The copper mines around Coniston were worked from at least the middle of the 16th century and, with a number of breaks in production in between, up to end of the 19th when competition from high-grade ore imported from overseas killed this local Lake District industry.

Coniston Old Man, the mountain behind Coniston village, was a source of large amounts of copper ore. This ore was initially carried by pack horses to be processed at Keswick but from the 18th century onwards was transported by boat down Coniston Water and then carted by road to the coast.

Today the homes of generations of Coniston copper mine workers are mostly holiday cottages and the old mine workings are a tourist attraction, albeit mostly for those with enough energy to do some walking.

Anyone interested in old industries, or simply in the ways our forefathers earned their livelihood, or in the processes by which today’s Lake District landscape was shaped, will want to explore this aspect of Coniston’s past – either on the ground or in an armchair (see Coniston Copper Mines: A Field Guide by Eric G Holland).

I have today posted a new article on the Coniston coppermines on our main English Lakes web site, expanding on this fascinating aspect of Lake District history: .

Eric Holland’s much larger book, Coniston Copper: A History, gives a more extensive treatment of the subject. It is out of print but can still be found, albeit often quite expensive, at some book dealers either new or secondhand.

The header photo both of this blog and our “English Lakes” site is of Ullswater. The second largest body of water in the Cumbrian Lake District, Ullswater is much less commercialised than the larger Windermere. There are few significant centres of human habitation. At the northeastern end of the lake is the small village of Pooley Bridge. At the southern end is Glenridding, and this is the focal point of an article in the December ‘09 issue of Country Walking magazine.

Headed “48 hours in Glenridding” the article suggests walks over Place Fell on a Saturday followed by Glenridding Dodd on the Sunday morning. It also points to places to while the time away over a meal, and of course advises a trip on the Ullswater Steamer.

One of the outstanding features of Country Walking is its monthly selection of walks in places all over Britain. These “Route Cards” are graded for difficulty and arranged to be cut out and carried with you for reference. Detailed maps are included, and helpful notes on such matters as refreshments, public transport and public toilets (where there are such things). The Place Fell walk (‘Challenging’) and the Glenridding Dodd circuit (mostly ‘Easy’ but with a couple of steep and rough sections) are described in detail in this month’s selection of 27 walks.

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Next month’s issue (January 2010) has “The Lake District in Winter” as a major theme. Don’t miss it.

On our main Lake District web site there is a picture, from a painting by Alfred Heaton Cooper, of Thirlmere before the forest. That views the lake from the western bank and looks toward Helvellyn and the southern end of the recently enlarged reservoir.  I’ve now found in my postcard collection a view in the opposite direction, pointing north.

The card, a tinted photograph, was posted in 1909 and so probably dates from the early years of the century, not long after the merger of the original two lakes, Leathes Water and Wyburn Water, to form the Thirlmere reservoir as we have it today. (For a note on the lake names in this area see the Thirlmere page on our main site).

Many years ago I started to collect postcards, both old and new. Lake District postcards were a part of that. From time to time I go back to it.  Recently I was looking at an album containing several cards of Dove Cottage, Grasmere which 200 years ago was the home of the poet William Wordsworth.  Here are two of the cards.

On this first one the postmark is not totally clear, but it is a Milton “ARTLETTE” card, a tinted photograph, posted in either 1900 or 1906.

Interestingly, the message on the back commences with, “We passed this cottage yesterday but could not afford to pay the 6d each to go in.”  It sounds very much like what you might hear from someone nowadays after a week of paying admission charges for one place after another – although I have to say that today’s charges at Dove Cottage are not unreasonable.

The second card is by Abraham’s of Keswick (no.229 in their series) and was posted in 1909.  Again it is a tinted photograph and views the house from a different angle.

It was in 1799 that William Wordsworth brought his family to live at Dove Cottage, and it was in this house not far from the lake at Grasmere that much of his greatest poetry was written.  It was here also that his sister Dorothy wrote her famous journals.

Other eminent poets and writers of the early/mid-19th century had a connection with Dove Cottage. Robert Southey and Samuel Taylor Coleridge were among the Wordsworths’ many visitors.  After the Wordsworths left in 1808 Thomas de Quincey lived there for many years.

The cottage and surrounding buildings now constitute an internationally important centre for literary research. The great majority of the original William Wordsworth manuscripts, in fact over 90% of those known to have survived, are now in the possession of the Wordsworth Trust which owns the Dove Cottage properties.

Major exhibitions are staged which are  open to the public in addition to the house itself, while the main document collection is accessible to accredited researchers by arrangement.  As with most Lake District venues, Dove Cottage is open around the year but check the web site for details, especially in winter when opening times may change.

During the past few days I’ve noticed quite a lot of comments on social sites such as Twitter about the Lake District weather.  From some it has been, “Arrrgh! It’s raining! I don’t like this!” From others it has been more like, “”It’s raining, but beautiful nonetheless.”

