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Day 7 Keswick to Rosthwaite In which we hear more about a founding father of the National Trust, knock off another Wainwright summit, meet a remarkable man who set a record that wasn’t to be broken for 28 years and see the home of a ‘delightful heroine’. We also visit at least three of Lakeland’s best known viewpoints. 14 km / 8¾ miles with 540 m / 1750 ft of ascent Highest point: Walla Crag (379 m / 1243 ft)
Across Derwent Water to the Newlands fells
O
Falcon Crag from Calfclose Bay
Watendlath Bridge
ur old friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote in 1830 that ‘in Cumberland and Westmoreland there is a cabinet of beauties.’ He particularly praised Derwent Water and the Vale of Keswick for the ‘air of life and cheerfulness’ there. Victorian tourists knew Derwent Water as the ‘Queen of the Lakes’ although it has to be admitted that some called it, somewhat less politely, the Devil’s Chamberpot, because of the frequent rain some people believe they get round here. Putting Borrowdale’s reputation for wet weather to one side for the time being, the Day 7 shelf of the ‘cabinet of beauties’ is crammed to bursting with goodies, so much so that today’s walk can be counted as a Lakes classic. Leave Keswick town centre towards the boat landings and the highly regarded Theatre by the Lake. Just before reaching the theatre, make a short diversion to the right onto the grassy slopes of Crow Park. This little hill, with its exciting view up the lake to the shapely and challenging outlines of Catbells and Robinson is a good example of a drumlin. Drumlins are elongated low hills made up of glacial till (boulder clay) deposited by glaciers. The exact processes involved in their formation are still open to debate, but it seems that the till is deposited by a moving glacier which then continues its journey over the material it has deposited to produce a laterally symmetrical mound of debris with a steep slope facing the direction of travel and a more gradual slope along the direction of flow. Or it could be that the shaping action is carried out by a second, later glacier after the first one has done the depositing. Drumlins are classic glacial deposition features and they usually come in large groups which, rather pleasingly, are called ‘swarms’. They are quite common in Cumbria, and there are some in the area around Kendal which we’ll be passing through towards the end of the walk.
The Theatre by the Lake opened in 1999 and was the last theatre to be built in Britain in the 20th century. The present building is a permanent replacement for the Blue Box Theatre, which was an amazing mobile theatre consisting of a convoy of wagons which had settled at Keswick in 1975.
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THE STORY OF THE ENGLISH LAKE DISTRICT Return to the main path and walk past the theatre and on down to the boat landings. Continue along the ‘promenade’, recently renovated as part of the Derwentwater Foreshore project, and soon reach a plaque set into the wall commemorating the life and work of Canon Rawnsley.
CANON RAWNSLEY AND THE BIRTH OF THE NATIONAL TRUST The splendidly named Hardwicke Drummond Rawnsley was born in Oxfordshire in 1851, son of a clergyman. While studying at Oxford, he was influenced by John Ruskin and was soon spending time in the Lake District. In 1878 he became vicar of Wray near Windermere, where, as a guest at their holiday home in Wray Castle, he was befriended by the well-to-do Potter family (including their then teenage daughter Beatrix). Rawnsley was probably the first adult to encourage the young Beatrix to continue with her drawings and later supported her efforts to get her first book published (11). It was in the late 1870s that Rawnsley started to take a serious interest in the conservation of the wonderful countryside in which he now found himself and, by 1883, he had become instrumental in the formation of the Lake District Defence Society (the forerunner of the Friends of the Lake District). Ruskin was an early champion of Rawnsley’s efforts, one of his first tasks being to oppose the proposal to build a railway to transport slate from Buttermere to Braithwaite at the foot of the Newlands valley. He was appointed vicar of St Kentigern’s at Crosthwaite (6) in 1883 and held this post for 34 years. Despite his longevity as a vicar, Rawnsley is better remembered for his tireless and vigorous campaigning against anything that he – and plenty of others like him – saw as contrary to the