Lesser of The Lakes

Windermere is famous as the largest of The Lakes in the English Lake District, and in England generally. Its also famously a beautiful place, flanked by the high fells of Langdale and pretty villages like Ambleside, celebrated in verse and on canvas by the romantics, and loved by the millions of tourists who have poured in since the Kendal and Windermere railway first brought the lake within reach of the masses.

After several visits to the more northern lakes and fells without ever having been along to Windermere, I thought I better go take a look and see what the fuss was about. So after a trip to Keswick I took the bus down to Ambleside, intending to walk along the shore to Bowness and up the hill to the station.

But it turned out that a walk along the shore wasn't possible, because Windermere is crap and walking near it is forbidden.

Perhaps I was just grumpy that day, but what could be seen of Windermere from beside the main road in the gaps between the trees and the dense forest of "keep out" signs didn't impress the way that Ullswater and Derwent Water do.

Winter in Keswick

In February 2010 I booked the train up to Penrith...

only to break the bicycle I'd planned to take on the day before departure....

so changed plans and walked everywhere in the snow around Keswick and Derwent Water, where the boat bus company fought to break the ice...

up over Walla Cragg and Latrigg in the blizzard, and through the fresh snow around the stones at Castlerigg...

and got the double decker bus down to Windermere for the train home...

The squirrel was a lucky catch in the woods below Ashness Bridge.

Skiddaw from the shores of Derwent Water

This is another one of those views I seem to keep returning to.

With attempts from the summers of 2007 and '08, the spring of '09 and winter '10.

The distinctive blunted heaps of England's fourth highest mountain, Skiddaw...

...reflected in Derwent Water.

The same view that appealed to and was exaggerated by the Romantic landscape artists.

One day I might even get around to climbing to the top and taking one looking the other way...

Haystacks

Not a big hill by Lake District standards, but a popular one.

Because of its pleasant ascents past the tarns and rock formations.

And the view over Buttermere and the valley.

More on Wikipedia.

Location: Castlerigg

In the house where I grew up, on the side of a kitchen cupboard above the kitchen sink is a small wide yellowed print on a bent and battered cobweb covered card, faded with the light of five thousand sunrises and dappled from the condensation of countless boiled kettles.

It's a print of the stone circle at Castlerigg, the Celtic Carles of Keswick, looking north over the shapely Cumbrian fells of Latrigg and Blencathra, known as Saddleback, in the northern lakes.

A neolithic druidical astronomy set, aligned with the autumn equinox and set centre stage on a minor eminence in a cavernous amphitheatre.

An antique shelter for the sheep, trap for the tourist, and prop for the photographer.

Built to catch the light and the lightning, the sun, the snow and the storms.

More photos in the Cumbria gallery...

Moving photographs

When flickr introduced video functionality, the community was divided. To a certain type of purist it was the beginning of the end, or the last straw; the big coporate takeover ignoring the wishes of a passionate established community in favour of mass appeal. A certain type of purist flouced off and cancelled their membership.

To the rest of us, flickr videos are just moving photographs: just another way to capture the light and landscape, the streets and streams of changing scenes.

more moving photographs...