Ernest Editions - Another Place, The Lake - 2020

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JO TINSLEY TINA SMITH HOBSON ABIGAIL WHYTE DAVE PERRETT LYNSEY THORNTHWAITE, ALEX MCCOSKRIE, COLIN HILL, RYAN LOMAS, JOLY BRAIME features@ernestjournal.co.uk advertise@ernestjournal.co.uk

Ernest Journal is published every six to nine months by Uncharted Press Ltd. ernestjournal.co.uk We are proud to be part of Bristol Independent Publishers. wearebip.co.uk

Printed by Taylor Brothers, Bristol All rights reserved by © Uncharted Press Ltd 2019. Copyright is either owned by or licensed to Ernest Journal, or permitted by the original copyright holder.

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SEEK OUT PICTURESQUE VIEWING Ernest Journal tries to ensure STATIONS that all information is correct at the time of publishing, LEAP GLEEFULLY but INTO ULLSWATER cannot be held responsible for any errors or omissions. The views expressed by authorsNAMES are not necessarily those of the publisher.

INVESTIGATE CUMBRIAN PLACE

STARGAZING ESSENTIALS Viewing station overlooking Ullswater above Lyulph’s Tower.

CAPTURE YOUR OWNCover: ISLAND FOR A DAY Photo by Ryan Lomas

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Have you ever heard of the concept of ‘slow travel’? A natural successor to the slow food movement, the idea explores what it means to journey slowly and simply, to immerse ourselves in a landscape and truly get to know its seasons, culture and people. It’s an invitation to let go of ‘must-see’ lists and allow our journeys to be guided by curiosity and chance encounters. It’s an idea that means a great deal to us here at Another Place, The Lake.

It’s also one of the reasons why we’re proud to introduce you to this special edition of Ernest Journal, made especially for our guests with a chapter of stories from the hotel and surrounding area.

A sense of curiosity and slow adventure flows through each edition of Ernest, but in this issue the team dives more deeply into themes of time and wilderness.

On board the icebreaker Otso, Horatio Clare forges a new relationship with sea ice – an unpredictable wilderness that holds the key to our futures (p16).

Jem Finer introduces us to Longplayer, a score composed to play for 1,000 years (p67). While David Nash tells us how he’s “launching a lifeboat” for his dying Ash Dome so it can grow into something new for generations to come.

PHOTO: LLOYD & YAYA, HANDLUGGAGEONLY

We pick up these same themes in our chapter by delving into the rich history of Cumbrian place names (p60); by drawing a line between our understanding of wild landscapes with those of the first ‘tourists’ who visited the Lake District (p62); and by re-connecting with the wild spirit within by leaping joyfully into Ullswater with our resident swimming guide, Colin Hill (p54).

We hope this special edition helps to deepen your experience of the North Lakes in true slow travel style.

Will Ashworth Director another.place

@anotherplace_uk anotherplacethelake

anotherplacehotels

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DIP IN

JOURNEY INTO

the north lakes As you know, here at Another Place, The Lake it’s all about having fun, eating well and letting go – whether that’s paddling out from our private jetty, gathering to play board games in the library or unwinding in our outdoor hot tub with that unforgettable view of the fells across the lake.

As well as giving you time to pause, each stay offers a unique opportunity to get to know this quiet corner of the Lake District – a wild region that’s been shaped as much by human hands as by the glaciers that carved its lofty peaks, rocky corries and hidden valleys. Whichever season you visit, there’s always a new experience or a fresh way to connect with this special place we call home.

COLIN NICHOLLS

Over the next 18 pages, we aim to share just some of the region’s secrets. Read on to discover the Picturesque ‘viewing stations’ that helped early visitors understand the sublime majesty of the landscape, to delve into the rich linguistic history of the Lakes with our map of Cumbrian place names and to leap gleefully into Ullswater with our resident open water coach Colin Hill.

dip in SWIM CLUB

THAT VIEW

THE LIVING SPACE

LAKELAND MOON GIN If you're going to gaze out over the Lakeland landscape, sniff its fresh air, listen to the rippling of its lakes, feel its rock under your boots and its cold water on your skin, then you might like to taste it too.

