Despite being called the Lake District, there is only one lake – Bassenthwaite Lake – everything else being ‘waters’, ‘meres’ or, in the case of the smaller expanses of water, ‘tarns’. Some are not even natural. Thirlmere and Haweswater were created by damming natural valleys in the 1890s and 1930s to supply water for the towns and cities of Lancashire.
Similarly the picturesque Tarn Hows may look as though it has been there forever, but it too is man-made. It was created in the mid-19th century for James Garth Marshall, MP and owner of nearby Monk Coniston Hall, as part of a series of landscaping projects he commissioned once he gained full possession of all the surrounding land after an enclosure act of 1862. In 1930 the Marshall family sold much of their land to Beatrix Heelis of Sawrey, – better known by her maiden name, the writer and illustrator Beatrix Potter – who then sold the half of this land containing the tarn to the National Trust and bequeathed the other half to them along with other land and properties in her will following her death in 1943.
Looking back it is fortuitous that the National Trust became such an important landowner and the Lake District National Park was established just at the right time. As the declining mining and quarrying were at risk of being replaced by other detrimental industries and as mass tourism was about to boom, these bodies came into being and were able to protect the landscape from unrestricted planning; some would say somewhat over-zealously. But the attraction of the Lake District is its beauty and its easy accessibility and if it was not for its considered conservation by these two bodies it is doubtful whether so many of us would find it such a magnet.
FRANK PATTERSON – THE WAINWRIGHT OF THE ROADS
Many walkers hold the name of Alfred Wainwright (1907–1991) close to their hearts in that they will have used his Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells to find their way to summits. However, few cyclists will have heard of the illustrator Frank Patterson (1871–1952), who provided over 26,000 drawings for Cycling magazine and then the Cyclists’ Touring Club Gazette over a period of 59 years.
As a young man Patterson was an enthusiastic cyclist; this was curtailed by a leg injury when he was 38, and he then took up long distance walking. For the last 54 years of his life, he and his wife lived in a rented Elizabethan farmhouse near Billinghurst in Kent where he spent most of his time shooting on the land that he sub-let rather than farm. Leading a simple and contented life at home, he had little desire to travel and produced many of his later drawings from photographs and postcards sent by friends, dropping in a bike or some cyclists to satisfy his publisher. While his style is not to everyone’s taste, his illustrations have a lasting appeal, both for their simple celebration of the British countryside – and for those traffic-free roads.
Rydal Water by Frank Patterson, reproduced with the kind permission of the CTC, the national cycling charity, www.ctc.org.uk
Geology and landscape
The height of the Lake District fells has not much to do with the hardness of their rock, which is little different to that of the surrounding countryside, but to a raft of hard granite below, which occasionally breaks through at Eskdale, Ennerdale, Skiddaw and Shap. The top tier above this granite layer is made up of three broad bands of rock running from the southwest to the northeast.
In the north is the Skiddaw Group made up of the oldest rocks in the region formed through sedimentary action about 500 million years ago. Although they look like slate, they are friable and easily eroded, forming the rounded hills of the Northern Fells. South of this is the Borrowdale Volcanic Group made up of lavas and ash flows that erupted during a period of volcanic activity 450 million years ago. The highest and craggiest parts of the Lake District that are the most popular with walkers and climbers, such as Scafell (964m), Scafell Pike (978m), Helvellyn (950m), Coniston Old Man (803m) and the Langdale Pikes (736m), are all formed from the harder rocks of the Borrowdale Volcanic Group. Further south again is another zone of sedimentary slates, siltstones and sandstones known as the Windermere Group, which were formed during the Silurian period about 420 million years ago. Again being far less resistant to erosion, they form the rounded hills that stretch all the way from the Duddon estuary across to Kendal giving the southern part of the Lake District a more pastoral feel.
A monument in slate at the summit of Honister Pass (Stages 3A and 3B, and Route 8)
Some 400 million years ago the fells would have been of Himalayan proportions as violent volcanic activity pushed up from below to form a very high mountain range. But millions of years of erosion have reduced them to their present size, exposing igneous intrusions, which originally cooled and crystallised hundreds of metres below the surface. About 350 million years ago, most of the land sank beneath a warm tropical sea that teemed with life. The remains of these life forms created a thick layer of sediment made up of shells, fossils and coral all over the seabed, which eventually formed the pale grey Carboniferous limestone that runs around the perimeter of the national park. In other areas to the west, this sea was filled in with fertile mud and sand that resulted in the growth of forests, which decayed to form the belt of coal that was the lifeblood of heavy industry in West Cumbria.
During the last two million years, the Earth has gone through repeated periods of glaciations separated by warmer periods that supported the growth of broadleaved forests. It is the action of glaciers and the continual freezing and thawing of melt water during this period that has shaped the fells we know so well today. After the last period of glaciation, the sea levels changed and soils formed below the oak forests in the valleys. However, clearing the forests for cultivation in the 11th century led to some soil erosion and the formation of alluvial fans and lake deltas characteristic of the central and southern parts of the region.
Since then, the only observable changes to the landscape have been due to the activity of man, either creating fields for livestock or mining and quarrying for minerals and building materials. Over the centuries, rock has been quarried for constructing buildings and the many miles of dry stone walls and slate for roofing. At the same time, lead, copper and other ores have been mined from veins in the rocks of the Borrowdale Volcanic Group at various sites in the centre of the area particularly during the 18th and 19th centuries. Today there is still some limited quarrying within the boundaries of the Lake District National Park, but by the 20th century mining had largely ended as financially viable veins of ore became exhausted.
The coastal region of West Cumbria has a particularly fascinating industrial history, revealed in local museums and heritage centres. Shipbuilding, coal and iron ore mining, steel making and chemical manufacturing have all been major employers, but today little of these industries remain.
STONE WALLS
Rebuilding an old dry stone wall on the fell road above Staveley (Stage 1B)
Riding through the Lake District gives ample time to really get to know dry stone walls. Cumbria has an estimated 15,000km (9300 miles) of them, so there is a lot to study. Although some date from earlier times, most were constructed following the Enclosure Act of 1801 to divide up the farming landscape. The fields around farms in the valleys are known as in-bye fields, but the fields up the fellside have been ‘taken’ from the fell and are known as in-take fields. The land above the highest wall is the open fell.
Earlier walls tend to be built from well-rounded stones that retreating ice had left scattered across the landscape, whereas more recent walls were constructed from stone that was quarried in the immediate vicinity and dragged to where they were needed by a horse-drawn ‘slipe’ or sledge. This was not an easy task as each metre of wall requires a ton of stone.
Walls in the Lake District are built with a variety of different types of stone depending on the geology of the location with slate, shale, sandstone, limestone and granites all in common use. Traditionally craftsmen would