The Cockermouth Woolfest has been held annually since 2005. It takes place on a Friday and Saturday in June, and includes a great range of displays and activities relating to natural fibres, and especially wool. Spinning, dyeing, weaving, knitting and felting are just some of the craft themes covered by well over 100 stallholders.

Woolfest is organised by “The Wool Clip” which is a Cumbrian co-operative formed by a group of designers and woollen product crafts people in 2001. It’s members are joined by upwards of a hundred volunteers in organising and running the Woolfest event which has grown to attract more than 5000 visitors from many parts of the UK and also from overseas.

Cockermouth Woolfest highlights the importance of hill farming and the crafts associated with use of the fleece. Many of the old crafts are being sustained, revived and publicised by this means. There are also fleece sales, to which individual farmers can bring up to five fleeces each.

The Rare Breeds Survival Trust is actively involved in Woolfest. More than a dozen different breeds were present in 2011, including Wensleydales, Teeswaters, and of course that Cumbrian stalwart of the fells, the Herdwick.

This is an event at which experts come together, but it is also an excellent day out for anyone interested to learn about sheep, wool and associated crafts.

Put the 2012 Woolfest in your diary or on your kitchen calendar.

Cockermouth Woolfest 2012

Date and times: Friday 22 June 10am-6pm and Saturday 23 June 10am-5pm

Venue: Mitchell’s Lakeland Livestock Centre, Cockermouth, Cumbria CA13 0QQ.

Entrance: £6 per day. No concessions. Accompanied children free. Tickets at the door.

Lake District Trails 1, features Mark Richards, the well-known broadcaster on BBC Radio Cumbria and author of many walking guides to the Lake Distrct and further afield. This first section of a week’s walk starts on the eastern fringes of the Lake District and has been named, “The Westmorland High Way”.

“The opening sequence is a three-day journey, drawing you from the eastern edge of the National Park through ten spellbindingly beautiful Lakeland valleys, destination – the fabulous mountain sanctuary at the head of Great Langdale.!” (Amazon review).

“Mark Richards, who met the famous author Alf Wainwright in his twenties, sparking a lifelong love of the Lakes, said: “This isn’t just the usual film you see of the Lakes – the production standards are exceptional and people will feel like they are walking the route with me.” (Press release)

Lake District Trails 1: The Westmorland High Way would make a superb Christmas present for anyone who loves the Lakes. Find prices on Amazon.co.uk.

I read today that Big Ben, since it was built back in the 1850s, has been slowly tilting. No, it has not yet become the Leaning Tower of London but the rate of tilt has increased since the Jubilee Line was built nearby and now has reached almost one millimetre per year.

Even more interesting, however, is the direction of its tilt. Big Ben is slowly leaning over and pointing to the NorthWest. I have a theory. Maybe it’s trying to tell all those millions of visitors to London, “You should go up North to see the Lake District”.

More about the tilt at Yahoo! News.
Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

Earlier today I uploaded a page on the site here with just a small sample of Lake District jigsaws based on photographs from Robert Harding. They will make splendid gifts whether for Lake District lovers, for jigsaw enthusiasts who you want to encourage to visit the area, or for anyone who loves beautiful scenery and a jigsaw challenge.

It then dawned on me that given the way the site navigation bar is currently set up people wouldn’t find the page very easily unless I first sent out a blog post. So here it is. Click here for Lake District Jigsaw Puzzles. This first selection is from the Robert Harding collection.

For clarity: These jigsaws are sold through Amazon.co.uk. They are not sold by ourselves, although we do receive a small commission on sales through this site, which helps toward keeping the site running.

I was encouraged to see the recent reports that the Lake District National Park Authority was proposing hundreds of new affordable houses to be spread around the national park, and would be carrying out consultations.

This consultation programme is now in progress, and Chris Warren, the national park’s Spatial Planning and Communities Team Leader, said yesterday:

We’ve been so pleased with the positive reactions we’ve had in many places, and a lot of people recognise that we’re doing something proactive to support the local community. Clearly people haven’t always agreed with our ideas, and it’s important that we learn about all of these concerns.
>> Read full article

Affordable housing for the local population is desperately needed, and this initiative is to be warmly welcomed. The Lake District must not be allowed to continue its slide into an area depopulated of its native inhabitants as house prices rise beyond anything they can hope ever to afford.

But here comes another point; will the Lake District planning authority be relaxing their stringent construction rules to make it possible for houses to be built at affordable prices?

Even given affordable housing, however, local young people will stay only if there is work for them. Seasonal tourism employment is not enough. As I’ve said on this blog before, there must be a more sustainable balance between environmental, social and economic factors in the planning system of national parks – sutainable in the sense that future generations of local people will find it both desirable and financially feasible to stay there.