Lakeland Moon Gin is blended just down the road in Kendal, and the 50

ILLUSTRATION: LOUISE LOGSDON, POOL PHOTOGRAPH: COLIN NICHOLS, ISLAND PHOTOGRAPH: QUENTYN TAYLOR

The thrill and chill of cold water swimming is one of the special joys of Another Place, The Lake, but warm water swimming has its perks too – especially at Swim Club, where the end of the heated pool in its airy glasshouse seems to fall straight into the breathtaking mountain view. But did you know there’s more to those familiar peaks than first meets the eye?

That great craggy bastion you can see across the lake is Barton Fell and its summit is called Arthur’s Pike. In fact, the North Lakes are rich in Arthurian legend. Fifteen minutes away there’s a distinctive Neolithic henge named King Arthur’s Round Table, while a mound on the opposite shore of Ullswater – traditionally called the ‘Tristermont’ – was allegedly home to the swoonsome Sir Tristram. Local legend says that Arthur’s final resting place, Avalon, lies beneath the nearby hill of Blencathra, rising a few miles west of the hotel.

water comes from a limestone-filtered Cumbrian spring. It’s traditionally distilled with a mix of seven different botanicals, and there’s a touch of witchcraft in the fact that the juniper berries are only gathered under a full moon – when their flavour is said to be at its fullest.

You’ll find Lakeland Moon Gin behind the bar in the Living Space. Try it with Fever Tree Mediterranean tonic and orange zest, or sip it strong and cold in a Martini. It's the perfect epilogue to an invigorating day roaming the fells.

DIP IN

ON THE LAKE

NORFOLK ISLAND “The island had come to seem one of those places seen from the train that belong to a life in which we shall never take part.”

Swallows & Amazons (1930). Hundreds of steamer passengers sail by the tiny islands in the remote southern reaches of Ullswater every day, but how many are intrepid enough to explore them? Ashore, adventures await that John, Susan, Titty and Roger would be proud of. Norfolk Island (pictured), is an ambitious five-mile paddle from the hotel by kayak or stand up paddleboard. Once there, you can spend a joyful few hours swimming laps between rocks, waving smugly at the steamers or sprawling out with a picnic blanket, watching swallows catch insects on the wing. Pemmican and grog anyone? Of course, you don’t need to go that far to discover your own remote cove as there are plenty of hidden spots nearby. Ask at reception to arrange a guided trip straight from our private jetty.

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WHAT TO PACK

ILLUSTRATIONS: LOUISE LOGSDON, PHOTOGRAPH: THE WANDERING FEVER

STARGAZING ESSENTIALS There’s nothing quite as magical as spotting your first constellation, planet or shooting star. Luckily, up here in the North Lakes, we have some of the clearest skies in the country. So wrap up warm and head out for a night-time adventure. Here’s all you need...

Thermos You’ll find a handsome green Stanley thermos in your room, along with sachets of tea, coffee and hot chocolate. Fill ‘er up!

Tunnock’s Have you spotted the jar of tea cakes in the hall? Grab one or two for a stargazing treat.

Walking boots or wellies You’ll need sturdy footwear for venturing out in the dark. Don’t worry if you’ve forgotten your boots, there’s a pair of wellies in your size waiting by the front door.

Red light torch See where you’re going without spoiling your night sky vision.

A rear bicycle light will do.

Warm clothing and a blanket Even in summer, nights can be chilly, so layer up!

Star chart app You can get amazing apps that use your phone’s GPS to simulate a real-time map of the stars.

Try Star Walk or Star Chart.

Binoculars A good set of 10x50 bins are perfect for viewing the moon, planets and some deep sky objects.

THE LIBRARY

ARBOREAL RINGS Anyone who has run their hands over a piece of freshly cut wood can’t fail to be fascinated by the tree’s life mapped out before their eyes – how long it lived; the fluctuations of the seasons; the flourishing springs and barren winters it endured. And it’s this very essence that the late artist Bryan Nash Gill has captured in his meticulously

ON THE FELLS

RICKY LIGHTFOOT “It’s great going away on a big adventure, but you know here I can have an adventure every day.”

