evidenced in his mournful description of the popular route up the Old Man of Coniston: “This is the way the crowds go: the day trippers, the courting couples, babies and grandmothers, the lot. On this stony parade, fancy handbags and painted toenails are as likely to be seen as rucksacks and boots.”  This is accompanied by a sketch of a lone walker looking to the fells while a crowd stares in the opposite direction, trying to spot Blackpool Tower.

    By his own admission, Wainwright was a shy child who grew up to be anti-social, but the popular perception of an old curmudgeon is a little unfair. Bonhomie toward like-minded explorers runs right through his writing and his dry humour is everywhere.

    In a personal note at the conclusion of his final Pictorial Guide, “The Western Fells”, AW lists his six best Lakeland mountains as “Scafell Pike, Bowfell, Pillar, Great Gable, Blencathra and Crinkle Crags”, then quickly qualifies the list, explaining, “These are not necessarily the six fells I like the best. It grieves me to have to omit Haystacks (most of all)”.

    Haystacks is not technically a mountain, being just short of the requisite 2000 ft, and AW is being objective in omitting it on these grounds; but this relatively diminutive hill captured his heart more than any other. He describes it as standing “unabashed and unashamed amid a circle of higher fells, like a shaggy terrier in the company of foxhounds”… “For a man trying to get a persistent worry out of his mind, the top of Haystacks is a wonderful cure.”

    Haystacks from Fleetwith Pike
    Haystacks from Fleetwith Pike
    Innominate Tarn
    Innominate Tarn

    The “persistent worry” of his home life continued until, in his own words, “my wife left me, took the dog and I never saw her again”. AW eventually found matrimonial happiness when he married an old friend, Betty McNally. She became not only his spouse but his walking companion. After his death in 1991, Betty carried out AW’s long-held wish and scattered his ashes by Innominate Tarn on top of his beloved Haystacks.

    Haystacks and Fleetwith Pike

    It’s been years since I climbed Haystacks and when I did, the top was shrouded in mist. It’s high time I return. I leave the house at 6:00 am for a glorious drive that runs the full lengths of Windermere, Rydal Water, Grasmere, Thirlmere and Derwent Water. From the high level drama of the Honister Pass, I descend to Gatesgarth with Buttermere stretched out before me, sparkling in the September sun.

    I park the car and follow the stream through the farmyard and out toward High Crag, towering ahead. To my left, Fleetwith Edge soars up over Low and High Raven Crags to the top of Fleetwith Pike. This is my intended descent. It looks a little daunting from below, but the views will be outstanding. Between these two loftier neighbours lies Haystacks, a dwarf in comparison but no grassy hillock, its craggy rock-face hints at the interest on top.

    I must have slept at an odd angle as I have a stiff neck which the drive has turned into a dull headache. Wainwright famously declared, “one can forget even a raging toothache on Haystacks”, so I’m sure it won’t bother me for long, but as I round a little coppice of trees, I find a sealed tray of paracetamol in the path. I don’t really believe in fate but can’t deny the serendipity and it feeds a strange feeling that I’m somehow supposed to be here today.

    Buttermere and High Snockrigg
    Buttermere and High Snockrigg

    I start the climb up to Scarth Gap between Haystacks and High Crag, pausing occasionally to cast an eye back  over Buttermere and Crummock Water. On reaching Scarth Gap, I’m greeted with fine views over Ennerdale to two of Lakeland’s heavyweights, Pillar and Great Gable. Pillar’s precipitous northern slopes are bathed in green shadow, sheer and formidable. I try to trace the High Level Traverse between the crags to the magnificent column of Pillar Rock, from which the mountain takes its name. I lose the line of the path (apparently it’s not much easier to follow when you’re on it).

    Pillar from Scarth Gap
    Pillar from Scarth Gap

    A cloud floats across the face of Gable, a huge dark turret rising from the valley head. Over Buttermere, the bulky mass of Grassmoor dominates, while here, across the saddle, the path climbs steeply to the rocky heights of High Crag. These are the “foxhounds” in whose company the “shaggy terrier” behind me stands “unabashed and unashamed”. I turn around and continue the climb to discover why.

