Lake District

• 1. Introduction

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  The Lake District, a mountainous region and national park in Cumbria in North West England, contains the wettest inhabited place in the country. At Seathwaite in Borrowdale, an average year brings about 3300 mm of rain. Nearby Sprinkling Tarn is wetter still, recording more than 5000 mm. Yet Penrith, just outside the district, receives only 870 mm. All that water has had a very long time to work on the land. The result is a compact landscape of lakes, coast and mountains, tied in memory to Beatrix Potter, John Ruskin, Arthur Ransome and a trio of poets known as the Lake Poets. How did so small an area come to hold so much rock, so many lakes and such high ground? Who and what lives in a place this wet? And how did hills that travellers once dreaded become a destination that needed its own protection?

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• 2. Granite and Ice

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  Beneath the Lake District lies a granite batholith, and its low density is the reason the whole upland massif sits buoyed up. The granite reaches the surface at Ennerdale, Skiddaw, Carrock Fell, Eskdale and Shap. Around it, the rocks fall into three bands running from southwest to northeast, growing younger toward the southeast.

  The northwestern band is made of early to mid-Ordovician mudstones and siltstones that formed in the sea. They are called the Skiddaw Group, and older writers called them the Skiddaw Slates. Because they crumble easily, they produce smooth mountain slopes, of which Skiddaw itself is the model.

  The central band tells a more violent story. Its lavas and tuffs, the Borrowdale Volcanic Group, erupted in the mid-to-late Ordovician as the old Iapetus Ocean slid beneath what is now the Scottish border. Great flows built peaks such as Great Rigg. Later explosive eruptions opened calderas, and one of them includes present-day Scafell Pike. Those hard volcanic rocks give the central fells their craggy outline.

  The southeastern band is the mudstones and wackes of the Windermere Supergroup, which wear away more readily and underlie the gentler country around Coniston and Windermere. Along the northern, eastern and southern edges, Carboniferous Limestone shows itself spectacularly at Whitbarrow Scar and Scout Scar.

  Ice then carved this rock into its present shape. Over the last 2 million years, repeated glaciations cut a wheel of valleys outward from an axial watershed that stretches from St Bees Head in the west to Shap in the east. Many valleys have the U-shaped profile typical of glaciers. Long narrow lakes fill hollows in the bedrock, and some valleys hold a pair, such as Buttermere and Crummock Water, or Derwent Water and Bassenthwaite Lake. Higher up, smaller lakes called tarns sit in glacial cirques.

  There are sixteen major lakes. Windermere is the longest and largest in England, at 18 km long and 14.73 km2 in area. Wast Water, at 79 m, is the deepest. Only Bassenthwaite Lake actually carries the word lake in its name. The rest are meres, tarns and waters, with water the most common ending and mere the rarest.

  Above the lakes stand England's highest mountains. Scafell Pike reaches 978 m, or 3209 feet, and on a clear day it offers a view to the Galloway Hills of Scotland, the Mourne Mountains of Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man and Snowdonia in Wales. Skiddaw stands at 931 m.

  The local vocabulary preserves another layer of history. Fell comes from the Old Norse fjallr, carried to England by Viking invaders. Howe comes from haugr, meaning a hill or mound. Tarn comes from a Norse word for a small lake, and in the strict local sense it means one lying in a corrie, which people here call a cove or comb.

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• 3. Gales and Fog

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  In the sheltered valleys, gales blow on only about five days a year, but on the fell tops they arrive on roughly 100 days. The coast sits between the two extremes, with about 20 days of gales. This is a windy district, and the wind is only part of a maritime climate that keeps the seasons mild.

  The mean temperature in the valleys climbs from about 3 °C in January to around 15 °C in July. Moscow lies at a similar latitude, yet its range runs from -10 to 19 °C. The sea softens the extremes.

  Rain follows the shape of the land. Moist air from the northwest is forced upward over the western fells, so the western lakes are far wetter than the eastern ones. Keswick, at the lower end of Borrowdale, receives 1470 mm a year, well below the soaking totals higher up the same valley. The UK Met Office puts the district's average at more than 2000 mm. March to June tend to be the driest months and October to January the wettest, though down at valley level the seasons differ little.