Cumbrian local Ricky Lightfoot is a champion trail runner who’s won races all over the world. The Lakeland landscape is both training ground and playground for Ricky, and you’ll find him out five or six times a week pelting through the fells, with dirt and scree spraying from his heels. “Downhill running’s like being on a tightrope,”

he tells us. “It's brilliant but sometimes you've got to reel it in a little bit.” A firefighter by day, Ricky loves to explore new routes, ranging across trackless fellside and powering up hidden gullies.

“I’ve got it into my head that there are places out there that a human foot still hasn’t stepped,” he laughs. “And I sort of thrive on the bad weather – it totally changes the perspective of things.”

You can follow three running trails straight from the hotel’s front door.

Ranging from 5-9km, the routes follow the Ullswater Way with astonishing views over the lake. Check our website or ask at reception for maps.

Follow Ricky @rickylightfoot

crafted prints of woodcuts. Whether maple, ash or spruce, each image is a meditation on the beauty and uniqueness of a tree.

You can see ink prints of these arboreal rings around the hotel, as well as in this wonderful memory game in the library. So why not pluck the box from the shelf, order a drink and curl up on a sofa, then you can while away an afternoon putting your memory to the test – at the same time being reminded that there is simply nothing lovelier than a tree.

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LEAP BACK IN Re-wild yourself on an open water adventure to Kailpot Crag, where a gleeful swim and a courageous leap can leave you feeling like a kid again, says Abi Whyte PHOTOGRAPHS: COLIN NICHOLLS

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e’re heading south. It’s a lot wilder there.”

With these enticing words, open water swimming coach Colin Hill tugs the boat’s engine into a splutter, and we pull away from the hotel’s jetty on a calm autumn morning. Ullswater is still and quiet after the ravages of last night’s storm, which has risen the water level by a good few inches, and there’s barely another soul on the lake.

“That’s my house over there,” Colin points out on the far shore as we gain some headway. It’s the perfect location for an outdoor swimmer of Colin’s calibre. A man who’s swum the Channel, and takes part in open-water challenges all over the world. I’m clearly in the right boat.

We’re setting out to Kailpot Crag, one of Colin’s favourite spots for a shoreline paddle. If you can imagine Ullswater – the second largest lake in the Lake District at just over seven miles long and half a mile wide – in the shape of a toppled over ‘Z’, we’re heading across the bottom stroke to the corner of the upward stem. The scenery does indeed feel more dramatic here: twisted, coppery oaks hang their branches over exposed rocks; the rolling, pastoral hills giving way to loftier volcanic fells.

“There’s no ignoring the jitters in my stomach as we wade into the water, but Colin’s humour and encouragement keeps me at ease.”

We moor at Kailpot Bay and follow a trail, forming part of the Ullswater Way, that meanders up and over the crag to a tiny shingle beach, where we make camp. There’s no ignoring the jitters in my stomach as we wade into the water, but Colin’s humour and encouragement keeps me at ease, and he soon has me splashing my face and immersing my shoulders to acclimatise to the cold, my wetsuit thankfully softening the blow.

With a hesitant plunge we’re off, Colin leading the way, and I ease myself into the water with a casual breaststroke, keen to make the most of the scenery: the silver and gold hues of the water, and clouds banked up on the fells. After a few metres, we stop for a rest, treading water while clutching on to our tow floats, laughing breathlessly at nothing in particular.

“This is the joy of wild swimming,” Colin tells me, rolling on to his back, “It’s like being a kid again. It feels mischievous; naughty.You can’t help but giggle when you’re doing it.”

I soon get into the childlike swing of things, rolling like an otter and submerging my head for the sheer novelty of being in an underwater world, albeit for a few seconds.

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“The inner child in me says ‘yes’, and it seems a shame not to listen to her. It’s so much fun I do it three times.”

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We wave at a passing steamer, then Colin gives me a few tips on my front crawl (I thrash my head around too much, apparently) as we round the corner and swim back to the boat. I manage the final stretch with my newly acquired technique, which still feels a bit rampant but I’m starting to get the hang of it, and not swallowing so much water. “Don’t worry too much about that,” Colin assures me. “With all the rain we’ve had, this lake is as fresh as drinking water.”

THE LAKE LOVER’S LEAP Clambering ashore, I realise it’s not quite home-time yet.