    Great Gable at the head of Ennerdale
    Great Gable at the head of Ennerdale

    The question is quickly answered as the ascent turns into a scramble; nothing technically difficult, but challenging enough to establish this as mountain terrain, good and proper, and the rival of any of its neighbours. On reaching the parapet, Haystacks’ treasures are revealed in full – a heather-clad castle of rocky towers and tiny tarns, leading eyes and feet in a merry dance of intrigue. Two excrescences of stone vie for the distinction of summit, although the honour is usually bestowed on the farther one, which boasts a cairn as its crown.

    Summit cairn, Haystacks
    Summit cairn, Haystacks

    Cloud shadows dapple the flanks of High Crag as I look back across a small blue pond that glistens like an overture to the watery expanse of Buttermere beyond. I’m almost entirely alone, but for two distant figures perched precariously atop the turret of Big Stack, framed against the plunging crags of Fleetwith Pike. Everywhere I turn is magical and somehow otherworldly. Haystacks has all the rugged drama of its neighbours but here, in place of a desolate wilderness of boulder, is a wild beauty and a pervading sense of tranquillity.

    Walker perched on Big Stack with Fleetwith Pike behind
    Walkers perched on Big Stack with Fleetwith Pike behind
    High Stile over Haystacks summit tarn
    High Stile over Haystacks summit tarn
    High Stile over summit cairn, Haystacks
    High Stile over a summit tarn on Haystacks
    Buttermere from Haystacks summit cairn
    Buttermere from Haystacks summit cairn

    I cross a depression and clamber to the true summit for another breathtaking panorama; then meander down through the heather, where herdwicks graze happily, to the peaceful shore of Innominate Tarn. AW’s wish to be scattered here is expressed more than once in his writings, but never as fully and eloquently as in Memoirs of a Fellwanderer, where he says this:

    “All I ask for, at the end, is a last long resting place by the side of Innominate Tarn, on Haystacks, where the water gently laps the gravelly shore and the heather blooms and Pillar and Gable keep unfailing watch. A quiet place, a lonely place.

    “I shall go to it, for the last time, and be carried – someone who knew me in life will take me and empty me out of a little box and leave me there alone. And if you, dear reader, should get a bit of grit in your boot as you are crossing Haystacks in the years to come, please treat it with respect. It might be me”.

    Innominate Tarn
    Innominate Tarn
    Herdwick grazing among the heather
    Herdwick grazing among the heather

    I’m transfixed by the gently rippling waters and could easily linger all day. AW was not a religious man. He knew heaven was right here and to mingle with this soil and feed the heather was his hope for an afterlife. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…

    Innominate Tarn
    Innominate Tarn

    To Wainwright, true music was here – in birdsong, or the tinkling of a mountain stream, or the sound of the wind among the peaks. I can’t argue with that. It’s perfect.

    Innominate Tarn
    Innominate Tarn with Gable keeping watch

    Eventually, I wrestle myself away and follow the path as it wends down through some remarkable rock scenery to Dubs Bottom, from where I start the ascent of Fleetwith Pike.

    Rock scenery on route to Dubs Bottom
    Rock scenery on route to Dubs Bottom
    Rock scenery on route to Dubs Bottom
    Rock scenery on route to Dubs Bottom

    The contrast could not be more striking. The intoxicating spell of a natural Shangri-La is broken by the harsh scars of industry in the spoil heaps and engineered gullies of Dubs quarry. From here, the path follows the line of an old works tramway to the head of Honister Crag, known as Black Star. Wainwright describes Black Star as “a place without beauty. A place to daunt they eye and creep the flesh”. The crag itself is not in view, but on the horizon a spoil heap rises, battleship grey, like a dark and sinister tower. If Haystacks was a fairy tale fortress, the vision ahead is the Castle of the Dolorous Guard, straight from the page of Arthurian legend. “Dub” is a Celtic word for black and right on cue, the sky darkens. It’s enough to send a slight shiver down the spine.

