This morning I decided to take a look at the visitor statistics for the Around-England blog, and got some surprises.

The most visited places on the blog

Previously, if anyone had asked me which had been the most popular items I might have guessed at some of my posts about the Lake District.  For example, recently there were:

Holehird Gardens, Windermere and  Wordsworth and the Lake District Rivers

Going further back in time there were:

The Ruskin Monument – Coniston and  Visiting Coniston in Winter

However, it was none of the above that headed the list. Rather, apart from people arriving at whatever was at the time on the site’s front page, the most frequent entry point was a story I wrote some time ago on my childhood and teenage memories of Towneley Hall, Burnley:

Burnley, Lancashire – Towneley Hall and Woodland Park

Close second (actually joint-second) was another Lancashire location. Many people searched the site for Bowland, and its incredibly beautiful River Hodder took that second place:

The Hodder – Lancashire’s Most Beautiful River

Partnering the Hodder in second place was the first Lake District item:

Dove Cottage, Grasmere on Old Postcards

Maybe at some time I should write more about my collection of old Lake District postcards.  It’s not large, but I enjoy it.

“Cromwell’s Bridge” – from Lower Hodder Bridge on a rainy day

What does all this mean?

I’m not sure what lessons to draw from this quick look at the statistics, but I’ll keep watching in an attempt to understand what people find most interesting. Maybe it’s just that there are many other souces of information about the Lake District whereas fewer people write about Lancashire.

However, as someone born in the part of present-day Cumbria that used to be Lancashire, and remembering that Windermere and Coniston Water used to be known as the “Lancashire Lakes”, I guess I’ll keep on writing about both counties – and not forgetting my wife’s family background east of the Pennines in Yorkshire, the birth-county of three of my four grandchildren.

Yes I can admire, indeed love, many other areas of England and will continue to post articles now and again even about the deep south, but I’m unashamedly a Northerner and will continue to make “The Case for the North”.

Incidentally, the most common search term that led people to the blog from Google was especially surprising: Wastwater Gnomes.

Yesterday I mentioned an excellent Winter Breaks deal at the Leeming House, overlooking Ullswater. (Later note added: This was a time-limited offer in late-2010, but click here for up-to-date details of this very nice hotel).

Today, though, I thought I’d put up a black and white photo of Ullswater from Purse Point – fifty-five years ago.  It’s from the Francis Frith collection which includes a remarkable range of photos of Lake District places, many going back into 19th century.  Click on the picture to look for more.

Reproduced courtesy of Francis Frith.

This morning my wife and I went for a short walk around the Coot Lake and Whisby Nature Park near Lincoln.  We had a clear blue sky and beautiful light  At Whisby even when the leaves have gone there is a wonderful variety of colour in the browns and golds of the trees, and this morning the water was reflecting the pure blue of the sky.

I’ll not attempt a detailed account of the Whisby Nature Park just now.  That may come later, but here are three photographs.  I only had my old Panasonic DMC-FZ1 camera with me, and the pics are a little grainy, but they do illustrate how, even without hills as backcloth to the water, such small lakes can still provide a beautiful relaxing country atmosphere. Nature reserves of this kind not only are good for wildlife but provide marvellous gentle recreational facilities, easily accessible to people in nearby towns and cities.

Thorpe Lake, looking west from near the Natural World Centre

Grebe Lake looking east from near the bird-watching hide

Coot Lake looking east from the Western end

]]> http://around-england.co.uk/the-lakes-at-whisby-lincolnshire/feed/ 0 http://around-england.co.uk/thirlmere-before-the-forest/ http://around-england.co.uk/thirlmere-before-the-forest/#comments Mon, 09 Nov 2009 06:00:26 +0000 David Murray http://www.around-england.co.uk/blog/?p=51

On our main Lake District web site there is a picture, from a painting by Alfred Heaton Cooper, of Thirlmere before the forest. That views the lake from the western bank and looks toward Helvellyn and the southern end of the recently enlarged reservoir.  I’ve now found in my postcard collection a view in the opposite direction, pointing north.

The card, a tinted photograph, was posted in 1909 and so probably dates from the early years of the century, not long after the merger of the original two lakes, Leathes Water and Wyburn Water, to form the Thirlmere reservoir as we have it today. (For a note on the lake names in this area see the Thirlmere page on our main site).

During the past few days I’ve noticed quite a lot of comments on social sites such as Twitter about the Lake District weather.  From some it has been, “Arrrgh! It’s raining! I don’t like this!” From others it has been more like, “”It’s raining, but beautiful nonetheless.”

The three photos below illustrate the final day of a four day holiday with my wife in August 2008.  I blogged about it at the time under the title, “Four seriously damp but totally delightful days among the English lakes“. We camped in the rain near Coniston Water. It was raining when we arrived.  It rained while we were there.  It rained as we were leaving.  As we drove past Newby Bridge (photograph above) we suddenly said, “Why don’t we go and get a cup of coffee at Fell Foot Park?  We’ve got our National Trust membership sticker on the car windscreen so it will be free (apart from the coffee of course).

By this time it had stopped actually raining but was still a very dull day, not what you want in August. From Fell Foot, close to where the River Leven leaves the lake, I took a number of photos including this one.

An hour or so later we’d moved further up the lake to Brockhole, the National Park centre. It was still cloudy but with patches of brightness and I was able to get a picture of the Swan carrying a few hardy visitors up and down the lake.