“You up for a jump?” Colin asks me, nodding towards the crag. I clench my jaw into a smile. The inner child in me says ‘yes’, and it seems a shame not to listen to her.

The crag we’re scrambling up bears a plaque dedicated to Lord Birkett (known as the ‘Lakes’ Great Advocate’), who was instrumental in keeping the lake from being turned into a reservoir in the 1960s. It reads, “He loved Ullswater. He strove to maintain its beauty for all to enjoy.”

‘Cheers Birkie,’ I think, before I my make my leap. It’s so much fun I do it three times.

The cold beginning to set in, Colin bundles me up in a dryrobe for our journey back to Watermillock on Ullswater’s northern shores. I give Colin a hurried goodbye, as I’m a bit late picking my daughters up from the hotel’s Kids’ Zone, but they don’t seem to mind too much, having just returned from a lakeside adventure themselves. “We had a picnic,” my three-year-old Anouska tells me.

After lunch, all feeling a little dozy-eyed, my girls and I hole up in the Library, alternating between games of solitaire, colouring in, and Bananagrams. I’d planned to take the girls on an afternoon walk, but – I realise – it can wait, at least until after another cup of hot chocolate. ● You can plan your own wild swimming adventure with Colin by booking online or via reception. You must be a competent swimmer to participate; wetsuits and safety equipment are provided. Alternatively you’re welcome to borrow wetsuits and floats from the Sheep Shed to swim in the lake.

BE SAFE AND SWIM WILD u If you’re new to open-water swimming, swim close to the lake edge so you can touch the bottom. u Steer clear of mooring areas, jetties and marinas. uWear a bright swimming cap and take a tow float so that you’re easy to spot in the water. u Wear a wetsuit to help you keep warm and buoyant. u Be mindful not to stay in too long, even if you feel fine. uKeep an eye on the weather forecast, as conditions can change quickly on the lake.

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What’s in a (place) name?

With geological features named ‘ghyll’ (ravine), ‘fjall’ (mountain) and ‘fors’ (waterfall), travelling in the North Lakes can feel more like a journey through the Norwegian fjords than a wild corner of Cumbria. Even the origin of Ullswater, the ribbon of water that Another Place, The Lake overlooks, is said to link back to Old Norse; this is ‘Ulf ’s water’, named after a Norse chief.

Situated in the centre of the British Isles – and with rich mineral resources and acres of fertile land – it’s perhaps no surprise that Cumbria has a long and complex history of human settlement. In fact, if you look a little closer, you’ll soon discover that these Old Norse place names are mingled in with Old English and Old Brythonic (the ancestor of modern Welsh, Cornish and Breton).

Using our illustrated map as your guide, we invite your to investigate the ‘toponymy’ of the North Lakes, seeking the stories behind place names in this distinctive region.

ILLUSTRATION: SAM BREWSTER 60

Cumbrian inhabitants would have spoken Old Brythonic – an ancestor of modern Welsh, Breton and Cornish – since at least the Iron Age. Look to landscape features ˉ such as rivers, valleys, crags and summits for ­­­­ surviving examples.

COMMON BRYTHONIC CELTIC NAMES blain, meaning ‘summit’ as in ‘Blencathra’ cair, meaning ‘fort’ carrek, which meant ‘rock’ or ‘crag’ cocker, from kukr, meaning ‘crooked river’ din, meaning ‘fort’ glinn, which meant ‘valley’ penn, meaning ‘hill’ as in ‘Penrith’ redïn, meaning ‘ferns’ or ‘bracken’

INVENTORY II

Angles moved into Cumbria from the 5th century, with settlers following the line of Hadrian’s Wall before settling in the Eden Valley and the coast. Place names suggest the Anglo-Saxons first settled the lowlands, staying away from the mountains.

COMMON OLD ENGLISH NAMES - meaning ‘homestead’ ham from ham, -inga- meaning ‘belonging to the sons or people of...’ mere from mær(e), meaning ‘pond’ or ‘lake’ stickle from sticele or stikill, meaning ‘a steep place’ - meaning ‘farmstead’ or ‘town’ -ton from tun, - meaning ‘settlement’ wick, wich from wıc, or ‘farm’

The Norse arrived in Cumbria around 950 AD and left a deep impression on the region’s place names, particularly in relation to geological features such as mountains, rivers, ravines and valleys.