The three photos below illustrate the final day of a four day holiday with my wife in August 2008.  I blogged about it at the time under the title, “Four seriously damp but totally delightful days among the English lakes“. We camped in the rain near Coniston Water. It was raining when we arrived.  It rained while we were there.  It rained as we were leaving.  As we drove past Newby Bridge (photograph above) we suddenly said, “Why don’t we go and get a cup of coffee at Fell Foot Park?  We’ve got our National Trust membership sticker on the car windscreen so it will be free (apart from the coffee of course).

By this time it had stopped actually raining but was still a very dull day, not what you want in August. From Fell Foot, close to where the River Leven leaves the lake, I took a number of photos including this one.

An hour or so later we’d moved further up the lake to Brockhole, the National Park centre. It was still cloudy but with patches of brightness and I was able to get a picture of the Swan carrying a few hardy visitors up and down the lake.

And then, as we walked up by the house at Brockhole the clouds parted and the sun appeared. Through the trees there was blue, on the trees there were brilliant greens.

Our detour along the Windermere shore had been more than worth the time.  It crowned what was a marvellous week – even in the Lake District rain.  And we have to remember that “If there were no rain there’d be no lakes”.

I was trawling Twitter for Lake District tweets this morning, and came across this beautiful photograph of Derwentwater on a cloudy day by Will Downing.

It captures the atmosphere so well that it makes me regret that I’m sitting here in Nottinghamshire more than 200 miles away from Cumbria, and not able just to leave my desk and walk down to the lake from Keswick.

[Click on the photo to see a larger display on the Twitpic site]

The end of last month saw the launch of a biography of Joss Naylor, the legendary Lake District fell runner from Wasdale.

He’s a man of 73 now, but in his early years was a pioneer of some of the roughest running in Britain. He once ran 72 Lake District fells inside 24 hours.  And not only in his early years!  Just four months ago, on behalf of a hospice charity, he ran 35 miles and climbed over 15,000 feet over the Buttermere peaks, and including Great Gable, Pillar, Skiddaw and Blencathra on the route.

Keith Richardson has now written a biography of Joss which tells not only of his running but also of his childhood in the bleak country above Wastwater, his life as a shepherd, and the social history of the wild country of Wasdale.  The book launch at The Theatre by the Lake, Keswick, was attended by almost 400 people

Unfortunately I can’t just now include a workable link to Amazon as they don’t currently have access to copies of the book.  Apparently a single bookshop has bought up all remaining copies from the publisher!  I do hope that it will be reprinted before long, and made more generally available.  You can, though, get Eric Robson’s recent DVD, Joss Naylor – Iron Man [2009].

I think the first time I heard of the Friends of the Lake District, or at least the first time they really hit my consciousness to any significant degree, was during their campaign to preserve Ennerdale Water and Wastwater in the late-70s and early-80s.

At that time I was visiting the area frequently as a management adviser to British Nuclear Fuels and my first awareness of the struggle over how much water could be  taken from the lakes without damaging the environment was very much conditioned by what I heard within the company – although my own work was nothing at all to do with that particular subject.  Gradually I came to realise, however, that even within BNFL there were many who had considerable sympathy with the cause of protecting the future of the lakes.  After all, most of the people employed there lived in the area and loved it.

This isn’t the place for a long article about one particular campaign.  The story was well told by Geoffrey Berry in his 1982 book, A Tale of Two Lakes: The Fight to Save Ennerdale Water and Wastwater, which is now available only secondhand but click on the link and you might well find a decent copy at Amazon.

The main reason for writing today is to flag up the 75th anniversary of this excellent campaigning organisation which has done so much to help preserve the Lake District and wider Cumbrian landscape heritage since its foundation in 1934. For more, see the Friends of the Lake District website.

It is difficult to believe that already more than a month has passed since I spent an afternoon in Grasmere.  The Lake District memory is very fresh.

It was a pleasant afternoon, dry but not too hot.  We had people with us who could not walk too far so we kept ourselves to the village itself and didn’t attempt to repeat last time’s walk around the lake, although before returning to Keswick I did drive out past Wordsworth’s Dove Cottage to show it to a friend visiting for the first time.

The highlight for most of our small party was the Heaton Cooper Gallery.  A Glimpse of Grasmere by Alfred Heaton Cooper is here on the left.  For myself a visit here is always enjoyable.  We have several Lake District scenes on our walls at home from both Alfred Heaton Cooper and son William, and it is always good to admire more – although on this occasion my credit card remained firmly in my pocket.  The 5-year-old with us thoroughly enjoyed herself at the place so thoughtfully provided by the Heaton Cooper family for small children to draw while the adults admire the paintings and prints.

We took a brief look from a distance at the Wordsworth graves in the churchyard, avoided the temptation of the special Grasmere gingerbread, but to considerable 5-year-old joy savoured the delights of cake and ice cream in one of the splendid local tea shops.

A brief visit this time, and not an energetic or weight-reducing one, but a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon out in one of the most beautiful areas of the most beautiful part of England.