The landscapes, lights and moods of the area around Elterwater in the Langdale Valley, Cumbria are magical. It’s perhaps my favourite known place in England. I can’t get enough of it. It might not be everyone’s cuppa for a precious week away but I can still never quite get why more people, particularly in the south-east of England where I now live, haven’t ever been to the Lakes. The oft given response that “it rains a lot” now solicits nothing more than a barely audible, disdainful sigh from me. Each to their own.
My latest trip was over the new year period, staying again in Chapel Stile. The ascents over a few days of kind weather included Silver How, Lingmoor and Loughrigg - for those who like a Wainwright or a Birkett. Fairly moderate walks for short winter days. It was just fabulous - every step, breath and glimpse. After each jaunt, the Britannia Inn in Elterwater provided seats and ale, then wine, then whisky. And we had a fine new year’s eve. I’ve got over the sluggish responses to asking for the fire to be re-lit on cold, late December early evenings. We only punctuated that ritual one day with a purposeful lower walk skirting the Langdale Valley side to get to the Old Dungeon Ghyll Hotel. I had not been in the pub for over thirty years. I had been introduced to it and ‘snuff’ on a school walking holiday when I was perhaps ‘shy’ of 18. I remember the teacher’s name but he can remain anonymous here. I forgot to ask if they still sold it. Best avoided unless your sinuses are really bad!
I took hundreds of photographs, always trying to capture what the eyes can see and sense. Often it’s gone in a moment as the light, wind and cloud dance across the fells. But you never quite can because it’s not just about what you can see. So you get, at best, part of it if you’re lucky. You have to imagine the rest when you’re looking through the images back home. Which is why you have to go back. Damp stone walls, rocky paths, rushing streams, stretching fells, brooding crags and lingering mist, mingled with peeps and shafts of sunlight. For the meteorological record, new year’s day brought cloudless blue skies. It’s landscape, weather and life in spades. If you have never been, just go. It might rain. And it might not.
