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.

In the past I’ve mentioned here a variety of energetic activities in the Lake District - running, walking and cycling.  On September 13th, however, there’s a new one.  It’s the “Great North Swim” - a mile in Windermere.  (No, I won’t call it “Lake” Windermere as in some of its publicity; there’s only one lake in the Lake District and that’s Bassenthwaite Lake!)

Anyway, whatever the water’s called, it’s going to be a cold wet experience in which around a thousand people are expected to participate - including some of Britain’s finest swimmers.

Several charities will be benefiting, including The British Red Cross and Marie Curie Cancer Care.

For more on this see Swimming in Windermere.

That’s all for now,

- David Murray -
England’s Lakes

It was the year before I was married. (I’ll let you work out when that was; I’m just indicating that it was well within living memory). Windermere was frozen over for several weeks during that winter, and for the first time for many years it was safe to skate over large areas of its surface.

Going back a bit further - that is, a few thousand years - not only was the lake frozen, but it was under several hundred feet of ice as the glaciers of the most recent ice age (I won’t say “the last”, as it might not be, in spite of what we’re told about global warming) …. Anyway, as I was saying, just over ten thousand years ago Windermere was under a massive glacier.

Strictly speaking that isn’t true, for at that time there was no Windermere. There were two much smaller lakes, one up at the Ambleside end, and another down toward Newby Bridge. In between the two, Claife Heights (now on the western side of northern Windermere) and Cartmel Fell (now on the eastern side of southern Windermere) were joined together in one continuous belt of hills, and the two lakes were in totally separate valleys ….. although both valleys were invisible under the cold solid white stuff.

As the glacier crawled its way down toward the sea at Morecambe Bay it carved a swathe through the hillside and allowed the waters of the two lakes (once they’d thawed, centuries later) to run together and create a single lake, the longest in England, that we now know and love as Windermere.

My bookcases have for decades now carried a wide range of books about the Lake District. However, I have very few that focus on just a single lake … because there are very few such books in existence. There is, however, an excellent book about Windermere: Portrait of Windermere, by Christopher Taylor. I bought mine twenty-five years ago when it first came out and have dipped into it repeatedly down the years. The paragraphs above owe much to my most recent dipping.   Click on the title or the graphic above to find a copy through Biblio.com

Or click on this link for more on other Lake District Books

That’s all for now,

- David Murray -
England’s Lakes

On Friday I relaunched my “England’s Lakes” site.

The original version was created using a semi-automated site-builder.  That was good for speed, but unfortunately as the site developed it become too difficult to control the layout and content as precisely as I wished.  So now it’s entirely restructured and much easier to manage.

Most of the old features are still there with the exception of the news feed.  That was giving unpredictable results, so until I’ve figured out how to control it better I’ve decided to take it off.  Similarly, the automatic feed of Amazon items was sometimes generating irrelevant adverts in the sidebar; so that also has been removed and replaced by a few of my own hand-pick Amazon items with a clear relationship to the Lake District.

More pages are being added steadily, and existing pages are being expanded.  Our own hotel finder will be here very shortly (hopefully later this week), and many of the pages now include photographs from the Francis Frith collection.

I’ve also launched an English Lake District Hub Page which will parallel some of the content on the main site but I suspect that like my “England’s Lakes” Squidoo lens it will gradually take on a character of its own.

Happy “Laking”,

- David -

I’m sure you’ve seen books about a particular town or village, possibly your own, made up almost entirely of old photographs.  If so, it’s more than likely that you’ve seen the work of the Francis Frith company.   They’ve been publishing photographs and photographic collections since the middle years of the nineteenth century.

We’re now able to introduce our readers to their collections both here and on our other sites.  We’ll very soon be adding sample photographs on our England’s Lakes site.



Coniston, from Church Tower 1906.
Reproduced courtesy of The Francis Frith Collection.

If you click on the above photograph of Coniston village a century ago you will be taken to a page listing many other photos of the Coniston area, including the lake.  From there you can order copies, or search for other areas either in the Lake District or further afield.

Keep coming back as we add more and more services to our England’s Lakes site.

- David Murray -
England’s Lakes

The overcrowding of the Lake District roads has long been a problem at peak times of the year. Why not contribute to the traffic reduction by leaving you car either at home completely or in the hotel carpark or on the campsite?

What!? I can almost hear the howls of outrage. It’s surely impossible!

Maybe. Maybe not. Certainly without a degree of planning it would be difficult to use public transport to move around the Lakes, but with planning a great deal changes. What’s more, this afternoon I’ve found a tool that should be a massive help.

It’s an online public transport journey planner for Cumbria. (Actually it’s for the Northeast and Cumbria!). I tested it by requesting timetables for Glenridding to Newby Bridge, and Staveley to Buttermere.  Sure the journey time for the first of these was long, not advisable for a day trip unless you really like looking out of a bus window, but I was very impressed with the second.  This system really does work, and for short journeys I’d describe it as an outstanding resource.

Take a look, and see whether you can contribute to emission reductions in the Lake District.

- David Murray -

This coming Sunday drivers had better be on the lookout for hundreds of cyclists if they’re planning to be on the Lakeland roads. The Fred Whitton Challenge involves 112 miles of hard riding over Lake District passes including Kirkstone, Honister, Newlands, Whinlatter, Hardknott and Wrynose. It’s organised for charity (The Dave Rayner Fund and MacMillan Cancer Relief) by the Lakes Road Club in memory of their former secretary Fred Whitton who died of cancer in 1999. From small beginnings that year with just sixty riders, in 2008 it is expected that a thousand cyclists will start from Coniston … and hopefully most will arrive back at Coniston later in the day. The fastest time, set last year, is just under 5 hours 46 minutes and no-one with even the slightest knowledge of the terrain could say that this is anything less than astonishing.

- David Murray -
England’s Lakes