  Snow is a winter expectation, with significant falls normally between November and April. Because most fells are not especially tall, they can also be bare at any time of year. In the valleys, snow falls on about 20 days a year. Around 200 days bring some rain and 145 are completely dry.

  Hill fog can settle at any season. The fells average only about 2.5 hours of sunshine a day, rising to about 4.1 hours on the coastal plains. Helvellyn, meanwhile, sees snow on an average of 67 days each year.

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• 4. Squirrels, Eagles and Vendace

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  England's last nesting pair of golden eagles was found in the Lake District. The female was last seen in 2004 and the male in 2015. Their departure is the sharpest loss in a region otherwise notable for the variety of life its lakes, forests and mountains support.

  The red squirrel is the emblem of the district. It has the largest population in England, in a United Kingdom where an estimated 140,000 red squirrels live alongside about 2.5 million grey ones. Below the tree line, native oak woodland is mixed with extensive conifer plantations, notably at Grizedale Forest. Some woods are coppiced, some pollarded, some left alone and some used for grazing and shelter. Rainfall in parts of the district is the highest in England, and it lets Atlantic mosses, ferns, lichens and liverworts flourish. Sundew and butterwort, two of Britain's few native carnivorous plants, grow here too.

  Other birds have been welcomed back. In 2001, a pair of ospreys nested near Bassenthwaite Lake for the first time in over 150 years. Ospreys now often arrive from Africa each spring, and 23 chicks have fledged in the area since then. Red kites were reintroduced into the dense forest near Grizedale. By 2012 there were about 90, and in 2014 they bred successfully, the first such success in Cumbria in over 200 years. The RSPB keeps a reserve at Haweswater, and buzzards, dippers, peregrines and ravens are residents.

  The lakes shelter three rare fish. The vendace lives only in Derwent Water and, until 2008, also lived in Bassenthwaite Lake. Algae and warming water have troubled it, and the species was moved to higher lakes in 2005 and 2011. The schelly lives in Brothers Water, Haweswater, Red Tarn and Ullswater. The Arctic charr is found in nine lakes, from Buttermere to Windermere.

  Introduced fish are the great threat. Ruffe, a non-native species now found in several lakes, eats vendace eggs. Those eggs take up to 120 days to hatch, while roach eggs are exposed for as little as three days. In 2002 the Environment Agency banned the use of freshwater fish as bait, live or dead, in 14 lakes. Anglers who break the rule face fines of up to £2,500.

  High on the Helvellyn range, Brown Cove Tarn hosts lichens of international importance, including more than 55 montane species recorded across the high ground. Umbilicaria crustulosa was first found in Langdale in 1889. Sheep have grazed these slopes since the 14th century, and that is why the lichen mats are thinner than in the Scottish Highlands.

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• 5. Sheep and Stone

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  Thousands of years before anyone climbed these fells for pleasure, Neolithic workers on the slopes of the Langdale Pikes were making stone axes that ended up all over Britain. The site is sometimes called a stone axe factory. Some of the earliest stone circles in Britain are linked to this trade.

  Mining came much later and mattered for centuries. From the 16th to the 19th centuries, miners took out copper, lead often mixed with silver, baryte, graphite and slate. Coppiced woodland fed the smelters with charcoal. Slate mining still continues at the Honister Mines at the top of Honister Pass, and abandoned workings dot fellsides across the district. Local graphite gave rise to a pencil industry, centred on Keswick. By the middle of the 19th century, the area supplied half the world textile industry's bobbins. Conifer plantations around Whinlatter Pass, in Ennerdale and at Grizedale Forest later gave forestry a growing role.

  All of that is overshadowed by sheep. Farming, above all sheep farming, has been the main industry here since Roman times. The breed most tied to the district is the tough Herdwick, with Rough Fell and Swaledale sheep also common. Farmers also produce silage and run some dairy herds. Sheep farming keeps the landscape visitors come for, since features such as dry stone walls exist because of it.

  In February 2001, foot-and-mouth disease broke out in Surrey, and by the end of March it had reached Cumbria. Thousands of sheep were destroyed, including Herdwicks. The loss went beyond numbers because many of those sheep were heafed. A heafed sheep knows its own stretch of unfenced fell and does not wander from it, and ewes pass that knowledge to their lambs. With whole flocks lost at once, the knowledge had to be relearned. Some fells had discreet electric fences strung across them for five years to help the new flocks re-heaf. Fears for breeds such as Ryeland and Herdwick have since eased, and sheep are again abundant.

