Usually when I recommend a Lake District book it’s one that I already own myself. I prefer to do this so that the blog does not degenerate into an undiscriminating commercialism.

Today, though, I’m making an exception. Although I’ve seen and admired Mark Denton’s The Lake District: The Panoramas on a number of occasions, for some unaccountable reason I’ve never actually bought a copy. However, I’ve seen this book of remarkably beautiful photographs praised so many times that I’m putting it up here anyway.

This would make a marvellous gift for a friend or family member who loves the English Lake District, or even to introduce someone for the first time to this wonderful part of the country.

There’s no doubting that Mark Denton is an outstanding landscape photographer. He has worked not only on rural but also on city landscapes including books on Edinburgh and London.  You might also like to take a look at his Yorkshire volumes: Yorkshire Moors & Wolds and The Yorkshire Coast.

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).

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]

“What is there for an eleven year old in the Lake District?” I heard that question a few days ago, and it set me thinking.

Firstly, I suppose one has to challenge the idea that there is such a thing as a standard model of eleven year old.  Of course not.  There are girls and boys, energetic, sporting, artistic, studious, inquisitive, imaginative, gregarious, solitary, pessimistic, optimistic,  quiet, talkative, … ,  all the variety of characteristics that will carry through into variety of adults.

Some will want to make their own enjoyment in walking, clambering up hillsides, mountain biking, swimming, rowing, and other active pursuits.  There are organised activity centres for the energetic outdoors.

The enthusiastic young photographer or painter will find no shortage of subjects to challenge their artistic abilities. Some may be interested in historical things. How about a visit to “ancient” Rheged near Penrith or the Museum of Lakeland Life in Kendal?  Did you know that pencils came from the Lake District? There’s even a pencil museum in Keswick for both the historically and the artistically inclined.

Old railways?  The Lake District has two.  There’s the “full size” version with steam trains running on the old, and now restored, branch line from Haverthwaite to Lakeside near the foot of Windermere.  Then there’s the “little railway” that climbs up into the mountains from Ravenglass on the west coast, a great afternoon out for both children and adults.

Do you want to know how a nuclear power station works?  Just up the road from the Ravenglass and Eskdale Railway is Sellafield with its excellent visitor centre (although at the time of writing this it was undergoing maintenance work; check their web site for details).

Interested in wildlife and nature?  How about the osprey viewing point by Bassenthwaite?  Or the freshwater aquarium at Lakeside? And talking of animals, for the imaginative among us, whether children or not, there are three Beatrix Potter attractions in the central lakes area.

Then again, the young poet might be fascinated by a visit to William Wordsworth’s cottage at Grasmere, or the recreation of eighteenth century life at his birthplace in Cockermouth.

This is just a start.  On our Lakes web site we include several lists of things to do and places to go around the main centres.  Check out also the range of National Trust locations in the Lakes. And whatever you do, don’t miss the national park visitor centre at Brockhole.

As for adults, so also for children, in addition to simply appreciating the beauty of the place there is no lack of things to do in the Lake District.

I’m old enough to remember when colour photographs, either Lake District photos or any others, were rare. Nearly all of us had black and white film in our cameras, and such colour photos as there were tended to have very poor colour quality.

Then along came affordable good quality colour film. Like many others I moved over from prints to 35mm slides. It saved printing cost and you could project them onto a screen or wall to show to family and friends. Only much later did I revert to printed photos, but somehow I never felt that my colour prints had quite the same character as the old black and white.

Recently I’ve been examining the Francis Frith archive and have been delighted to find some excellent photos. These are not only the street scenes of towns and villages for which the archive is possibly best known, but also lake and mountain views.

Ullswater, 1888.
Reproduced courtesy of Francis Frith.

The above photograph of Ullswater, taken in 1888, is one example of the wealth of photographic Lake District beauty available on the Frith site. The Crummock Water scene below is another. I’m currently collecting a set of my favourites for display on a new lake district photos site. Meanwhile I’ve created a few pages of vintage photos at thelakedistrict.inoldphotos.com

Crummock Water, 1893.
Reproduced courtesy of Francis Frith.

I think it will be clear by now that my own answer to the question in the title, “Must Lake District Photos be in Colour?” is a resounding “No!”