If the boundaries of the Lake District and Yorkshire Dales national parks are to be extended (a point on which I am highly ambivalent) a change toward greater emphasis on economic development becomes even more urgent.

On our main page about the Cumbrian town of Cockermouth there is mention of John Dalton the eminent early-nineteenth century scientist who first proposed the atomic theory of matter.

John Dalton was, however, not the only eminent scientist to be born in or around Cockermouth. Just a few years older was William Woodville (1752-1805), also from a local Quaker family, He followed a medical career and became Director of the St. Pancras Smallpox Hospital in London. There he kept systematic records of thousands of patients suffering from that most-feared disease of the time. Very soon after Edward Jenner’s 1798 report of vaccination with cow pox and in spite of much opposition to this development he began the first extensive clinical trials, having access to far larger numbers of patients than Jenner in Gloucestershire.

If you watched this excellent short YouTube video from CloudBio you will have noticed that Woodville was not mentioned. For a long time his contribution to the development of vaccination was under-recognised but in recent decades, without in any way detracting from the genius of Jenner, Woodville has belatedly been receiving more of the credit he deserves.

Birthplace plaque, Cockermouth – Fearon Fallows (1788-1831)

A third Cockermouth scientist is celebrated with a plaque on the wall of the house where he was born in 1788, just around the corner from the Wordsworth House. Fearon Fallows was born into a relatively poor but intelligent family. His potential was recognised locally and he was sponsored to attend university in Cambridge. He became an outstanding mathematician and astronomer, and a Fellow of the Royal Society. When thirty-two years old in 1821 he was sent by the Royal Astronomical Society to manage the construction of the Cape Observatory in South Africa, the first scientific research establishment in the southern hemisphere. In this connection was appointed an Astronomer Royal. Fallows was there for ten years. There were repeated problems with the construction but nevertheless in spite of dying at a relatively young age from scarlet fever in 1831 he has been credited with the discovery of several hundred stars.

Cockermouth, then, although just a small Lake District town, within a very few years in the late 18th century was the birthplace of three outstanding men of science, in very different fields of knowledge: physics, medicine and astronomy. The town has reason to be proud.

More on Cockermouth

Cockermouth on the Around-England blog

The Lake District, West: Cockermouth

On Thursday afternoon I made a long-postponed return to what, in my not entirely unbiased opinion, is possibly the most beautiful valley in the Lake District, Longsleddale.

The entrance to Longsleddale valley viewed from the top of the lane, near the A6

Having described it in those terms I have to say that it is also one of the less visited valleys. Its access is away from the major tourist routes and for many people the thought of driving up five miles of very narrow lane might be offputting. Driving north toward Shap up the old A6 road above Kendal it is very easy to miss the junction as you climb the hill but when you do turn down the lane toward Garnett Bridge you are faced, as shown above, with an enticing prospect.

Garnett Bridge, Longsleddale, Cumbria

The River Sprint at Garnett Bridge

It is more than twenty years since my wife and I spent a night in B&B accommodation at Garnett Bridge. We saw it then in sunshine, and I saw the same again this week. The Sprint is one of the feeder streams of the River Kent, from which Kendal gets its name. Here, after some recent rain it foams its way under the bridge. (Apologies for the tilt on the camera; you should see the other shot!)

From here I made my way up the valley to the car park by the old schoolhouse, now the Community Hall. This featured in a wonderful little book by a former teacher, Olwen Harris (School in the Fells) in 1969, describing not only the school but life in the valley during the 1940s. It is scarce now, but can be found secondhand (click on the link).

The Old Schoolhouse in Longsleddale

There are many very old farmhouses in Longsleddale, the oldest of which is Ubarrow (or Yewbarrow) Hall which has an ancient pele tower. The valley provided the inspiration for the village of Greendale in the Postman Pat children’s TV series. In the 19th century it was the location for the popular novel Robert Ellsmere by Mrs Humphry Ward.

As is very often the case in old villages, the schoolhouse is right next to the parish church. In these days when the church is too often viewed as irrelevant to society it is important not to forget that in past centuries it was usually the parish church or chapel that provided education for local children. Long before there were school buildings as such the vicar or curate would often double as a schoolmaster. From the Lakeland valleys many a boy found his way to Oxford or Cambridge and out into the wider world as a result of his early teaching by the country clergyman. Nearby Docker Nook provided one example in Isaac Godmond (1734-1809) whose memorial is in the north transept of Ripon Cathedral.

St. Mary's Church, Longsleddale

At the beginning of this article I mentioned my own bias toward Longsleddale. Part of the explanation lies in the gravestone to be seen on the photograph above resting against the church wall between the left and centre windows.