best interests of the Lake District. He was one of the prime movers to keep footpaths open around Keswick when the landowners tried to have them closed (5) and fought against a proposed electric tramway from Windermere to Ambleside. His biggest fight came with the Thirlmere Reservoir scheme (5) and we know how that panned out. But his very public persona and boundless enthusiasm for the cause did at least play a major part in creating the sea change that we now know came about during the arguments for and against that scheme. His final challenge was to argue against the proposals to build a motor road over Sty Head Pass from Wasdale Head to Borrowdale (29). He wasn’t just an opposer of schemes that, to some people, might have improved the Lakes had they been allowed to come to fruition. He was also a county councillor, an organiser of beacons on Helvellyn and Skiddaw to celebrate Victoria’s diamond jubilee, a campaigner for better footpath signposting, the chairman of the Dove Cottage Trust and, above all perhaps, one of the three founder members of the National Trust in 1895, along with Octavia Hill and Sir Robert Hunter. It was Rawnsley who helped arrange the purchase of over 100 acres of pasture and woodland at Brandelhow Park on the west shore of Derwent Water to prevent a large housing development going ahead there, and it was he who was Hon Sec of the fledgling organisation, a position he held until he died in May 1920. He retired from his duties at St Kentigern’s in 1917 and moved to Allan Bank at Grasmere (4). Keep ahead and soon arrive at Friar’s Crag where, provided you haven’t gone horribly wrong, you should be able to find the Ruskin stone, a tall spike of Borrowdale slate. It is probable that Friar’s Crag takes its name from St Herbert, a seventh century priest and hermit whose followers would stand on the crag to receive his blessing.
The view up the lake from here was described (by Norman Nicholson) as ‘probably the most famous in the Lake District’. I don’t know about that but it is pretty good, and Ruskin, who knew about such things, considered it was one of the three or four most beautiful views in Europe. Don’t forget, Borrowdales on the left as you look up the lake and the Skiddaws on the right. Geologically, Friar’s Crag is part of an intrusion of diorite, which was squeezed, when molten, into a gap in the layers of volcanic ashes and lavas that were being laid down about 460 million years ago. The almost vertical cliffs of Friar’s Crag, although very low, show how hard the diorite is relative to the
53 surrounding rocks which have undergone considerably more erosion. And while we’re on matters geological, the two closest islands to Friar’s Crag – Derwent Isle and Lord’s Island – are both partially submerged drumlins. (Derwent Isle is the one on your right as you look up the lake, and is the one that Joseph Pocklington used to own and where he fought his naval battle with Peter Crosthwaite (6)). Although his memorial stone is a prominent feature of the landscape of Friar’s Crag, John Ruskin is associated much more with Coniston, having lived at Brantwood on the lake shore there for the last 29 years of his life, so we’ll hear a bit more about him when we get to Coniston (9). From Friar’s Crag, walk along the lake shore, where the exposed tree roots are particularly striking.
Suspended tree roots on the shore of Derwent Water near Friar’s Crag
Keep on following the lake shore as closely as the path allows through the marshy woodland of The Ings (Norse ‘ing’ = marsh or meadow), and on past Stable Hills to follow the shore again to the pine-studded headland of Broomhill Point. Beyond the point, walk along the beach of Calfclose Bay, looking out for a split boulder on or near the shore This is usually easy to see, but it will be submerged when the water level is high. The boulder is a piece of andesitic lava from further up the valley and which, I understand, was carried down to its present location by a glacier. Boulders transported this way are known as ‘erratics’ and this particular one was sculpted by Peter Randall-Page as a celebratory piece for the centenary of the National Trust in 1995. The low ridge on the left consisting of sand and gravel is, according to one source, an ‘esker’, but another says it’s a ‘kame’. Both are formed by water flowing in or beneath a glacier but if the experts can’t agree on what it is, what chance have the rest of us got? I’m not even certain whether all geologists can agree whether kames and eskers are, in fact, the same thing or not.