    It would be remiss to imply the old quarry workings are a lamentable eyesore, however. Industrial heritage holds its own fascination, especially as it is slowly reclaimed by nature. AW understood that Lakeland isn’t a true wilderness. The hand of man is everywhere, from the intricate pattern of dry stone walls enclosing lush green grazing pastures in the valley bottoms to the shafts and tunnels of old mines that pierce the fell sides. As he put it (in describing Honister), “there is no beauty in despoliation and devastation but there can be dramatic effect and interest and so it is here”.

    But the desolate outcrop of Black Star is not my destination and I turn left after Dubs Hut (maintained as a bothy by the Mountain Bothies Association) and climb beside a slate-filled gully to two spoil heaps where I pick up a path left, which meanders over open moorland to the summit of Fleetwith Pike. Here, one of the finest views in Lakeland awaits, looking straight down the valley over Buttermere and Crummock Water with distant Loweswater curving off to the left.

    Buttermere from Fleetwith summit
    Buttermere from Fleetwith summit

    I sit and stare at this majestic scene as I eat my lunch, then begin the plunging descent of Fleetwith Edge. It’s not nearly as daunting as it appeared from below. There are some steep rock steps to negotiate and some minor scrambling, but nothing too difficult if due care is taken. The path follows well chosen zigzags and is impossible to rush, not only because you need to watch your footing, but also because it’s absolutely necessary to pause frequently and marvel at the improving vista.

    Buttermere from Fleetwith Edge
    Buttermere from Fleetwith Edge
    Descending Fleetwith Edge
    Descending Fleetwith Edge

    At the bottom, I join the road and I’m suddenly struck by the hope that my gaitors have done their job. What if I find a bit of grit in my boot? I can’t leave AW in the car park, he hated cars.

    I look back and notice the white wooden cross low on the fell side. This marks the spot where Fanny Mercer, a servant girl from Rugby, fell from Fleetwith Edge in September 1887 (130 years ago, this month). Her simple memorial is a sobering reminder that the fells can be treacherous as well as beautiful. It’s heartbreaking to think one so young was robbed of her life on what should have been a joyful excursion.

    Fanny Mercer's cross
    Fanny Mercer’s cross

    Tragic accidents occur daily, some of much greater magnitude than the sad story of a servant girl from over a hundred years ago. And yet this simple cross remains affecting because there’s no objective yardstick for pain. That whole communities are devastated by fire, flood, disease or famine doesn’t negate the suffering of someone bruised by a failed relationship or grieving the loss of a loved one. We all have our crosses to bear, however big or small, but ironically, it’s often hardship that sharpens our senses to the beauty in the world. The most affecting songs are rooted in heartbreak and it was perhaps the pain of a loveless marriage that led Wainwright to find hope, inspiration and validation among these hills. I hope Fanny experienced a little of that wonder too, before her life was cut so abruptly short.

    “The fleeting hour of life of those who love the hills is quickly spent, but the hills are eternal. Always there will be the lonely ridge, the dancing beck, the silent forest; always there will be the exhilaration of the summits. These are for the seeking, and those who seek and find while there is still time will be blessed both in mind and body” – A Wainwright.


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      All That Glitters…

      The Newlands Horseshoe

      The wild scenery of the Newlands valley is spectacularly beautiful and surprisingly famous, prized by both Beatrix Potter and Queen Elizabeth I for very different reasons. On this inspiring high-level circuit, I learn why the Earl of Northumberland lost his head and how a hedgehog may hold the key to happiness.

      The Tale of Mrs Tiggy-winkle

      “Once upon a time there was a little girl called Lucie, who lived at a farm called Little-town. She was a good little girl – only she was always losing her pocket handkerchiefs.”

      So begins Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Mrs Tiggy-winkle, in which a little girl goes looking for her lost pinafore and pocket handkerchiefs. As she scrambles up a hill called Cat Bells, she discovers a door in the hillside. She knocks. The door opens, and she’s invited into the tiny kitchen of Mrs Tiggy-winkle, a washer-woman who launders clothes for the local animals. Not only has Mrs Tiggy-winkle found Lucie’s lost linen, she’s washed and pressed it all for her.

