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The King's England - The Lake Counties

by Arthur Mee

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Calder Abbey

Extract from the Introduction

The Lake Country

IT is an astonishing piece of England, the greatest surprise and delight that awaits the English traveller who has not been this way. It has deep solitudes, majestic heights, and the solemn beauty of still water, a grouping of natural beauty uncommon in this country and here seen at its best. It has not the vastness of Switzerland, and yet it is a veritable mountain land. In Switzerland or in Tyrol we may at any time be in a valley 5,000 feet above the sea before we begin to ascend a mountain of 8,000 feet and so have but 3,000 to climb. That is actually what we may climb in Lakeland. Nearly all the Lakeland dales are but a few hundred feet above the sea, a fact which must not be forgotten in comparing our own mountains with the Alps. Scafell with its 3,210 feet, is more than 3,000 feet above Wastdale, lying at its base, and the bed of Wastwater is below sea level.

The Lake mountains of England spring suddenly and loftily from low green valleys, and so abound in swift changes from soft and quiet beauty to rugged grandeur. They are a medley of hills closely compressed, as if Nature had tried to place as much of her handiwork as possible on a small show-ground.

If we imagine Lakeland as a circle about 90 miles round we may form some conception of one of the most remarkable natural kingdoms Nature made in carving out the earth. Rivers and glaciers, rain and frost, wind and every kind of weather have made Lakeland what it is. Sometimes the rocks are covered by material borne on glaciers, now thinly spread, now thickly laid, and so it is that we have strange contrasts of vast masses of barren rock and hillsides clothed with living beauty.

Over 280 pages + Plates, Drawings, Map & Index

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