  Counting them once had its own rhythm. Yan tan tethera is the traditional sheep-counting system of the district. It is now rare, yet local schools still teach it.

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• 6. The Road to Lakeland

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  In 1698, Celia Fiennes rode over Kirkstone Pass into Patterdale and wrote about hills hanging over her head, rocky and barren, with little streams running down their sides. She found them terrible and also pleasantly noisy. In 1724, Daniel Defoe was blunter. He called Westmorland "the wildest, most barren and frightful of any that I have passed over in England, or even Wales itself".

  Attitudes shifted toward the end of the 18th century. Wars in Continental Europe limited foreign travel, and visitors turned to the Lakes. In 1778, Thomas West published A Guide to the Lakes, which began the era of modern tourism. He listed stations, viewpoints from which to enjoy the best prospects and to judge them by aesthetic standards. Buildings were put up at some of them, and the remains of Claife Station, on the western shore of Windermere, can still be visited.

  William Wordsworth published his own Guide to the Lakes in 1810. By 1835 it was in its fifth edition under a new title, A Guide Through the District of the Lakes in the North of England, and it did much to popularise the region. His favourite valley was Dunnerdale, also called the Duddon Valley.

  Then came the trains. The Kendal and Windermere Railway reached Kendal in 1846 and Windermere in 1847. The Coniston line opened in 1848, though until 1857 it was joined to the national network only by ferries between Fleetwood and Barrow-in-Furness. The line from Penrith through Keswick to Cockermouth followed in 1865, and the Lakeside line in 1869. These railways were built with traditional industry in mind, but they brought a huge rise in visitors, and steamers on Ullswater, Windermere, Coniston Water and Derwent Water carried them farther. Coniston closed to passengers in 1958. The Cockermouth line closed west of Keswick in 1966 and completely in 1972.

  The car replaced the train, and the M6 carried traffic up the eastern flank. Since the 1960s, narrow roads have meant congestion in some areas. Bowness-on-Windermere answered with a new car park at the edge of the village and an extension of an existing one.

  A single author drew many walkers. Alfred Wainwright published his Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells between 1955 and 1966. It covered 214 fells, with hand-drawn maps and panoramas, along with stories and asides. Walkers still aim to bag every Wainwright. Chris Jesty revised the books between 2005 and 2009, and Clive Hutchby is revising them now, with Book One published in March 2015 and Book Six in April 2019.

  Visitors come mainly from the rest of the UK, and from China, Japan, Spain, Germany and the US. Windermere Lake Steamers carry about 1.35 million paying passengers a year, making them the most popular charging attraction in Cumbria. The cost shows on the paths. Soil erosion caused by walking is a significant problem, and millions of pounds have gone into protecting overused routes. John Wyatt became the first national park ranger in the early 1960s, and he was joined two years later by a second.

  Cycling and food have joined walking. Keswick and Ambleside are hubs for cycling holidays, and mountain bikers use trails at Whinlatter and Grizedale. Eight Michelin-starred restaurants lie inside the World Heritage boundary, among them The Cottage in the Wood and Lake Road Kitchen. The Traditional Cumberland Sausage, a spiced, unlinked pork sausage, holds Protected Geographical Status.

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• 7. Poets, Painters and Storytellers

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  Of William Wordsworth's eighty years, sixty were spent among these lakes and mountains. He was a schoolboy at Hawkshead, lived in Grasmere from 1799 to 1813, and then at Rydal Mount from 1813 to 1850. The region was first brought to public attention by Thomas Gray, who wrote a journal of his Grand Tour in 1769. It was Wordsworth, however, whose poems proved most influential. His poem "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" was inspired by daffodils on the shores of Ullswater.

