Lake District
For Terry Abraham, making the third film in his Life of a Mountain trilogy – Helvellyn – has involved overcoming some of his hardest personal struggles. But the mountain landscapes of England – and in particular his beloved Lake District – remain an endle
Terry Abraham recounts how his deep love of the Lakes helped him through his darkest hour
OVER THE PAST DECADE, my Life of a Mountain film series has dominated my life for long periods. In 2016, after I finished the second in this series, on Blencathra, I chose to take a ten-month break, partly to work on other projects, but mostly to recover from the intensity of production.
My recuperation, however, was to meet an abrupt end. I’d been out mountain biking, exploring farmers’ tracks and little-used bridleways in the Eden Valley. As night fell I made my way out of Bolton and was speeding down towards the River Eden when a bank of fog appeared. I know the road – it’s got a couple of hairpins before you reach the bridge – and I’d started to slow; but the fog suddenly diffused the light from my bike lamps, virtually blinding me. “Bugger, that’s not good,” I thought, as I braked hard, then hit the verge, then flew like an arrow into the roadside drystone wall. Because I’d only popped out for a short ride, I’m ashamed to admit I wasn’t wearing a helmet.
My memory of coming off the bike –and the rock wall shining white in the beam of my headtorch as I flew towards it – is vivid. I remember the moment of impact – a shockwave through my head, into my neck and down the rest of my body; I remember a deafening crack in my eardrums; and I remember thinking: “This is it; I’m a gonner.”
A WALK IN THE DARK
When I came to I was lying face-down on the ground, mouth full of leaves and verge-dirt.
The first thing I did was try to move my toes – I was certain
I’d broken my neck – and I felt them wriggle. I stood up slowly. A few moments later I felt a warm sensation moving down my scalp, then blood started pouring down my face. I rang Sue, my wife, immediately: she was seven minutes away while an ambulance was ten or fifteen. She got me to hospital in Penrith. I was rushed straight in, at which point my memory fades again. I was kept in overnight, Sue a constant at my bedside.
Sue only told me afterwards that the doctors had said things were touch and go; not only were my injuries serious, but I was also in a state of extreme shock. The Penrith nurses stitched me back together. Sue took photos to show what a mess the accident had made of me, and what an idiot I’d been for not wearing a helmet. I was allowed home with a warning that I was likely to have severe concussion.
It was the first time I’d experienced concussion. You know when you walk into a room and think: “What did I come in here for?” I got that constantly. Not only was I confused; I also hated being stuck at home. I felt like a caged animal, desperate to get out. But my memory was shattered. I remembered almost nothing from the month before the accident and had to rely on others to tell me what I’d been up to.
As my days of healing became weeks, I fell into a deep depression. It wasn’t a constant presence; instead it visited on certain days. It peaked one winter’s evening when Sue was away with work down south and I was home alone. I was sat by the fire when I suddenly felt an urge to walk out of the door, climb Cross Fell in the snowy dark and never come back.
It was no idle thought; I got as far as the front door, but my cat wouldn’t leave me alone. She kept miaowing and looking up at me, as though she knew something was wrong. I began crying like a baby, talking to the cat to the house, to myself, repeating the same words: “I don’t know why, I don’t know why...”
“Before my bike accident I’d never experienced anything as profound and unsettling as the subsequent depression.”
THE RECOVERY
In time I snapped out of it and sent Sue a message. She rang back within a minute and insisted I make an appointment with the doctor. When I saw him he offered me medication, which I declined, despite his warning that depressive episodes could continue for six months or more. “You need to be active,” I was told. “Get those happy hormones going by spending time outdoors.” Because of my injuries and the problem with my memory, no-one except the doctor wanted me to go out. But sod them; I did. My friend Dan Richards was a tower of strength during those days. He would come to the house and take me on the fell in the snow, looking at red squirrels, spotting birds of prey.
One afternoon we went up Hallin Fell and I was snapping away with the camera, gazing across Ullswater to Helvellyn, when I realised I’d been away for too long; it was time to start on my third and final film.
The urge came on suddenly, and it felt uncanny, because it was an earlier health scare that had kicked my arse into gear before Scafell Pike. Even so, it took a while to get back into the flow. Some months later I was in the Dockray Hall pub in Penrith when the bar lady, Sandra, came over to me: “So you’re back, then?” Her words took me by surprise. “The sparkle’s back in your eyes,” she added.
I asked what she meant. “You were a nightmare, Terry,” she replied. “Constantly asking the same things over and over. I could see in your eyes that you weren’t there. Now you’re back. I can see it.”
ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD
In making Helvellyn, as with Scafell, I haven’t let anyone rush me. I’ve done what I wanted to do, how and when I wanted to do it. Blencathra, produced in just 14 months, was too hurried; I could not – and would not – fit Helvellyn into a similar time frame.
Part of that was down to my slowly recovering health: I didn’t want to risk burnout. But mostly I wanted to nail a range of new, ambitious ideas – big sequences, smaller, more intimate scenes, and concepts I’d not been able to pin down in the past. Shooting would require a full two years.
A project of that scale could easily have become a disjointed mess, but I’ve put a lot of graft into Helvellyn and – unlike with
its predecessors – have planned every detail. There’s purpose to every scene and a link to the scene that follows; nothing is thrown in for the sake of it and everything is interwoven. A section on the future of farming leads into a discussion about conservation, which in turn leads into the area’s cultural heritage, which leads into another subject, and so on.
Threaded into this narrative are a number of overarching messages. One of them is about the impact of our recreational activities on the landscape. Walking, cycling, climbing, kayaking, swimming; they may appear harmless, but they have consequences, affecting ecology, soil fertility, water quality and more.
Most of all I wanted Helvellyn to capture my love of wild places.
AN UNEXPECTED WILD SWIM
Ever since my cycling accident, Sue has kept a close eye on me.
But she can’t be with me all the time; and in spring 2019, more than a year after the accident, I demonstrated that her caution was justified.
I was in the upper reaches of Aira Force, below Gowbarrow Fell above Ullswater. It was dawn and there was no-one else around. I was there to capture shots of the frozen waterfall using a GoPro fastened to a pole so that I could stick it underwater. I had my camera set up, the sun was breaking through the trees and I was enjoying the solitude when the next thing I knew I’d slipped and fallen 18 feet over rocks into the bowl of the waterfall.
I’ll never forget being under the water and seeing my expensive iPhone – which I’d only just upgraded – trapped on a rock as the currents tried to wash it downstream. “I’m not losing that!” I thought, grabbing it, and jumping out of the water, hoping the phone was waterproof. At least the GoPro was. My clothes, however, were definitely not. I clambered onto the rocks in nearfreezing conditions, soaked to the bone, stripped off and hung my clothes on branches in an effort to dry them.
It was only when my core temperature rose and I stopped shivering that I considered my situation: there I was, naked, above one of Lakeland’s busiest tourist honeypots.
Thankfully I was in the quieter, higher reaches of the falls; and, by the time visitors appeared my clothes were almost dry. I quickly
pulled on my torn jeans and jacket. But the shock was already sinking in. My arm was bruised and grazed, and the pain was agonising – even after necking paracetamol from my first aid kit. That afternoon my arm began to shake and I headed back to Penrith for a beer. Sue was livid. It was only then that she revealed how serious my cycling injuries had been a year earlier.
MENTAL MOUNTAINS
You see people from all backgrounds on the fells, each with their own reason for being there, whether it’s fitness, hill bagging, adrenaline, soul searching, companionship or nature. Many of us, however, tend to forget about mental health – how being outdoors can be of immense psychological benefit.
Before my bike accident I’d never experienced anything as profound and unsettling as the subsequent depression. A specific sequence in the film looks at the positive effects of being outdoors. It features ambassadors from different mental health organisations, including Alex Staniforth, who has been affected by depression, anxiety and bulimia. I was inspired by how the fells have helped him face those challenges, and how he now shares his message with millions of young people. He’s attempted Everest twice, and he has climbed all the highest points in the 100 counties of the UK – covering 4,782 miles on foot, by bicycle and kayak.
There’s a crag – Lad Crag, just south of Helvellyn’s summit – where I often camp. It’s a quiet little spot, and you can get water from a nearby spring, Brownrigg Well, which flows all year round. Ravens reside on Lad Crag and the crags below into Nethermost Cove, and it’s wonderful to sit by the cliff edge, at the porch of my tent, watching them swoop around, talking to each other, chasing, dancing in the air. Even on a summer’s evening when it’s still light at half nine, there’s no one else around. When the queues on Striding Edge have gone home and the air is still, you can hear a pin drop from my perch on Lad Crag.
I always feel better out on the fells, as opposed to being in a town or city. On my first visit to Lakeland, seeing rays of ‘God light’ shining on Windermere prompted me to think that the world would be a better place if we could bring the world’s leaders to wild places.
As a species we come from a very different environment to the one so many live and work in today. Perhaps being outdoors benefits our mental wellbeing and happiness so much because it’s a reminder of where we came from.
“I considered my situation: there I was, naked and shivering, above one of Lakeland’s busiest tourist honeypots.”