A Lot of Lakes Part the First

When I think of the Lake District, I think of scenery, walking, and the Romatic poets - Wordsworth and Coleridge of course, collaborating together in Grasmere and Keswick, but also their contemporaries and buddies who lived or travelled, like Southey, de Quincey, Shelley, Keats. It was an intense period of change for England, socially, culturally and politically, with the French Revolution having implications for English politics and thought, and the Industrial Revolution changing the way life was lived at a speed unprecedented.

At Buttermere

The Lake District surely was a stark contrast to this. It wasn't without change of its own, which is considered in some of the poetry, but there was still what would have seemed a simpler way of life tied directly to the land - and there was a beautiful landscape of smooth lakes and steep slopes, of green pastures and living forests.

Derwentwater

There are 20 major lakes in the District, with a variety of other tarns and resivours scattered in the dips and flat stretches between the hills. I stayed first at a youth hostel beside Derwentwater, a lake I'd not heard of, but possibly my favourite of those I saw. Barrow House, its other name, is a converted mansion that the Queen visited at some point for a reason. It's a short bus trip or a slightly longer but absolutely gorgeous walk from Keswick, one of the main centres in the national park, and so it is removed from the bustle. The lake is on the other side of the road, and all around is tame woodland, with a waterfall right outside - I could hear it (when the fat chick wasn't snoring) from my bed. I'd been unsure of the location simply because the buses didn't run early or late, but when I turned down Barrow Road out of Keswick all doubts were dispelled. The footpath went alongside the road, beside green fields sprouting lambs, through patches of forest with robins and tits and other light-tongued birds, along the lake shore itself, and unfolding at turns beautiful hills layering themselves like a satisfyingly good metaphor.

Walking from Keswick towards Barrow House/ Derwentwater Youth Hostel

The area is on the border of Scotland, and so it's not surprising that some of the hills are quite similar, particularly on the days when I got low cloud and moments of lingering rain. There were similar forms and rocks, and a few thin waterfalls, but it did feel much tamer. Some of this is surely to do with the level of domestication, with a greater population than many of the areas I passed through in the Highlands, but the fields and paddocks were more deliberately defined on the ground. There were also many more people walking, which was sometimes odd as I would feel as though I had it all to myself for a brief time, only to have a small posse of well-equipped walkers just around the next turn.

I had quite a perfect afternoon the first day, so sunny and warm I had to roll my trousers up. The air was clean. I walked behind the hostel and along the side of a hill, looking out across the lake and its surrounding hills. I saw a black beetle shining in the grass, and a hawk having an argument with another bird. After dinner Derwentwater demanded to be swum in, and cajoled me until on the third try I managed to submerge myself (all but my head) in the rather cold water. The stones were slippery with a rust-coloured layer. The air, though cooling for night, was warm again when I got out and hung my damp gear on a small tree at the water's edge. I sat on a stone for a short while then walked back through midges, hoping to see badgers that never came to me.

I did, however, see a red squirrel the next morning. It skittered through the leaves across my path and up the trunk of a tree, where it sat and then teleported a few feet higher, then sat again. If it had kept where it was to start with, I'd not have known it was there.

In the on-off rain the following day I walked up to Cat Bell summit, a steep fell on the opposite side of the lake. At the top the wind was so strong I crouched to try and keep my balance.I could just see the white of the hostel somewhere on the other side, behind the rain. I finally worked out how to set the self-timer on my camera at the bottom, on the other side of Derwentwater.

Foreboding on the Cat Bells

Lake Buttermere

I found my way around to Keswick and caught a bus to Buttermere, where frantic spells of sun lit up the beautiful hills at the far end. I walked around the lake, woods on one side and farmland on the other, with a river reaching from the hills at its end. It began raining again as I reached the bus stop, and I holed up in the public toilet (don't worry - it won Bronze in the National Toilet Awards and wasn't as bad as it may sound) until the bus arrived.