And then, as we walked up by the house at Brockhole the clouds parted and the sun appeared. Through the trees there was blue, on the trees there were brilliant greens.

Our detour along the Windermere shore had been more than worth the time.  It crowned what was a marvellous week – even in the Lake District rain.  And we have to remember that “If there were no rain there’d be no lakes”.

I was trawling Twitter for Lake District tweets this morning, and came across this beautiful photograph of Derwentwater on a cloudy day by Will Downing.

It captures the atmosphere so well that it makes me regret that I’m sitting here in Nottinghamshire more than 200 miles away from Cumbria, and not able just to leave my desk and walk down to the lake from Keswick.

[Click on the photo to see a larger display on the Twitpic site]

I think the first time I heard of the Friends of the Lake District, or at least the first time they really hit my consciousness to any significant degree, was during their campaign to preserve Ennerdale Water and Wastwater in the late-70s and early-80s.

At that time I was visiting the area frequently as a management adviser to British Nuclear Fuels and my first awareness of the struggle over how much water could be  taken from the lakes without damaging the environment was very much conditioned by what I heard within the company – although my own work was nothing at all to do with that particular subject.  Gradually I came to realise, however, that even within BNFL there were many who had considerable sympathy with the cause of protecting the future of the lakes.  After all, most of the people employed there lived in the area and loved it.

This isn’t the place for a long article about one particular campaign.  The story was well told by Geoffrey Berry in his 1982 book, A Tale of Two Lakes: The Fight to Save Ennerdale Water and Wastwater, which is now available only secondhand but click on the link and you might well find a decent copy at Amazon.

The main reason for writing today is to flag up the 75th anniversary of this excellent campaigning organisation which has done so much to help preserve the Lake District and wider Cumbrian landscape heritage since its foundation in 1934. For more, see the Friends of the Lake District website.

It is difficult to believe that already more than a month has passed since I spent an afternoon in Grasmere.  The Lake District memory is very fresh.

It was a pleasant afternoon, dry but not too hot.  We had people with us who could not walk too far so we kept ourselves to the village itself and didn’t attempt to repeat last time’s walk around the lake, although before returning to Keswick I did drive out past Wordsworth’s Dove Cottage to show it to a friend visiting for the first time.

The highlight for most of our small party was the Heaton Cooper Gallery.  A Glimpse of Grasmere by Alfred Heaton Cooper is here on the left.  For myself a visit here is always enjoyable.  We have several Lake District scenes on our walls at home from both Alfred Heaton Cooper and son William, and it is always good to admire more – although on this occasion my credit card remained firmly in my pocket.  The 5-year-old with us thoroughly enjoyed herself at the place so thoughtfully provided by the Heaton Cooper family for small children to draw while the adults admire the paintings and prints.

We took a brief look from a distance at the Wordsworth graves in the churchyard, avoided the temptation of the special Grasmere gingerbread, but to considerable 5-year-old joy savoured the delights of cake and ice cream in one of the splendid local tea shops.

A brief visit this time, and not an energetic or weight-reducing one, but a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon out in one of the most beautiful areas of the most beautiful part of England.

My time in the Lake District has been very limited so far this year but I did get three days there last week, the primary reason for the visit being to visit elderly relatives. In addition to an overnight in Workington I managed to spend two nights in one of the sleeping ‘pods’ of a large tent belonging to some friends on a camp site near Threlkeld and attended a few meetings at the Keswick Convention, an annual inter-denominational Christian event drawing thousands of people every year and that has been running for around 130 years since being started by a local vicar in the mid-1870s. It was also possible to fit in a couple of afternoon trips into areas easily accessible from Keswick.

Earlier in the week the weather had been wet (as is necessary to fill the rivers and lakes, so we shouldn’t complain too much about it) but my days there were quite pleasant. Friday afternoon took me with two friends past Bassenthwaite to Cockermouth where we enjoyed a late lunch at the Trout Hotel and followed this with a drive to see Loweswater, Crummock Water, Buttermere, Honister Pass, Borrowdale and Derwentwater. I love the northern lakes. They’re so much less congested with traffic and people than the honeypot areas of Windermere, Ambleside, etc, beautiful as those areas are.

The contrasting scenery of Loweswater and Buttermere, the different shaped valleys, the sudden transition from the steep scree-covered slopes of Honister to the greenery of Borrowdale, all these made for a great afternoon. As we drove along we talked of The Secret Valley and the Herries Chronicles, fictional accounts of this fascinating landscape. What a pity that having passed Lodore we didn’t have time to visit Watendlath and Ashness Bridge.

It was announced a few days ago that The Great North Swim, organised by Nova International, a company founded by Brendan Foster the 1976 Olympic bronze medallist, is to be held again at Windermere in the English Lake District.

Last year was its first, and was oversubscribed at 2,500 entries.  This year it will be spread over 2 days, September 12th and 13th, allowing 5,000 people to take part.  In addition to the big names of swimming it is expected that thousands of ordinary people will swim the mile-long open water course from a spot on the lake shore by the Low Wood Hotel.

If you’re a swimmer there’s time to train, but possibly very little time to enter as this event is likely to be extremely popular and places are limited.

A range of charities will benefit from this outstanding Lake District event, including Diabetes UK, Cancer Research UK and Lifeboats to mention only three.