It was not a glorious, sunny day when we last visited Brockhole, the Lake District Visitor Centre. Rather it was the end of one of those weeks that give the Lake District lakes their water. Nevertheless we spent a most enjoyable two or three hours.

Brockhole is not to be confused with “Brockholes”, the nature reserve now run by The Wildlife Trust fifty miles south of here by the River Ribble in Lancashire. It is a large old house in splendid grounds on the eastern shore of the lake, between Windermere village and Ambleside.

The official guardian of the Lake District, along with Cumbria County Council, is the “Lake District National Park Authority” and the LDNPA (as it is often known) has occupied Brockhole for many years. Today the house is the official National Park visitor centre, whilst the head offices of the Authority are (rather incongruously but probably more conveniently) just outside the Park boundary at Kendal.

Once inside you have a wide variety of things to keep you occupied. You can, of course, simply walk around the grounds, admiring the scenery. You may, though, have come for one of the many organised events that cater for both adults and children. Often there are special exhibitions in the gallery rooms of the house. I recall one of sensational black and white photographs showing very early Lake District rock climbing. There is a shop which stocks much of Lake District interest and, as you might expect, you can eat.

The splendid Thomas Mawson garden, laid out in the Arts and Crafts style, covers thirty acres and overlooks Windermere with the Langdale Pikes in the background. Or maybe you’re a fan of kitchen gardens; then there’s something for you too. We hadn’t come for a particular event but we did all those other things mentioned above, and especially we explored the grounds. The weather cleared and, by the time we left, Brockhole and its visitors were enjoying the sun.

If you are visiting the Lake District make sure you take some time out to visit Brockhole. I don’t believe you’ll be disappointed. Entry to the house and grounds is free apart from car parking, so when you’ve had several days of shelling out for pricey attractions elsewhere this can be a great relief to the wallet. The house is open all year round except Christmas Day from 10am to 5pm, although the closing time changes in the winter months to 4pm. The grounds and the children’s adventure playground open all year from 8am to 6pm. See the Brockhole web site for more detail.

The photographs here were all taken during that visit in 2008. It’s surely time to go back again and take some photos in the sunshine. Now that “Around-England” is based in Cumbria we really have no excuse.

Whatever is this? Monster Roots in Brockhole Garden

Last summer, while staying for a few days in Kendal (dog-sitting for our son who was holidaying in warmer climes) my wife and I paid our first visit to Holehird Gardens, high up on the hillside above the village of Windermere in the English Lake District. This had been recommended by friends who had “discovered” them a few weeks earlier.

The gardens are the home of The Lakeland Horticultural Society, and are especially impressive for being tended totally by the voluntary labour of members.  Here are just a few of the photos I took on that dull but immensely enjoyable August afternoon. The weather had been rather damp, to say the least, but we grabbed the opportunity of a few dry hours and were not disappointed.

Holehird Collections

The gardens contain several national collections. The Polystichum fern collection includes around sixty cultivars. The Hydrangea Walk includes some 150 cultivars of Hydrangea macrophylla alone; and that is not all, as there are many other Hydrangea species and cultivars.

Thirdly there is the Astilbe collection, and what magnificent displays are to be seen in the summer months. This is a very special collection, and The Lakeland Horticultural Society is appointed by the International Society for Horticultural Science (ISHS) as International Registration Authority for Astilbe.

Astilbe bed at Holehird, August 2010

Holehird Gardens – Alpines

Finally, for today. I must not miss a reference to one of my own passions, alpines. The alpine area of the garden is something not to be missed by any keen gardener, with its scree areas, rockeries, troughs and alpine houses. I’m putting here just one my alpine photos from that day last August, the Tufa House.

Holehird Tufa House, August 2010

If you’re a gardener, or even just enjoy other people’s gardens, when you’re next in the Lake District don’t miss Holehird.

A Holehird Video [Addendum January 2012]

Having just now come across the following video on YouTube I thought it would be good to add it here as it gives a really good idea of the gardens.

This video of Holehird comes from the YouTube channel of chaldon2view who has many other very nice garden-related videos. If you’re a garden-visiting enthusiast make sure to take a look at them.

Looking at the variety of “Lake District and North” topics  about which I’ve “tweeted” on Twitter recently a few have triggered thoughts too long to express in 140 characters. So here’s another opinion piece.

Elm Replanting

We’ll start in central Lancashire. The avenue of elms at Riverside Walk in Miller Park, Preston had been there for over a hundred and fifty years.  Generations of Preston people had enjoyed them.  Last year, however, the avenue was struck down by Dutch Elm disease.  This was a serious loss to the town and its Victorian heritage.  The news that  replanting with disease-resistant elms will shortly be completed is very welcome.

Proposed Conservation Area

I notice that there is a proposal to make part of Windermere village a conservation area.  The consultation period is now over, and in any case as an outsider I probably don’t have much right to comment, but I shall.  It’s not that I’m opposed to “conservation areas”.  Many of them have prevented serious damage to local heritage. Sadly, however, they are sometimes abused by the authorities. There are big risks for the local community. Petty-minded officials can put unnecessary obstacles in the way of perfectly reasonable improvements and even necessary repairs to buildings.

They can also be seriously inconsistent. In another part of the country with which I’m familiar a local church wanted to replace its carpark fence but was told it could not erect the type that it wanted.  When it was pointed out that the design was identical to that around the next-door building owned by the local authority they were told that local government was exempt from the rules!  Consistency? Equal treatment? What’s that? Eventually the church won the argument, but for a while was told that they’d need to apply again, and pay yet another fee for the privilege.  Revenue raising?  Taxation by the back door? By all means protect the heritage, but without this kind of nonsense.

Lost in the hills after dark.