COMMON OLD NORSE NAMES beck from bekkr, meaning ‘stream’ dale from dalr or ‘valley’ fell from fjall, meaning ‘mountain’ force, foss from fors, meaning ‘waterfall’ gill, ghyll from gil, which meant ‘ravine’ holme from holmr or ‘island’ pike from pic, meaning ‘peak’ side, seat from sætr, meaning ‘pasture’ tarn from tjorn or ‘small lake’ thwaite from þveit, meaning ‘clearing’

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THE LANGUAGE OF WILD BEAUTY Prior to the Picturesque movement, people sought out symmetry, elegant architecture and the trimmed neatness of a formal garden. When they reached the Lake District, it was culture shock; they couldn’t articulate the sublime majesty of the landscape. A new language was needed to interpret this wild aesthetic.

PHOTOGRAPHS: RYAN LOMAS WORDS: JOLY BRAIME

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hen Daniel Defoe visited the Lake District in the 1720s, he noted gloomily that “all the pleasant part of England was at an end”.

He described the “horror” of the place with great relish, calling it “a country eminent only for being the wildest, most barren and frightful of any that I have passed over in England, or even in Wales.”

Despite being even more awful than Wales, however, the Lake District was about to see an explosion in popularity. Today, nearly 20 million people a year visit the Lakes – in 2017 it was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site – and it all started with the pioneer tourists of the Picturesque movement.

In Defoe’s day, people liked symmetry and neatness, elegant architecture and formal gardens. Picturesque beauty, on the other hand, was all about the wild and violent lines of nature. An important aspect of a ‘picturesque’ landscape was that it needed an element of the ‘sublime’, which is to say that it had to have a hint of fear and awe about it, elevating it beyond something that was simply pretty.

Artists had been exploring the concept of the picturesque as far back as the 1600s, but it was an English vicar called William Gilpin who famously defined it in 1768 as “a term expressive of that peculiar kind of beauty, which is agreeable in a picture”.

Gilpin wrote a series of books about the picturesque, including the pithily titled Observations, relative chiefly to picturesque beauty, made in the year 1772, on several parts of England; particularly the mountains, and lakes of Cumberland, and Westmoreland. Part

travel guide, part artist’s manual, it offered a fresh way to understand the rugged Lakeland landscapes, complete with its own specialised vocabulary.

A NEW LANGUAGE Because his readers were learning to connect with natural landscapes by appraising them like paintings (and often by actually sketching them), Gilpin’s guides were couched in the technical language of art. He writes of composition, middle tints, near-distance and offscapes, and his books are peppered with italicised terms, always meticulously defined. “In a distance, the ruling character is tenderness, which on a fore-ground gives way to what the painter calls force and richness. Force arises from a violent opposition of colour, light, and shade: richness consists in a variety of parts, and glowing tints.”

Gilpin was almost comically finicky about correct composition in a landscape. Insufficiently dilapidated ruins were “disgusting”; a jarring line or colour was a “deformity”; a mountain that was shaped too much like something man-made was deemed “grotesque”.

“Thomas West devised a network of ‘viewing stations’, where visiting aesthetes could enjoy curated vistas.”

The effect of Gilpin’s waspish language is considerably heightened by the fact that the letters ‘s’ and ‘f ’ look very alike in books printed in the 1700s, lending the text a Pythonesque shrillness that rather suits it. It’s difficult to read his condemnation of (illproportioned) Scandinavian mountains as “maffef of hideouf rudeneff ” without cracking a smile.

Gilpin was clear that such deficiencies in nature were “not a subject for the pencil; [and] should be relinquished”. Or in other words, edited out. Trees should be planted or removed at the artist’s discretion, ill-formed hillocks should be broken open, and intrusive cottages “thrown down”. Those with enough money sometimes even bought the landscapes themselves so they could make such alterations in real life. t PREVIOUS PAGE: The viewing station overlooking Ullswater from Lyulph’s Tower. u Hallin Fell, looking south down the remote valley of Martindale.