      Out of gratitude, Lucie helps Mrs Tiggy-winkle deliver clean clothes to the animals. Once back at the stile, she watches Mrs Tiggy-winkle scamper home and notices now her friend suddenly looks smaller and seems to have swapped her clothes for a coat of prickles. Only then, does Lucie realise that Mrs Tiggy-winkle is a hedgehog.

      Some think Lucie fell asleep at the stile and dreamt the whole escapade, but they can’t explain how she returned home with her freshly laundered pinafore and missing handkerchiefs.

      The tale was Potter’s sixth book and the first to use a real-life setting. Cat Bells is a well-known Lakeland landmark, familiar to those visiting Keswick as the distinctive hill rising over the far bank of Derwent Water. Its western slopes run down to the Newlands valley. At the valley’s wild heart is Littletown, a tiny hamlet comprising a farm and a few cottages.

      Cat Bells and Derwent Water
      Cat Bells and Derwent Water

      In the summer of 1904, Potter took a holiday at Lingholm, just outside Portinscale, at the foot of the valley. She spent her time sketching Newlands, Littletown, Cat Bells and the mighty Skiddaw, whose summits dominate the skyline to the north-east. These pen and ink drawings were reproduced in the finished book, virtually unchanged. Even the door in the hillside had a basis in reality – it probably shuttered an old mine level. With its publication, one of the quietest and most secluded of Lakeland valleys became well known to millions of children around the world.

      The Rising of the North

      But Newlands found fame long before Potter’s time. Goldscope, on the lower slopes of Hindscarth, was the most renowned of the Cumbrian mines, yielding rich seams of copper, lead and even small quantities of gold and silver. The German engineers, who spearheaded the works, named it Gottesgab, or God’s Gift (eventually corrupted to Goldscope). Elizabeth I considered the mine so strategically important that she requisitioned it from its owner, Thomas Percy, 7th Earl of Northumberland, and refused to pay him royalties. Percy took the Queen to court, and, unsurprisingly, he lost. A catholic and supporter of Mary Queen of Scots, the earl was already ill-disposed to the protestant Elizabeth and the loss of revenue from his land proved the last straw. In 1569, he joined forces with The Earl of Westmorland and several other Catholic nobles in the Rising of the North, an armed insurrection against the Queen. The rebellion was quashed, and Elizabeth parted Percy from more than his mine. She cut off his head.

      The Newlands Horseshoe

      Newlands is ringed by a mighty horseshoe of fells. The eastern prong comprises Cat Bells, Maiden Moor and High Spy, while the western side splits into horseshoe of its own, with an outer wall of Robinson and High Snab Bank, and an inner curtain of Hindscarth and Scope End (Goldscope lies beneath). Dale Head stands exactly where you’d expect – a grand centrepiece.

      The Newlands Valley
      The Newlands Valley

      On a beautiful June morning, I park up in Littletown and take the track opposite the farm, signposted Hause Gate and Cat Bells. Scope End rises invitingly across the valley. Wainwright says we should “make a special note of the Scope End ridge: this route on an enchanting track along the heathery crest, is really splendid… In descent, the route earns full marks because of the lovely views of Newlands directly ahead.”

      Scope End
      Scope End

      I’m here to tackle the horseshoe, but heeding Wainwright’s advice, I leave Scope End for last and follow the track eastwards up the fellside, bearing right on to a grassy bridleway. The path crosses a stream then zigzags up to the col of Hause Gate between Cat Bells and Maiden Moor. The sudden eye-watering aspect over Derwent Water and Bassenthwaite to Skiddaw is enough to quicken the pulse if it wasn’t already racing from the ascent. It’s only 9 o’clock, and even at this hour, there’s strength in the sun. The Newlands slopes are shades of green so vivid they assault the senses, but a summer haze paints the distant shores in watercolour.

      I forego Cat Bells (it’s in the opposite direction to the rest of the horseshoe) and turn right for Maiden Moor. Maiden Moor’s summit is a featureless plateau, but from here on, the horseshoe is an airy, high level circuit that is never short of spectacular. The drama increases as soon as the crags of High Spy North Top appear. Its rocky outcrops afford the last sparkling mirage of Derwentwater.