Exposed tree roots are a fairly common feature in much-visited places where the repeated passage of booted feet wears away the surrounding earth. This problem is discussed, with reference to Friar’s Crag itself (but not to the adjacent beach where the photo on the left was taken) in Ecology, Recreation and Tourism by John and Ann Edington, and you do see trees with exposed roots quite often in popular spots in the Lakes. But suspended roots like those on the shore here are not as common and although it seems to have something to do with water levels. Derwent Water has a 9ft difference between its high and low water levels and Eric Bavin in Travelling in Lakeland says that, in just one night in August 1938, the level rose by almost 2 m / 7 ft. Just a few years ago, I was told by a Keswick man that, during dredging work near where the River Derwent wooden barrier was removed. As a consequence of this, the water level went down. I don’t know by how much but it was enough to upset the Keswick Launch people whose boats struggled to land at some of the jetties and the naturalists who saw a deterioration in the wetland habitat around the southern end of the lake. Farmers, on the other hand, were pleased because their cattle suddenly had a bit more grassland to graze. Over the years since I was told this I have come to wonder whether I was having my leg pulled. Maybe it was anybody can shed any further light on this, I would be very grateful. Thanks!
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THE STORY OF THE ENGLISH LAKE DISTRICT
Great Wood, together with adjoining woods, is the largest block of sessile oak woodland in northern Britain and is a favourite haunt of the wood warbler. This unobtrusive bird is described by the RSPB as numerous and widespread but, because of a severe decline in the number of breeding pairs in Britain over the last 25 years, it has recently been added to their Red List of threatened species. So, if you see any don’t chase them away! In case you were wondering, the sessile oak differs from the ‘normal’ (pedunculate) oak because its acorns are not carried on stalks (peduncles) but directly on the outer twigs (sessiles). It is largely found in western Britain and is the national tree of Wales.
The height of Walla Crag used to be given as 1234 ft – nice and easy to remember. The splendid people of the Ordnance Survey have now calculated the height as 379 m which equates to 1243 ft. So, there we are. Another of life’s certainties taken away from us.
The National Trust Centenary Boulder at Calfclose Bay
Leave the lakeshore to cross the main valley road and walk half-right through Great Wood to reach the little bridge at the foot of Cat Gill. Don’t cross the bridge but take the path that climbs steeply up the wooded ravine of the gill. Although it looks a little fearsome from below, the walk up Cat Gill is very enjoyable, the path having been recently improved. The steeper parts, which used to be unpleasant, are now pitched and the path follows ingenious zig-zags to make life easier. As the gradient becomes less steep on grass, the path follows a wall which you can cross at a choice of places to reach the excellent summit of Walla Crag. Just be aware that there is very steep ground down to your left, in particular near the ravine of Lady’s Rake. The Earl and Countess of Derwent Water were, it seems, on the side of the rebels during the Jacobite uprising of 1715. The Earl was hanged for his pains and his good wife fled. According to legend, she escaped her pursuers by climbing Walla Crag by the only line of weakness in the cliffs – the gully now known as Lady’s Rake. After Loughrigg and High Rigg, you’ve heard this before, but the rewards for getting to the top of Walla Crag far outweigh the effort of getting there. On the other hand, you might feel, after Cat Gill, that you deserve a good view, and you’ve certainly got one here.
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Derwent Water, Bassenthwaite Lake and Keswick from Walla Crag
Leave the summit of Walla Crag through a nearby kissing gate and turn right onto a good path which soon passes round the head of one of the feeders of Cat Gill, where the ground to the right of the path falls away quite steeply. Once past this the path is very easy and gives outstanding views ahead and right as it descends gently for a further kilometre to cross a footbridge over Barrow Beck. Turn right down to a road – and probably several people – at Ashness Bridge. Ashness Bridge is arguably the most photographed scene in the Lake District. It is undeniably another fine packhorse-style bridge which may have carried packhorse traffic to and from Watendlath: it certainly carries a lot of wheeled traffic nowadays and its narrowness makes most motorists slow down almost to a stop.