I came across a Lake District photograph this afternoon and felt I had to share it here. The site on which I saw it gave permission to use the photos it displays. Just in time I discovered that my latest “find” had in fact been stolen from someone’s portfolio, should not have been on the site where I found it, and to display it here would have been a breach of copyright. It was a stunning lake scene with snow-tipped mountains in the distance. I wish I could take photos like that!

To me it was yet another illustration of the variety of pursuits to which the English Lake District so wonderfully lends itself. Walking, climbing, boating, fishing, cycling, ….. . The list goes on and on, but whereas all of those can give much pleasure to the person directly engaged in the occupation Lake District photographs can bring pleasure to many others beside the photographer.

Well I can’t show that particular photo here just yet, but decided to post a modified version of what I’d written about it. If I can track down the photographer I’ll try to get permission.  I did think of putting an alternative here, but my mind was so full of the one I’d seen that to show another immediately now would almost inevitably be presenting it as second-best, however goood it might be.

Recently I travelled up to the Lake District in the north of England to visit an elderly maiden aunt.  I say, “elderly,” but that’s not really an adequate expression.  She’s approaching a hundred and two years old.   She still has a lively interest in the doings of her large brood of nephews and nieces, and the even larger numbers of great- and great-greats as well.  But also she thinks a lot about the past.

Having been born in 1907 there’s a lot of past for her to think about, and her memory is still amazingly intact.  Old photographs fascinate her, and this made me think of how important it is to record in writing for future generations something about those people on the sepia tinted pictures of yesteryear before no-one any longer has a clue who they were.

Memories, of course, often involve places as well as people. In family collections it is often the snaps of people rather than places that have survived. Photos of fondly remembered places as they were many years ago are often limited to a few creased old postcards. Occasionally a treasure hoard of old photographs is discovered and what memories they bring flooding back as they appear in the local newspaper.

Windermere, Sunset 1926.
Reproduced courtesy of Francis Frith.

The English Lake District for a century and a half has been one of the most photographed areas of Britain.  How good it is to know that many photographs – of lakes, rivers, towns, villages and individual buildings – have survived and are available to massage the memories of generations of lovers of Lakeland.

Holidays past, childhood homes, honeymoons among the mountains, visits to grandparents, sunny afternoons rowing on Derwentwater, the “steamers” on Windermere, paddling in the Rothay and scrambles up Scafell; all these and more come back to life through an old photo on the wall.

Increasingly, as photos of distant places long ago become conveniently traceable over the Internet, people living even thousands of miles across the world’s oceans can find and acquire beautifully printed copies of these records of the past.  More and more homes around the world are displaying fondly a picture of England’s Lake District, a valued legacy from the photographers of generations past.

—
David Murray, a native of Cumbria, is owner of a growing portfolio of niche websites including some about the English Lake District.  thelakedistrict.inoldphotos.com and lakes.around-england.co.uk are two of his sites about which he is especially enthusiastic.

For many years I’ve admired the photographs of W A Poucher (1891-1988), showing the beauties of the Lake District from many different aspects – and of course, his many illustrated guides covered far more than the Lakeland mountains.  His was a lover of the high places of all the countries in our islands.

Now there’s a book devoted totally to his life and his photography which should make an excellent gift this year for anyone who’s a lover of the English (and Welsh, and Scottish) countryside and landscape photographer par excellence.

“A Camera in the Hills” by Roly Smith is published by Frances Lincoln (ISBN-10: 0711228981; ISBN-13: 978-0711228986). It is profusely illustrated with both colour and black and white photography from his long years of recording our hills and mountains.

If you click on the link above or on the photograph you can order this splendid book from Amazon.co.uk.

I hesitated before starting to write this. After all, why should anyone else be interested in a record of how my wife and I spent a few days in the Lake District. We’d driven north to look after grandchildren for a few days, then there was a gap before I had to be north again for two preaching engagements, so rather than return home between the two we took our tent to the Crake Valley, close to where the River Crake flows out from the foot of Coniston Water (picture below, taken in the rain).

Why should this interest anyone else? Well, it strikes me that an important point about these days is that they were wet. Yes, more than damp … wet!

This  is not intended to put off those considering a visit to the Lakes, but rather to demonstrate that rainy weather does not have to destroy an holiday in the English Lake District. It can, in fact, add interest as one searches for alternatives to the obvious; and in the Lake District one doesn’t have to search far.