Twice in the past couple of weeks I’ve read of people, in different parts of the UK, having to be rescued from mountains in the dark, having apparently gone out without torches.  It really needs to be said over and over again in capital letters, IF YOU’RE GOING INTO THE HILLS GO PROPERLY EQUIPPED.  It’s said that the use of capitals is like “shouting” but sometimes a good loud shout is necessary. Just now I was looking at a powerful outdoor torch on the Cotswold Outdoors web site (that’s a commercial link by the way). Wow! It’s quite a price, and you don’t need to go to that extent, but if you’re going uphill in the afternoon you should know what time the sun is going to set, make sure you’re down in good time, and just in case you’re delayed have a good torch with you.

Upland Farming

Finally, I’m delighted to see the efforts being made by the South Lakes MP, Tim Farron, to highlight the problems faced by hill farmers.  This is not a party-political point but is vital to the future of upland agriculture. I’m including this here as someone descended from generations of Westmorland shepherds.

OK, that’s it for this time.  More in a week or two.

The Lake District has been getting quite a bit of TV publicity recently.  We’ve seen a presenter “swim-hiking”, a hotelier doing an overnight two-length swim in Windermere – that is, the full length of Windermere and back – and although I am not an addict myself I understand that even Coronation Street has been showing a honeymoon by the lake. All of this is on top of the weather reports and recovery from the recent flooding.

Here, however, is an item that I’ve not seen anywhere else apart from the National Park web site, an important meeting tomorrow, 20th January :

Lake District National Park – Bassenthwaite Reflections

A pioneering nature reserve will be the focus of a public meeting to forge future action plans for the special wetlands area. The Lake District’s first reserve of its kind at Dubwath Silver Meadows, near Bassenthwaite Lake, will come under discussion at a gathering on 20 January. People will be asked for ideas and help in safeguarding the future of the seven hectare site which is managed by a local farmer for wetland flora and fauna. Heritage Lottery Fund backed Bassenthwaite Reflections …..

On the artistic front there’s a new exhibition starting at Brantwood, Coniston.

New Exhibition at Brantwood Coniston

Coniston artist Joy Grindrod says, “This Saturday is the start of my latest exhibition “Peat Light”, held in the Severn Studio at Brantwood, Coniston. There will be new work showing, many are of local scenes and some Scottish landscapes. It will be showing until 7th March …”

Some Interesting Links – Recent Items on Other Sites

• Britain’s big freeze in pictures: Derwentwater in Lake District turns to ice (telegraph.co.uk)
• Country diary: Lake District (guardian.co.uk)
• Fell walker swept away by avalanche survives (guardian.co.uk)
• <

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”.

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.

The High Court has ruled in favour of the Lake District National Park Authority and its Windermere lake speed limit. A group known as the Keep Windermere Alive Association had attempted to trigger a full legal review of the speed limit which was imposed four years ago.

The response to this will inevitably be mixed, with some of the boating community distraught but many others pleased at the preservation of a quieter lake environment.

In the past I’ve mentioned here a variety of energetic activities in the Lake District – running, walking and cycling.  On September 13th, however, there’s a new one.  It’s the “Great North Swim” – a mile in Windermere.  (No, I won’t call it “Lake” Windermere as in some of its publicity; there’s only one lake in the Lake District and that’s Bassenthwaite Lake!)

Anyway, whatever the water’s called, it’s going to be a cold wet experience in which around a thousand people are expected to participate – including some of Britain’s finest swimmers.

Several charities will be benefiting, including The British Red Cross and Marie Curie Cancer Care.

For more on this see Swimming in Windermere.

That’s all for now,

- David Murray -
England’s Lakes

It was the year before I was married. (I’ll let you work out when that was; I’m just indicating that it was well within living memory). Windermere was frozen over for several weeks during that winter, and for the first time in many years it was safe to skate over large areas of its surface.

Going back a bit further – that is, a few thousand years – not only was the lake frozen, but it was under several hundred feet of ice as the glaciers of the most recent ice age (I won’t say “the last”, as it might not be, in spite of what we’re told about global warming) …. Anyway, as I was saying, just over ten thousand years ago Windermere was under a massive glacier.

Strictly speaking that isn’t true, for at that time there was no Windermere. There were two much smaller lakes, one up at the Ambleside end, and another down toward Newby Bridge. In between the two, Claife Heights (now on the western side of northern Windermere) and Cartmel Fell (now on the eastern side of southern Windermere) were joined together in one continuous belt of hills, and the two lakes were in totally separate valleys ….. although both valleys were invisible under the cold solid white stuff.

As the glacier crawled its way down toward the sea at Morecambe Bay it carved a swathe through the hillside and allowed the waters of the two lakes (once they’d thawed, centuries later) to run together and create a single lake, the longest in England, that we now know and love as Windermere.

My bookcases have for decades now carried a wide range of books about the Lake District. However, I have very few that focus on just a single lake … because there are very few such books in existence. There is, however, an excellent book about Windermere: Portrait of Windermere, by Christopher Taylor. I bought mine twenty-five years ago when it first came out and have dipped into it repeatedly down the years. The paragraphs above owe much to my most recent dipping.   Click on the title or the graphic above to find a copy through Biblio.com

Or click on this link for more on other Lake District Books

That’s all for now,

- David Murray -
England’s Lakes

The redevelopment of Waterhead, Ambleside, was bound to be controversial. Reconciliation of the many inevitably conflicting interests are difficult enough in an ordinary town or village but when it’s in a national park, and especially when it’s by Windermere, you can guarantee a good debate.

The Westmorland Gazette a few days ago published an article on the latest compromise proposal. Here’s the link so that you can follow what is being talked about for the future of this important area on the Windermere shore.

- David Murray -
England’s Lakes