The Rev. Robert Walker was my 4xgreat-uncle. My great-great-grandfather, son of a poor miner from the hills above Sedbergh, arrived in Longsleddale as a farm labourer in the 1830s. Tom married one of Rev. Walker’s nieces, starting a farming family that still has members in these Lakeland hills. I would have liked to honour his final resting place but he lies unmarked, in common with most people of that period.

Looking up the valley toward Stockdale and Sadgill from Longsleddale churchyard

It was time to move on. As the scene above shows there is still more to be seen of the Longsleddale valley as it twists and turns up into the mountains. Passing the Swinklebank farms (Tom brought up his family and shepherded his sheep at High Swinklebank), and then the lane up to Stockdale, I arrived at the old bridge.

Ancient Packhorse Bridge at Sadgill, Longsleddale

From here I could have gone further if the day had been longer, or rather if I’d started in the morning rather than mid-afternoon. From here one can go up to Harter Fell, walk over to Kentmere, take the track over Gatescarth Pass to Mardale (where the village of Mardale Green now lies under the Haweswater reservoir) or take the bridleway to Staveley. For this time, however, I must return to the car and be satisfied with a view of the young Sprint as it comes down from the fells on its journey to the Kent, and ultimately to Morecambe Bay.

The top of Longsleddale with the young River Sprint above Sadgill

For more on Longsleddale see the excellent Longsleddale Community Web Site.

This afternoon a visit to Grasmere was rounded off well by a look around the 2011 Summer Exhibition of the Lake Artists Society in the village’s New Hall. The society was founded in 1904 as one of the many initiatives of the multi-talented artist and historian, W G Collingwood, who in his younger years served as secretary to John Ruskin at Brantwood and with his wife is buried alongside Ruskin in Coniston churchyard.

Membership of the Society is limited to forty-five but the exhibition is open to submissions from any artist residing in Cumbria – although the selection process for display is rigorous, and this shows in the quality of work I saw today.

Lake Artists Society 2011 Summer Exhibition - a first sight of the main gallery

Above is an impression of the exhibition hall on first entering. I paid my pound entrance fee (yes, only £1.00!) and bought a copy of the 56-page guide (only £2.50) and then asked could I be allowed to take photographs, explaining that they were for this web site. After a friendly conversation with a gentleman introduced as the Society’s “chairman” (I can’t find this title in the guide, so my apologies if I got that wrong) I spent a very enjoyable time admiring what, albeit to the eye of a non-artist, came across as excellent work.

The Lake Artists Society 2011 Summer Exhibition - Part of the main gallery

Although many of the paintings exhibited are landscapes, reflecting both the location and the name of the Society, there is a wider variety of theme, and also sculpture. The main gallery itself is divided into sections, and there are two full-length corridors, North and South.

The Lake Artists Society 2011 Summary Exhibition - more than landscape

I just wish I’d had more time to be able to do this exhibition justice, but having taken my photographs I realised that I’d left my wife waiting for me, sitting in the car in the carpark around the corner. Sadly, I had to leave, but I’ll be looking out for The Lake Artists Society 2012 Summer Exhibition. This year’s exhibition is open until 7th September.

In Lanthwaite Wood, by Crummock Water - August 2011

Lanthwaite Wood is a National Trust property at the foot of Crummock Water in the Lake District, alongside the point where the River Cocker leaves the lake. The car park there provides an excellent starting point for walks, which often give opportunity to see Red Squirrels.

The River Cocker flows from here down Lorton Vale to Cockermouth where it joins the River Derwent on its journey from Derwentwater and Bassenthwaite Lake to the coast at Workington. This area was devastated by flooding in November 2009 with loss of life as well as property and great damage to infrastructure. The repair and renovation work is still continuing. And that is the reason for posting this not-very-good photograph.

This is the only shot I took during my brief pause there last Monday afternoon, so it will have to do in spite of the washed out brightness of the river and field beyond the trees. However, the point of the picture is to highlight the small plaque visible half way up the wall of the building. It has been placed there to show the level to which the flood water rose on that destructive day.

As I looked at that, and saw its height above normal river level, I found myself staring uncomprehendingly at a mental picture of what hit the people downstream through the valley and in Cockermouth town, the childhood home of William and Dorothy Wordsworth.

These mountains and their lakes are beautiful, but what potential also for destruction. I’m reminded of the Old Testament psalmist: “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help” (Psalm 121). But his sense of strength and reassurance there is balanced by Psalm 29 where the mountain waters pour down with destructive force upon the cedar trees and the low-lying land below. Yes, life is a mixture of storm and of calm, and these Lakeland hills illustrate it so powerfully.

Looking toward Crummock Water from the Lorton-Loweswater road