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As a concept, the picturesque is gloriously paradoxical.

You aim to allow nature its full, unfettered glory by tampering with it to make it fit a set of aesthetic rules.

All the same, people were mad for it.

As high society packed their paint boxes and directed their carriages northwards, they needed a more useful travel guide than Gilpin’s Observations, which were decidedly light on practical information.

Enter another priest, Thomas West, who in 1776 published A Guide to the Lakes. West was a dab hand at packaging up the picturesque for the mass market. Not only did his guide contain helpful travel advice, but he also devised a network of ‘viewing stations’, where visiting aesthetes could enjoy curated vistas.

These viewing stations weren’t necessarily high points.

Ullswater, for example, he felt should be viewed from closer to the shore, since it “loses much of its dignity as a lake” if seen from any hill except Dunmallard at the northern end. Head up to one of his viewing stations just above Aira Force and you can sort of see what he means. Because Ullswater is long and sinuous, you get a better sense of its scale from a little lower down. Lakefront viewing stations had the added bonus of rich acoustics caused by the shape of the valley, and West noted that tourists could “find much amusement by discharging guns, or small cannon”.

True connoisseurs of the picturesque would turn their backs to West’s views and instead examine them in a ‘Claude glass’, which was a convex mirror about four inches across, named after the Baroque landscape painter Claude Lorraine (1600-1682). “Where the objects are great and near,” wrote West, “it removes them to a due distance, and shews them in the soft colours of nature, and in the

most regular perspective the eye can perceive, or science demonstrate.” Ideally a visitor would carry two Claude glasses – a smoked mirror for bright days and a silver foil one for dull weather – rather like analogue Instagram filters.

It’s difficult to imagine the 18th-century tourists standing there with their backs to the landscape, gazing at the views in filtered mirrors, without thinking of their modern-day counterparts stood in exactly the same position taking snaps for Instagram. And in Gilpin editing out “grotesque” cottages and other such aberrations, there is more than a hint of Photoshop.

Just like overly-keen Instagrammers, enthusiasts of the picturesque were ripe for mockery. Even Jane Austen had a pop at them in Northanger Abbey, where one character so over-analyses the technical aspects of a view that he strips all the joy out of it – an experience that will be familiar to anyone who has tried to enjoy a nice holiday in the company of an Insta-fiend.

But maybe we shouldn’t be too snooty about either ourselves or those early tourists. Understanding and appreciating the majesty of natural landscapes, after all, is hard, and our compulsion to frame and record them is perhaps just an attempt to reduce them to more relatable proportions. Two hundred years ago, they reached for a Claude glass; today we get our phones out.

FROM TINY ACORNS… The problem with a prescriptive system like picturesque beauty was that it left little room for an instinctive response to landscape. But as a starting point, the concept provided a stepping-stone to a richer, more spontaneous relationship with nature. It wasn’t long before Wordsworth and his set broke free of the viewing stations, wandering lonely as clouds through the Lakeland fells and discovering what West himself termed “accidental beauties”.

The Lake District has been called the birthplace of landscape conservation, one of the many reasons why the region was recently added to the World Heritage List. For all their fussy artistic language and absurd mirrors, it was Gilpin, West and the early picturesque tourists who first found a way to relate to those ‘sublime’ landscapes. In doing so, they may well have sown the tiniest seeds of a global conservation movement that now spans more than 3,000 national parks and over 70 National Trusts worldwide. ● VISIT LYULPH’S TOWER VIEWING STATION Park at Aira Force National Trust car park, then take the waterfall path.When the path splits, take the right fork over a stile. A path leads you above Lyulph’s Tower (private), where you can appreciate the glorious view.

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Welcome to your special edition of Ernest Journal, published exclusively for guests at Another Place, The Lake.

Ernest is a journal for enquiring minds. It’s made for those who value surprising and meandering journeys, fuelled by curiosity rather than adrenaline and guided by chance encounters.

It is a repository for wild ideas, curious artefacts and genuine oddities, replete with tales of pioneers, invention and human obsession.

Ernest is founded on the principles of slow journalism.

We value honesty, integrity and down-to-earth storytelling – and a good, long read every now and then. ernestjournal.co.uk

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