Lake District Walking Holidays

The English Lake District is one of the most popular destinations for walkers, especially hillwalkers, in the country. My new site now has a section to help plan your Lake District walking holiday.

Included in that section of the bookstore are books that give good advice on how to walk safely in the hills. See this article on the site blog on avoiding a fate as a statistic of the mountain rescue service. Walk safely.

Cumbria West and North

It is no insult to the Lake District to say that often I wish when reading about Cumbria there was less emphasis on the central Lake District locations and more attention given to the outer areas of the county. They get a rough deal.

In the past I've blogged about the Eden Valley but yesterday I spent part of the day visiting Workington, Maryport and Cockermouth. I have to say that the Workington visit was not too successful as the place I wanted to see was closed. My walk around Maryport harbour area, though, was very enjoyable as was a visit to the Senhouse Roman Museum.

I'll be writing more about it shortly but last night wrote a short piece on Cockermouth on the Around-England blog.

Lake District Guide Books

Since popular tourism developed in the nineteenth century there have been many Lake District guide books published. Today there is a wide range to choose from. I've put a a selection on my "Lake District in Books" site.

Click here: Lake District Guide Books

This is just one of the sections on the site. In addition to the main book pages there is also a blog with brief reviews of other Lake District books most of which are now out of print.

Kirkby Lonsdale and Derwentwater

In the past couple of days, following a brief break during introduction of the new site layout, I've returned to posting on the main Around-England blog. The first was a photo-walk in Kirkby Lonsdale, including the beautiful view of the Lune Valley so highly praised by John Ruskin in the 1870s and nowadays known as Ruskin's View.

The second refers to a walk by Derwentwater yesterday evening. I posted a photo immediately on returning home. It was a beautiful Lake District evening, yet another example of the unpredictability of Cumbrian weather, this time for the better; yesterday morning I could not have predicted that my wife and I would have been strolling by the water's edge in evening sunshine.

Copper Mines at Coniston

I suspect that the majority of people who visit the beautiful English Lake District in Cumbria think of it as a "natural" landscape. In reality, though, what we see now is the product of many centuries of interaction between the land and its human and livestock inhabitants.

One severely under-noticed factor is the impact of mining. All around the region there are the remains of mines. This is especially so in the Coniston area where in addition to slate quarrying there were at least four hundred years of copper mining.

Earlier this week, after a visit to the Mining Museum in Keswick I went back to something I wrote two years ago, edited it a little, and posted it on the Around-England blog: Coniston Coppermines.

Lost Railways of Cumbria

I'm just old enough to remember being able to catch a train from Ulverston to Coniston, or to Lakeside at the foot of Windermere. Having said that, however, I confess to some considerable surprise at discovering the extent of the railway network that surrounded the Lake District in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Lost Railways of Cumbria provides an excellent description of that past era in Cumbrian transport history. It will give hours of pleasure both to railway enthusiasts and to lovers of the Lakeland county.

A Lake District Walking Holiday Can Be WET

Visitors to the English Lake District need to be prepared for wet weather. Walks in the Lake District can be damp. It doesn't always rain, of course. Earlier this week I enjoyed a marvellous afternoon in the sun by Ullswater, and I once had the hottest holiday I can remember camping by the same lake. On the other hand I've known it to be very wet, and once blogged under the title, Four Seriously Damp But Totally Delightful Days Among The English Lakes.

If you're planning a Lake District walking holiday and wondering where you might walk if you happen to hit some damp days, take a look at this book:  "Lake District Wet Weather Walks" by Chris Mitchell.