Category: Lake District
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The Maid of Buttermere
Back home now, back on my own patch, yet the pull of the Lakes refuses to loosen its grip. I cannot leave without telling the tale of the Maid of Buttermere, a story that has clung to the valley like the morning mist on the fells. It is an eighteenth-century mix of beauty, trickery, and…
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Burtness Comb: A Watch Lost and a Frozen River
Burtness Comb hangs above Buttermere like a great green amphitheatre, tucked between High Stile and High Crag. I once picked my way down it during the Lake District Mountain Trial in 1978. Somewhere on that bracken-choked slope, there may still be an orange-faced Omega watch, a twenty-first birthday gift, quietly keeping time for no one.…
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Crummock Water And its Tombolo
On the west shore of Crummock Water sits a small oddity that likes to keep a low profile. It is said to be the only example of its kind in the Lake District, which is no small boast for a strip of stones. This feature is a “tombolo”, a gravel beach about 50 metres long…
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The Slow Making of Buttermere and Crummock Water
That flat sweep of rich green pasture is not there by chance. It sits on the land bridge between Buttermere and Crummock Water, quietly doing the job of keeping the two lakes apart. It was built by a geological feature known as a fan-delta, courtesy of the steady graft of Mill Beck. Long before maps…
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Aitkin Knott and Keskadale
A sweeping, high-angle view drops into Keskadale, better known as the Newlands Valley, seen from the brown, heathered spine of Ard Crags. At the end of the ridge sits the small knoll of Aitken Knott. Here Earl Ackin, a leading Norse-Cumbrian lord and brother of Earl Boethar, was buried, set high above the land where…
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Goldrill Beck Set Free
Mist and drizzle soften the view over upper Patterdale, where Brotherswater draws the eye and Goldrill Beck winds its way across the valley floor. Not long ago this river was forced into a rigid eighteenth-century channel, cut straight alongside the A592 at the edge of the wood beneath Hartsop above How. The result was a…
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Mediobogdum: A Harsh Posting for Rome’s Auxiliaries
It was not my first visit to Mediobogdum, better known as Hardknott Roman Fort, but it was the first time the weather allowed me to see it properly. The forecast had promised worse, yet the skies shifted restlessly, throwing sudden light and shadow across the valley of the River Esk, a green quilt of fields…
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Nab Gill: The Lost Industry of Eskdale
Cross the little packhorse bridge by Eskdale Mill in Boot, glance left, and you will see stone ruins that have long been forgotten. The remains stand upon a loading platform, above the overgrown site of Boot railway station. These are the offices and works of Nab Gill Ironstone Mine, named after the great cleft high…
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Stand-off in Eskdale
A stand-off on the path below Harter Fell. The lead yow stood her ground until I raised the camera, then broke into a dash that set the rest of the flock thundering up the fell. The Lakes is quintessential sheep country, and the sheep that defines it is the Herdwick. Wiry and stubborn, they seem…
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Commonwood Quarries and the Quest for Slate
Caw in the Dunnerdale Fells may rise only 529 metres, yet it carries the unmistakable outline of a true mountain. From the abandoned Commonwood Quarries above Ulpha, its shape dominates the view. These workings were once famed for their “green” slate. The site remains striking, a scatter of ruined buildings, deep quarried faces and silent…