My wife and I have just returned from another expedition to the English Lake District, this time to the southern lakes. We camped near the foot of Coniston Water with the intention of building up a better collection of photos of the Crake valley as well of the Coniston and Hawkshead area.

Well, things didn’t turn out quite as planned.  Several days and nights of frequent rain storms hampered the photography.  In spite of the damp, though, we had a great time and the limited number of good photos this time has the advantage of requiring another trip in the not too distant future.

Hill Top and Hawkshead - Beatrix Potter

On Friday we decided to have an indoor day and to visit the Beatrix Potter sites.  Why didn’t we take our National Trust handbook with us?  It would have told us that Hill Top is closed on Fridays.

I really don’t understand this.  Certainly the property has to be protected against too much visitor stress, and limitations on the number of visitors per day are fully justifiable, but closing the region’s leading attraction on a weekday during the height of the visitor season is beyond my comprehension.

Initially my frustration was personal, but of course as a member I ought to have checked my handbook.  However, a large proportion of visitors are not members and would never imagine that such an important site would be closed.  Sitting in the car eating an egg sandwich before driving back to Hawkshead I watched car after car arriving, unloading children.  They would walk cheerfully as far as the “Closed today” notice board only to return dejected, almost tearful, anticipation squashed.

“Never mind,” parents were probably saying, “there’s the Beatrix Potter gallery in Hawkshead.  We’ll go and see Peter Rabbit there.”  Hmm!  If I don’t fully understand the closure of the house, I certainly don’t understand at all the mentality of closing both of the Beatrix Potter locations on the same day of the week.  This is just incomprehensible.

We did eventually get to Hill Top the following day, and enjoyed it.  I am an admirer of the National Trust and its work, but do believe that it needs to give much more serious thought to its closure policy. at least during July and August, when so many children are being sent away disappointed from both places - not to mention the thousands of gallons of petrol being burned up each year on these fruitless trips along the country lanes; should this be added to the Trust’s carbon footprint?

The above photograph, taken last Saturday, shows the house as it is today, dressed in its summer greenery. This, however, is not as Beatrix Potter bought it. She added extensions to the original property. She was not a preservationist of the type that insists on keeping everything unchanged. She knew that one has to move with the needs of the times.

In this case, she wanted to install a farm manager so built the extension wing visible on the left of the photo to house him and his family (this part is not open to visitors). Internally, as well, she made changes. The sophisticated fire surround in the parlour was the first that I noticed; not at all typical of a small Lakeland farmhouse and apparently installed by Beatrix Potter after buying it at a local sale. She also added a room in which to hang some of her brother’s paintings. Preservation and progress were equal constituents of this phase of Hill Top’s development.

- David Murray -
England’s Lakes

What is now the Keswick Country House Hotel was originally built by the company that in 1865 launched the Cockermouth, Keswick & Penrith Railway. As their new railway line into the northern Lake District replaced the previous three-hour (minimum!) journey from the Penrith mainline station by horse-drawn coach, the tourist trade expanded rapidly. A new hotel was needed alongside the station. A hundred and forty years later the hotel has adopted twentyfirst century standards while the station house now houses several executive class rooms as an extension of the hotel. The trains stopped coming to Keswick more than thirty-five years ago.

Last night while searching through a pile of old Lake District brochures in my study, looking for something entirely different from what I eventually found, I came across a book I’d forgotten about but which I presumably bought on a visit to Keswick some years back. It kept me up late reading. Here it is, a fascinatingly detailed account of the history of the railway line that ran east to west across the northern lakes area.

I’ve created a page about it on our English Lakes site with the title, “By Train to Keswick“, but if you really want to know more about this piece of Lake District history, click on the book here to see whether there’s a copy available from Biblio.com. Alternatively, try Amazon.co.uk.

Note: This book seems now to be quite rare. Shop around between the two sources here, as each will probably list several alternative book dealers - and prices tend to vary widely.

- David Murray -
England’s Lakes

It seems that the predictions of British people holidaying in our own islands this year are coming true. For several decades the lure of reliable sunshine in Spain and elsewhere in the Mediterranean has been a greater attraction than the beauties of the English coastline or the grandeur of the Scottish and Welsh mountains. The same has been true to a lesser extent with respect to the Lake District although this has continued to be a favourite domestic destination.

Wastwater, from Strands
by A. Heaton Cooper,c.1905

The ever-present possibility (or more) of experiencing the rain which is at the root of their attractiveness is something of a turn-off for many; we like our lakes and streams, and the green grass, but we’d rather it rained at a different time or on someone else.

This year, however, although our pounds will still buy more dollars than has been usual for many years, the euro is even stronger, and therefore holidaying in the euro-zone becomes more expensive. Add to this the rapidly escalating price of oil and therefore of long-distance travel, and holidays in the home-country begin to have an economic attraction once again.

I hope the Lake District benefits from this, although I also have some other hopes, including that the increased load, if it fully materialises:

1. will be spread across the region and not concentrated too much in the “honey-pot” locations of Bowness, Ambleside, Grasmere and Keswick; there are so many other wonderful places to visit around Cumbria;
2. will include a large proportion of people moving around responsibly on foot over the hills, and not merely burning up the fuel on the Lake District roads that they’ve saved by not flying to Majorca.

If you’re thinking of the Lake District for either a long or short break this year, take a look at Coniston Water, Ullswater and Wastwater. And scan the National Trust web site for further ideas as to locations.

- David Murray -
England’s Lakes