Ashness Bridge with Keswick and Skiddaw in the background
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THE STORY OF THE ENGLISH LAKE DISTRICT Before continuing with our journey, it is worth walking down the road for 200 m or so to find the unassuming cairn that carries the memorial plaque to Robert Graham of Keswick. As you will see on the plaque, he ‘traversed 42 Lakeland peaks in 24 hours’ in June of 1932. Say it quickly, and it’s just another fact, but stop and think about it and it’s quite an achievement. To put it into some kind of perspective, we’ve ‘traversed’ four Lakeland peaks so far, and it’s taken us six and a half days. By the time he hit forty, Carlisle-born gardener Bob Graham, was running a guest house with his wife in Keswick. A keen fell walker, Bob had no doubt heard about attempts over the previous 60 or 70 years by various people to tackle increasingly challenging rounds of Lake District fells. By 1920, the unofficial record stood at 70 miles with 5,500 m / 18,000 ft of ascent in just over 21 hours. In 1931, to celebrate his 41st birthday, Bob set off on a long route that would take in 41 tops – one for each year of his life. Bad weather and a route-finding error – see, we can all make them – caused the attempt to be abandoned, but the following year he was ready to try again, this time with the addition of an extra top. He set off from the Moot Hall in Keswick at 1 a.m. on Sunday 13 June 1932. With the help of four pacers, he got back to Keswick at 12.39 am on the 14th having reached all 42 tops and having covered a distance of about 65 miles with over 8,000 m / nearly 27,000 ft of ascent. Bob’s high-tech gear consisted of tennis shoes, shorts and a pyjama jacket and his specially prepared athlete’s diet was bread and butter, a boiled egg and plenty of fruit and sweets. The only training he’d done was to tackle long walks, many of them continuing into the night. There were no reporters to meet Bob and his pacers, and no fanfare or fuss at all. The five men went back to Bob’s B&B and he was up at six to cook them all breakfast. The Cumberland Herald called Bob’s performance an ‘astonishing record of mountaineering skill and endurance’ but the man himself always said that anybody could do it provided they were fit enough. It seems that there were very few serious attempts to emulate Bob’s feat until the late 1950s and then in June 1960 Alan Heaton from Lancashire repeated Bob Graham’s route in 22 hours 18 minutes, Bob himself turning out to encourage the new challenger. By the middle sixties regular attempts were being made and fortunately the tradition of the existing record holder helping would-be record breakers was carried on. As the initial 42 peaks began to be regarded as do-able by more people, the top runners were raising what they called the ‘absolute’ record, by increasing the number of peaks tackled. In 1971 the incredible Joss Naylor (28) ran over 61 peaks (including Bob Graham’s original 42 of course) in just under 24 hours and one of his pacers was Alan Heaton, the man who first broke Graham’s record in 1960. In 1971 the Bob Graham club was formed. To be a member all you have to do is to cover Bob Graham’s original 42 peaks on foot in under 24 hours. When the club was formed there were just eight members. There are now over 1,700. In 1982, the 50th anniversary of Bob’s achievement, the plaque on the cairn was unveiled by Bob’s widow and a new record time for the original round was set by Borrowdale’s Billy Bland. His time for the official Bob Graham round was a scarcely believable 13hrs 53mins, a record that still stands.
57 Almost inevitably, records continue to be broken – youngest person, oldest person, most peaks, first round in winter and so on – but what stands out to me is the modesty and good nature of all those who take part. Walk back to Ashness Bridge and continue along the road for 500 m or so. At the first opportunity, escape from the tarmac into the trees on the right and soon arrive at the viewpoint known as Surprise View. Yes, it’s near the road, and yes, there are usually plenty of people about, but do take care here. The cliff is as near vertical as makes no difference. Keep ahead for a further 300 m and arrive at a junction where you take a broad track heading off half right. This is signposted for Watendlath and leads down to a footbridge over Watendlath Beck. Turn left and follow the path for an easy mile and a half to Watendlath.
I have never found the view to be all that much of a surprise. I don’t want to spoil it for you but you won’t see the Hanging Gardens of Babylon or Machu Picchu. It is spectacular though and you can spend a happy few minutes getting loads of dramatic photos.
This pleasant, undemanding walk never far from the stream of Watendlath Beck is along a perfect hanging valley, carved out by a smaller glacier than the one in the main part of Borrowdale (see Day 3 for a bit more on hanging valleys). Watendlath is, on most days, idyllic. Its setting, next to a shimmering tarn set in a green bowl in the hills, is perfect, while the little cluster of farms and cottages contributes the human touch which adds so much to the appeal of the Lake District. Add to that the packhorse bridge at the entrance to the hamlet and the place’s associations with Hugh Walpole’s Herries Chronicle and you have just about all the ingredients needed for another Lakeland gem.