1. Go prepared. Check out in advance what indoor places of interest are to be found in the area. Research historical events and famous people connected with the area, and see whether there are museums or historic houses associated with them. Ask which writers and artists have worked around here, are they commemorated in some way, and are their works on display? Why not use our “English Lakes” site to help with your planning?
2. However well you think you know the area, take every opportunity to scavenge the racks of brochures that are in just about every hotel foyer, restaurant, coffee shop, trinkets store, petrol filling station, etc, etc, etc.. You’ll almost certainly be surprised to find something that you didn’t imagine would be around here, or which you vaguely knew about but had forgotten.
3. Don’t let a bit of rain turn you totally away from the idea of an outdoor holiday. Use the gaps in the heavy rain to take short walks. If you’re visiting the Lakes I assume you’ll have waterproofs with you.  Put them on and go out.

Day One:  Coniston Water, Millom and Haverigg

Wednesday: We were camping (the tent attaches to the back of our estate car – more on that in a later post) at a small secluded site at Blawith, between Torver and Greenodd.  We’d chosen this because, although as a child in the 1950s I’d often visited my uncle’s farm just up the road between Lowick and Gawthwaite, we’d never before explored the area in any detail.

The morning was damp but not actually raining, so skirting the private land over which there appears to be a right of way only to use the Coniston passenger launch jetty, we found our way down to a point at the water’s edge where there is a canoe launching point.  Even in the damp air with the mist over the hills it was a  beautiful, peaceful spot and until we reached the road on our return walk by a different path we never saw a single soul.

For the afternoon we chose to visit a town and headed west to Millom, home of the late Norman Nicholson, possibly the most outstanding of 20th-century “Lakes Poets”.  It would have been nice to spend some time in the local museum, which I’m told is very informative on the history of the area – this grey town between the heights of Black Combe and the Duddon Estuary which for generations was home to a major steel-producing plant based on the local availability of haematite ore, all now gone. This, however, will have to wait for another trip as we decided to head further west to Haverigg, a small coastal village.

If you’re lover of windswept views of sand and sea then this outer point of the Duddon estuary, looking south across to Askam and Barrow with Walney Island wrapped around the tip of the Furness Peninsula, must be for you.  As we reached the coast the rain had stopped.  We strolled onto the first few sand dunes (an area of dune said to be the largest in England, and recognised now as a Site of Special Scientific Interest for its extensive natural habitats).  I’d like to spend more time exploring this area.  For today, though, we sat for a while on a seat overlooking the estuary, enjoying the view, then drank an excellent cup of tea at the beach cafe. Across from the cafe is an information board about the Duddon Estuary – one of the best, in the sense of being genuinely informative and interestingly put together, that I’ve seen anywhere. (I don’t expect you to be able to read the text on the photo!)

Day Two:  Barrow-in-Furness

Thursday: Still raining.  And disaster struck.  It’s not easy to lock the keys inside our car; it’s designed to make it difficult, but I succeeded.  “Don’t worry,” said my wife.  “I’ve got my keys in my bag.”  “Where’s your bag?”  “Oh! … It’s in the car!”  That occupied the morning, but the Green Flag emergency call-out man did a splendid job, and by lunch-time we were mobile.  We decided to go west again, this time on the south side of the Duddon, so headed out past Greenodd. Ulverston and Dalton to Barrow.

Now what can I say of my birthplace?  My parents left just after World War II, and took me with them. I was only three years old so I never knew Barrow well, but over the years came to think of it as a rather dull, dusty, declining and dispirited town with little going for it apart from the fluctuating fortunes of the shipbuilding industry.  Today, however, I saw a brighter Barrow.  The town is picking itself up.  As we walked through the streets, even on a dull day, there seemed to be more energy about the place.

I’m cheered at that.  But actually, our focus now was not to be on the present but on Barrow’s past.  There is a excellent museum in one of the old docks; three floors of exhibits on the history of this remarkable town and its growth from almost nothing to a major industrial centre based on iron, ships and railways within little more than thirty years in the nineteenth century.  It was indeed a miracle town of the industrial revolution.  For me it has a special interest as one of my four sets of great-grandparents arrived in the area from Liverpool during the 1870s, but even without a personal connection The Dock Museum can provide a fascinating afternoon out, not least for its scale models of ships launched from the shipyards here – and there’s a nice coffee shop. The Barrow Dock Museum is something of which the town can rightfully be proud.  (I wonder whether it is fully appreciated locally).