      Derwent Water from High Spy North Top
      Derwent Water from High Spy North Top

      The true summit lies a little further onward. At its western edge, the precipitous cliffs of Eel Crag plunge to Newlands’ floor. Across the valley, the rocky face of Hindscarth rises in counterpoint like a dark grooved pyramid on an upward sweep of green, the spires of Coledale beyond. Borrowdale unfolds viridian below, and further round, a tsunami of white cloud breaks over Great Gable, engulfing the summit in a surging wash of foam, the surf plunging below the skyline.

      Hindscarth from High Spy
      Hindscarth from High Spy

      It’s Olympian. I seem to have reached the top of the world. Such a scene would have undoubtedly inspired the Great Masters to paint lavish depictions of God

      As I stare in wonder, I notice a solitary figure sitting on the horizon, legs outstretched, gazing down on creation. Could this be the Almighty on a tea break, taking five to review his work?

      I draw nearer. Now, I see that the Great Masters got it all wrong. There’s no long white beard or flowing robes. No muscle-bound Adonis hurling thunderbolts. No Bacchanalian feast. Just an old chap in a plaid shirt and a battered fishing cap eating corned-beef sandwiches from a Tupperware tucker box. As a vision of The Almighty, it’s perfect.

      I notice how the summit cairn is a work of art – a perfect cone, worthy of Andy Goldsworthy. Perhaps, it was a divine commission. As I pass, I shout a greeting to God. He responds with a brief salute and returns to his sandwiches.

      Top of the World - High Spy
      Top of the World – High Spy

      The seasoned mountaineer, Bill Birkett, describes the pull up Dale Head as “strenuous”, so I’m ready for a stiff climb, but I have to say, it doesn’t look all that much higher. Only once I’m over the crest do I realise quite how far the path drops to Dale Head Tarn first. On the way down, the cloud inversion is ever more beguiling. It makes the loss of altitude worthwhile. I indulge my eyes in the certain knowledge my quads will pick up the tab shortly.

      A large stone shelter sits above the tarn. I rest a few minutes, staring straight down the valley to Skiddaw, then wander down to the waterline. The surface is an oasis of cool blue glittering among the reed beds. It’s a lovely spot to while away a sunny day. But I must put these thoughts from my mind, I have another mountain to climb.

      Dale Head Tarn
      Dale Head Tarn
      Dale Head from High Spy
      Dale Head from High Spy

      The ascent is steep but mercifully short, and the effort is gratuitously rewarded. Dale Head’s sculptural cairn makes High Spy’s look like a preliminary sketch. The real show-stopper, though, is the magnificent view down the entire length of the Newlands valley – a perfect, glacial, U-shaped example. In geological terms, Dale Head is the junction between two major Lakeland rock formations: sedimentary Skiddaw Slate to the north and Borrowdale Volcanic to the south; systems of stone separated by fifty million years of planetary evolution.

      Dale Head Summit Cairn
      Dale Head Summit Cairn

      The view south over the dark mossy crags of Fleetwith Pike to the distant brooding leviathans of Great Gable, Kirk Fell and Pillar is every bit as arresting. I walk west along the long flat top, pausing frequently to savour it all. As the path drops to the depression before Hindscarth, a magnificent prospect gapes open over Buttermere to High Stile and her henchmen, High Crag and Red Pike. A photographer mounts a massive lens on a tripod. I take a photograph, surreptitiously, and try not to feel inadequate about my little point-and-shoot.

      It’s the perfect spot to pause and eat some lunch.

      Buttermere from Dale Head
      Buttermere from Dale Head

      A crunch of scree below. Two fell-runners are jogging up the stiff gradient. When they reach me, they pause for breath and we chat. They’re attempting a section of the Bob Graham Round, a leisurely little leg-stretcher, in which contestants conquer 44 peaks in under 24 hours. They’ve run over Robinson and they’re heading for Great Gable. After the briefest of respites, they resume, and I watch in bewilderment. Apparently by pushing your body to that kind of physical extreme, you experience an endorphin-induced euphoria. I’m perched on a rock, eating a pie – it’s euphoria enough for me!

