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.

The Derwent Dams

At the northern end of Derbyshire the rain that falls on the Dark Peak of the Peak District gathers into the River Derwent, a tributary of the Trent, which cuts a deep valley through the millstone grit plateau.

The valley here is dammed by the Howden and Derwent Dams, and then, after conflux of the Derwent with the Ashop, by Ladybower Dam, to form one of Britain's major water supply systems and quench the thirst of the industrial towns of South Yorkshire and the East Midlands.

The solid stone neo-Gothic Howden and Derwent dams were constructed first, starting in 1901, with a narrow gauge railway constructed to carry rock up the valley from their quarry to Birchinlee, the temporary "Tin Town" of the builders. The upper of the two, Howden, was completed a hundred years ago, in July 1912, and Derwent followed at the end of the following year.

It immediately became clear that the dams weren't catching enough to support the growing populations and industries of the areas, and so a weir-culvert-tunnel system was constructed to divert the Ashop from the neighbouring valley into Derwent Reservoir. But even after with this source added in 1920, the problem was not really solved. In 1935 work began on Ladybower Reservoir, capturing further tributaries and extending the catchment area from 21 to 26 square kilometres, and adding 6.3 billion gallons of storage capacity to the 2.1 billion of Derwent and 1.9 billion of Howden.

These photos were all taken in May last year. I'll have to go back for more one day, though: after prolonged rain, the dam faces become huge spillways.

View Larger Map — Ordnance Survey Map

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.