There’s much more to Barrow for the visitor. The lover of history can investigate the magnificent ruins of Furness Abbey, the ancient Cistercian monastery from which the powerful abbots of long ago strongly influenced both the religious and economic life of this region, and beyond.   The nature lover can spend fascinating hours at the reserves on Walney Island, and a drive back to Ulverston along the “coast road” on the south of the peninsula is beautiful, but for now we had to return to base camp and chose to go through Askam (briefly to revive childhood memories of walks along the sand to Dunnerholme with the dogs) and Broughton.

Day Three:  Hawkshead and Coniston

Friday. I wish we’d known the significance of the day as we chose to visit the Beatrix Potter properties of the National Trust at Hawkshead and Near Sawrey … but as described in an earlier post on this blog we found them both closed.  (Warning!  Don’t try to visit Beatrix Potter on a Friday.  She’s “not at home” to visitors on that day).  However, after eating our sandwiches in the Hill Top car park, we drove back and wandered around Hawkshead under umbrellas, found a good bookshop and visited the old Grammar School (pictured above), founded in 1585 and attended by William Wordsworth from 1779-1787.

Next stop was Coniston village.  I wanted some photographs of the Ruskin monument in the churchyard, and obligingly the rain stopped for a while.  On previous visits I’d not noticed that W. G. Collingwood (at different stages of his life Ruskin’s student, assistant, secretary, travelling companion, colleague and biographer – as well as artist, archeologist, antiquarian and author in his own right) is buried in the adjacent plot.  Then to complete a trio of gravestone photos I walked to the modern burial ground a few hundred yards away to see the grave of Donald Campbell who was killed in 1967 when his Bluebird speedboat crashed on Coniston Water during an attempt on the world water speed record.

I’ve visited the Ruskin Museum in Coniston several times in the past, and decided this time to give it a miss.  If you’ve never been then you should include this on your itinerary, but I satisfied myself with a photograph of the temporary entrance as in the very near future a new extension is to be opened housing the restored Bluebird, remains of which were recovered a few years ago along with Donald Cambell’s body (at last laid to rest in 2001) after eventually being found in the depths of the lake.  I hope to return when the new exhibits are open.

The weather by now was blustery but dry, so after a cup of tea in a very nice cafe a walk to the lake was just what was needed.  More photographs, then on the way back we stopped off to look at an exhibition of two Lakeland photographers.  Rather unusually they were housed in an upstairs gallery over  the Fudge Shop on a small retail development, strategically positioned so that the footpath is routed through it, between the village and the lake.  I was very impressed with the work of both Trevor Brown and David Briggs.

Day Four:  Windermere and Near Sawrey

Saturday: Overnight it had poured down, but our trusty tent kept us snug and dry. We took it down between showers, and drove to Lakeside, at the foot of Windermere.

The plan had been to visit the freshwater aquarium there but we changed out minds and left it for another visit. It look as though this could provide a very interesting hour or two on a rainy day, or even to retreat from the sun when it’s too hot, but I simply cannot understand how the National Park planning authorities allowed it to be built in a style more suited to a small town supermarket. Why on earth isn’t it at least faced in local slate to make it fit in with the general environment?

The weather now improved and we had a very good, intermittently sunny day mostly around Windermere. Firstly Fell Foot Park, owned by the National Trust and providing access to a beautiful stretch of the lake shore. Given my interest in the local rivers it allowed me photograph the point at which the River Leven flows out from the lake to commence its short coastward journey.

We then moved on toward the northern end of the lake, to Brockhole. headquarters of the Lake District National Park Authority. The house, gardens and a stretch of lake shoreline are open to the public free of charge (apart from a modest car park fee). The house includes an information centre, Lake District exhibitions, a very nice restaurant, a bookshop and a film theatre. This is a “must-see” for any visitor to this part of the Lake District. Many special events are held at Brockhole on a wide variety of Lakeland themes. Views from the garden are little short of spectacular.

We also fitted in a visit to Hill Top, the Beatrix Potter farmhouse, compensating from our failed attempt the previous day, and then it was time to hit the motorway. We’d had an excellent few days. The weather didn’t allow the intended photographic exploration of the Crake Valley; that will have to wait for another time; but we demonstrated clearly that damp days don’t have to be a spoiled holiday.