  He was one of the Lake Poets, together with Coleridge and Southey. Robert Southey, the Poet Laureate, lived in Keswick for forty years, from 1803 to 1843, and was buried in Crosthwaite churchyard. Wordsworth succeeded him as Laureate in 1843. Coleridge also lived in Keswick and with the Wordsworths at Grasmere. Wordsworth and his wife lie in the Grasmere churchyard, close to Hartley Coleridge, the son of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

  Other writers settled here too. Thomas de Quincey spent most of the years from 1809 to 1828 at Grasmere, in the first cottage Wordsworth had lived in. Harriet Martineau built herself a house at Ambleside in 1845. John Ruskin spent his last years at Brantwood beside Coniston Water, and his assistant W. G. Collingwood lived nearby and wrote Thorstein of the Mere. In Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet is excessively disappointed when a holiday in the Lake District is called off.

  Children's writers took up the setting. Beatrix Potter lived at Hill Top Farm and set many of her Peter Rabbit books in the district. Her life became a film starring Renée Zellweger and Ewan McGregor, and many visitors, especially from Japan, come to see her family home. Arthur Ransome set five Swallows and Amazons books, published between 1930 and 1947, in a fictionalised version of the Lakes. Geoffrey Trease did the same in five school stories from 1949 to 1956, beginning with No Boats on Bannermere.

  Hugh Walpole lived at Brackenburn on the lower slopes of Catbells from 1924 until he died in 1941 and wrote The Herries Chronicle there. Richard Adams set The Plague Dogs in 1977 around a fictionalised Lawson Park, a remote hill farm overlooking Coniston Water. James Rebanks, a sheep farmer, wrote The Shepherd's Life in 2015 and English Pastoral in 2020. Crime writers Reginald Hill, Val McDermid and Martin Edwards have also used the district.

  Painters and craftspeople followed. Alfred Heaton Cooper and William Heaton Cooper were among the most famous artists to depict it. The German artist Kurt Schwitters, in exile, moved here permanently in June 1945 and stayed for the rest of his life. Film director Ken Russell lived around Keswick and Borrowdale from 1975 to 2007 and used the area in Tommy and Mahler. Canon Rawnsley, a friend of Ruskin, started the Keswick School of Industrial Art in 1884.

  Lawson Park, the farm in Adams's novel, has housed Grizedale Arts since 2007. The organisation supports artists' residencies and helped launch the careers of several Turner Prize winners. In Coniston it supported the refurbishment of the Coniston Institute and opened an unstaffed Honest Shop there in 2012. In 2020, Taylor Swift released a bonus track called "The Lakes" on her album Folklore, and she names Wordsworth in it.

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• 8. A Protected Landscape

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  On the 9th of May 1951, the Lake District was designated a national park, one month after the Peak District became the first in the UK. Its purpose is to guard the landscape against unwelcome change by industry or commerce while leaving people free to move in and around it. It covers 2362 km2, runs just over 51 km from east to west and nearly 64 km from north to south, and is the largest of the thirteen national parks in England and Wales. Only the Cairngorms is bigger in the UK.

  Its boundaries stood unchanged until 2016, when the park grew by 3 percent to the east toward the Yorkshire Dales. The extension took in land of high landscape value around the Lune Valley. Kendal, parts of the coast and the Cartmel and Furness peninsulas lie outside the park.

  The Lake District National Park Authority is based in Kendal and has 20 members. Westmorland and Furness Council appoints six, Cumberland Council appoints four, and the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs appoints ten. It runs a visitor centre at Brockhole, a former country house on Windermere, and the Coniston Boating Centre.

  Protection here does not mean public ownership. Most land is private, and about 55 percent is registered as agricultural. The National Trust owns around 25 percent, United Utilities owns 8 percent, and the park authority itself owns 3.9 percent. The Forestry Commission and other investors hold woodland. Even so, a general right to roam covers roughly 50 percent of the park. In 2012 it also had 2159 km of public footpaths and 875 km of bridleways.

  In 2017 the park, excluding the 2016 extension, became a UNESCO World Heritage Site, listed as a cultural landscape. It took four attempts. Two efforts in the 1980s and one in 2012 had failed.

  The success has brought crowds. In 2024 the park received 17.73 million tourist visitors, equal to 26.85 million tourist days when counting visits longer than three hours. Keswick, Ambleside and the linked towns of Windermere and Bowness-on-Windermere are the three largest settlements, and all depend heavily on tourism. Walkers who cross the park on the Coast to Coast Walk pass from the Irish Sea to the North Sea, travelling west to east through the heart of the district.

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