Ronald Turnbull
Ahhh, the Lake District. England’s largest, most mountainous national park is also its most popular. What is it that attracts hillwalkers back time after time?
outlines the many reasons he loves the Lake District, including the likeness of its greatest valleys to the Spice Girls
So, what’s so great about the rather small group of rather low hills in the north-west corner of England? You may suggest that the Scottish Highlands are a whole lot wilder. To that I simply shrug my shoulders. You might indicate that Yosemite has trees that are taller than 290m Castle Crag in Borrowdale. To that I just raise one of my eyebrows and nod my head sideways. You can tell me that Lake Baikal in Siberia isn’t just larger than all the lakes of Lakeland put together, it’s larger than Lakeland
(13 times larger, to be precise). I roll my eyes upwards and point the palms of my hands at the sky.
Firing off these ‘mine’s bigger than yours’ stats at this particular national park is like the end of a Hollywood action movie. You can rattle off your machine guns for 20 minutes, and chuck in the odd rocket-propelled grenade for good measure. But there’s just no point. You’ll destroy a whole lot of parked cars but you’ll be firing blanks when you try to shoot down the Lake District. Because Lakeland is, quite simply, the world’s most concentrated little lump of mountain loveliness.
Any day of the year could see me parked up at Rosthwaite, or stepping off a bus at Dunmail Raise or a train at Penrith. It could be at daybreak, it could be mid-morning. Or it could be in the evening, after a bar meal at one of Lakeland’s hundred pubs, ready for an overnight on a hilltop of squishy heather.
I could be crossing River Derwent on an ancient stonework bridge, for a rocky little path under an ancient oakwood. Above the wood, a small, unvisited summit – this morning I’m thinking of High Doat above Borrowdale Youth Hostel. Only 283m high, but the top is a place of rocky slabs and tiny pools, with a view down the twisting green valley and up to Glaramara, Great End and Great Gable.
Then it’s a lung-enhancing climb up steepish grass, with little rocky outcrops, alongside the carved out hollow of a gill. Dropping briefly into the top of Newlands, out over boulders below the waterfall, and across the base of the great north face of Dale Head. And into one of Lakeland’s least significant scrambles, Far Tongue Gill. Mostly stones and boulders, it won’t ever make it into a guidebook. But a tiny waterfall splashes in on one side, while the other slope is scree and slabby rock and heather still in winter-black.
On Hindscarth top, the cloud lifts a little at sunset. And a hundred gnarly, crinkly little summits are revealed. Ten minutes down the ridge, there’s a little heathery shoulder, crags dropping on three sides, and a view to the lights of Keswick where a choice of fine pubs is competing to offer me, ten hours from now, a Cumberland cooked breakfast. And there’s a hundred other wrinkles in these hills, just waiting for your tent or bivvy. When it comes to Lakeland, there’s really nothing to discuss.
“OH THE LAKE DISTRICT’S LOVELY. LET’S GO THERE. WE CAN EAT SCONES. THEY DO GREAT SCONES IN 1927” DOCTOR WHO