The waterfall on the left as you approach Watendlath is not named on the OS map but is known as The Churn or The Devil’s Punchbowl. It is a little shy about revealing itself to passing walkers and the grassy slopes from where people try to get a view are steep and slippery. Do take great care!
PACKHORSE ROADS AND BRIDGES – TRANSPORT WITHOUT WHEELS The packhorse bridge at Watendlath is almost certainly the real deal (unlike High Sweden Bridge on Day 2, which might not be). It is on the old wool trade route from Rosthwaite to Wythburn, when Wythburn still had a couple of inns (5), and it may have been used as a way to transport graphite from the mines at Seathwaite (29) to Keswick, back in the days when the road along Borrowdale was too difficult to negotiate. In the 1300s, the Lake District was beginning to develop a woollen industry, based on the vast sheep runs that were being carved out of the forest on the Lakeland fells. Iron ore mines were also being opened up round about the same time, some – but not all – of this trade being driven and organised by the Monasteries (50). The rugged terrain of the Lake District made road building a difficult and laborious task, so not much of it happened until it had to, and until somebody was prepared to pay for the construction and upkeep of roads and bridges. But the increasing demand for trade to be made easier had to be met and, until the arrival of the turnpike roads – not until the 1750s in most of the district – the lack of any decent roads effectively prohibited the use of wheeled transport. So, for several hundred years, horses were used to carry people and freight. Packhorse trains of up to 40 animals became a common sight in the Lake District of the 17th and early 18th centuries, and the goods they carried included wool, cloth, corn, goose feathers, lead and iron ores, salt, coal, charcoal, lime and even salmon and trout. Conditions were not great for packhorse trains and some routes quickly became impassable in wet weather. Bridges were constructed and they were kept simple and basic. They did not have to be wide enough for wheeled carts and had to be built with no parapets – or very low ones – so that the laden horses could negotiate them without obstruction. Most of these distinctive-looking bridges were built before 1800 and a convincing case has been made that they were nearly all built between about 1660 and 1760. Ernest Hinchliffe in his Guide to the Packhorse Bridges of England gives detailed descriptions of a couple of dozen examples in the Lake District and this route either crosses or goes near about half of those. In passing, Hinchliffe says ‘nowhere more than in the Lake District are there packhorse bridges in such majestic settings’, and I don’t think we would want to argue with that.
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THE STORY OF THE ENGLISH LAKE DISTRICT Most walkers will want to have at least a quick look around Watendlath, if only to make use of the cafe, picnic bench or public toilets it offers.
The pronunciation of the name of this hamlet seems to cause some trouble. Many years ago, I was told that the emphasis should be placed on the second syllable, i.e. wat-ENDlath, as somebody with a lisp would say ‘What endless bliss it must be to live in Watendlath.’ I have to confess that I have never asked a Watendlath resident how it should be said, so I could be completely wrong. As for its meaning, that’s not entirely clear either. It’s derived from the Norse for water end (vatn end) and then either barn or lane or land. Is that all clear enough for you? It’s a nice place though, whatever it means and however you want to pronounce it.
Fold Head Farm – the white building on the right just past the cafe – has a slate sign on its wall declaring itself to be the home of Judith Paris, the eponymous heroine in the second of the five massively popular Herries novels written by Sir Hugh Walpole in the 1930s. Walpole lived part of the time at Brackenburn, a house on the lower slopes of Catbells on the opposite side of Borrowdale and we’ll be hearing more about him on Day 30. There used to be two farms in Watendlath claiming to be the ‘Home of Judith Paris’ but Walpole said the place he described in his novels was an amalgam of more than one farmhouse. Leave Watendlath by re-crossing the packhorse bridge and then taking the path that heads away south-west. Take the right hand branch at the junction and head quite sharply uphill for the brief climb to Puddingstone Bank. As the gradient eases, a great view opens out ahead, very much of the fells (from Dale Head round to Great Gable, Great End and Glaramara) but also with the Seathwaite valley prominent.
Looking up Borrowdale from Puddingstone Bank
On the clear descent to Rosthwaite, ignore a junction signed to Keswick and the Bowderstone, but turn right through a gate at the next junction (signposted to Rosthwaite). The path leads down past Hazel Bank to the main valley road and the village of Rosthwaite.