      Redemption

      After lunch, I stroll down to the depression and follow the path right, to the summit of Hindscarth. Across Little Dale, Robinson is a mirror image, dropping abruptly to High Snab Bank, as I drop down to Scope End.

      Wainwright was right about Scope End. The ridge is utterly enchanting. As I walk amongst the Bilberry and Bell Heather, I realise I’m smiling. This is hardly remarkable: I’m a glass-half-full kind of guy, it’s a beautiful day and I’m walking the fells. But I’ve been out of sorts all week. Sometimes, it seems as if the current is against you and you expend all your energy just treading water. On top of that, a friend is seriously ill in hospital and the prognosis is not good. If the worst happens, people I care a great deal about face a very painful time ahead.

      Being out here doesn’t change that, but somehow it makes it easier to accept. We spend much of our lives so divorced from the natural order of things that we are easily shocked and outraged, even terrified by its realities. Immersing ourselves in the natural world for a short while, helps put things in context. Out here it’s easy to see how precarious our lives are. This landscape is hundreds of millions of years old, the whole of human existence, but a few thousand. Our tiny sparks of life are the briefest of candles, but to have been lit at all we’ve beaten overwhelming odds. Our time is short, but the fact we are here is astonishing. The only possible response is to seize life firmly with both hands and wring out every last drop of value. What that actually means is different for each of us, but what it definitely doesn’t mean is dwelling too long on the past or fretting so much about the future that we fail to embrace the present. My friend has never been guilty of that. Neither will I be.

      As for all that other stuff – well it seems to have shrunk drastically in significance. Spend too long staring at your shoes and the obstacles in front can seem like mountains. Climb a real mountain and you see them for what they are – trifling impediments, easily overcome with the smallest of steps.

      The Wild Majesty of the Newlands Valley
      The Wild Majesty of the Newlands Valley

      Beatrix Potter understood. Some literary critics, like Ruth MacDonald, felt the plot of Mrs Tiggy-winkle was “thin”, perhaps dated because of its apparent concern with the domestic chores traditionally associated with girls; perhaps also, because Lucie appears to learn nothing of herself as a consequence of the story. Others, like Humphrey Carpenter, think the book explores the theme of nature-as-redemption. In this respect, the linen is allegorical. Something is missing from Lucie’s life; her world is disordered. In Mrs Tiggy-winkle’s kitchen, Lucie immerses herself in an older, slower, natural Arcadia where she finds a temporary refuge. When she returns home, what was missing has been restored.

      Potter was not just an author but a hill farmer; a firm believer in conserving the landscape and its traditional ways of life. The existence of the Lake District National Park owes much to her bequest, and she would undoubtedly be delighted to learn her legacy has achieved UNESCO world heritage site status. Given Potter’s beliefs, I feel Carpenter’s interpretation must be right. It’s surely no coincidence that Mrs Tiggy-winkle is the first of Potter’s books to be set in a real-life location, she cared so much about.

      I reach the valley floor and look back at its sweeping green majesty. To my left, the beck glitters like a bed of jewels. Scope End’s eastern flank bears a small scar, however. Two spoil heaps mark the entrance to Goldscope mine. It looks far too tiny to have such a turbulent and far-reaching history; feuds fought, and lives lost over the small seams of metal encased in its rocks.

      Church Beck
      Church Beck

      The quantities of gold and silver extracted here were negligible, but Elizabeth I used its copper to debase the national currency – swapping silver coinage for copper and keeping the silver for herself. How much of human history has centred on the ruthless pursuit of metal we deem “precious” by dint of its being glittery and rare? Homo Sapiens: “wise man”. On the vast timeline of evolution, we’ve only been around for about five minutes; perhaps we’re not quite as evolved as we think we are.

      As I walk down toward the footbridge, I pass a wooden bench. It bears a commemorative plaque:

      “Brian Gudgeon Machin

      1924-2000

      He drew strength from the fells”

      You and me both Brian – and a little girl called Lucie who was always losing her pocket handkerchiefs.

      Brian's Bench
      Brian’s Bench


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