Although some marketing body has come up with the superficial branding of the Lake District as Wordsworth Country, and hordes of tourists flock to Dove Cottage every year, please permit me to post an extract from William Wordsworth’s poem The Prelude (Book 1). 

As Sister Wendy Beckett writes in her collection of poetry Speaking to the Heart, this is Wordsworth at his most true and responsive to the numinous of his beloved Lake District. “Anyone who has stood alone and in silence, above all in the early morning or at night, knows the mysterious power of hills and water. Wordsworth stands alone in finding a voice for these almost indescribable feelings” writes Beckett in the introduction to the poem.

 

An extract from The Prelude (Book 1) by William Wordsworth

                        A rocky Steep uprose

Above the Cavern of the Willow tree,

And now, as suited one who proudly rowed

With his best skill, I fixed a steady view

Upon the top of that same craggy ridge,

The bound of the horizon – for behind

Was nothing but the stars and the grey sky.

She was an elfin Pinnace; lustily

I dipp’d my oars into the silent Lake,

And, as I rose upon the stroke, my Boat

Went heaving through the water, like a Swan –

 

When, from behind that craggy Steep (till then

The bound of the horizon) a huge Cliff,

As if with voluntary power instinct,

Uprear’d its head. I struck, and struck again

And, growing still in stature, the huge Cliff

Rose up between me and the stars, and still,

With measur’d motion, like a living thing,

Strode after me. With trembling hands I turn’d,

And through the silent water stole my way

Back to the Cavern of the Willow tree.

There, in her mooring-place, I left my Bark,

And, through the meadows homeward went, with grave

And serious thoughts; and after I had seen

That spectacle, for many days, my brain

Work’d with a dim and undetermined sense

Of unknown modes of being; in my thoughts

There was a darkness, call it solitude,

Or blank desertion, no familiar shapes

Of hourly objects, images of trees,

Of sea or sky, no colours of green fields;

But huge and mighty Forms that do not live

Like living men mov’d slowly through the mind

By day and were the trouble of my dreams.

 

You can read the entire poem here.

 

Posted in INSPIRATION | Comments Off on A POEM FROM WORDSWORTH COUNTRY

Although the exhibition ends today, I wanted to give a quick plug for Henry Iddon’s photographs taken in the Lake District. Spots of Time have been on display at the Wordsworth Trust gallery at Dove Cottage, Grasmere, since March 2008.

Blackpool-based photographer Iddon spent 18 months perched on fell tops throughout the night to capture the effects of artificial light at different times and seasons. Bright clusters of streetlamps and house lights dot the unusual images of the English Lake District, with the wider orange glow of major towns such as Barrow-in-Furness diffusing the night sky behind.

Keswick and Derwent Water seen from the slopes of Skiddaw taken at 11.22pm, when sunset was 7pm. © Henry Iddon

Lord Smith of Finsbury, chair of the Wordsworth Trust and former Culture Secretary, said that the photographs achieved the unusual feat of seeing one of Britain’s most exhaustively recorded landscapes through new eyes. He said: “They show us the bright, glowing, night-time impact of humankind, but set within the immensity of the broader landscape. No-one can look at them without being moved to ponder on the relationship of reverence and of interdependence that we ought to foster with the natural world around us.”

Don’t worry if you don’t make it to the exhibition today – I felt the lighting in the gallery really let the prints down – Iddon has produced an impressive website for the project. View it here.

 

Posted in MISCELLANEOUS | Comments Off on SPOTS OF TIME BY HENRY IDDON

I should also give a mention to fell running, another regular fixture at the Cumbrian county show. Fell running is the sport of running off road, over upland country where the gradient climbed is a significant component of the difficulty. The name arises from the origins of the sport on the fells of northern England, especially those in the Lake District.

Fell runners compete in the senior guides race at the Ennerdale and Kinniside Show

When and where fell racing began is unknown, but as early as 1850 it was taking place at Grasmere. The participants ran up a hillside to a flag on the summit of the fell, then returned as fast as they could to the starting point where the winner was greeted by a band playing ‘See the conquering hero.’

Anyone with the stamina to stay the course can participate. Traditionally farmers, farm workers and shepherds were involved. Today there are countless races during the summer with men, women and children (most shows have junior races for children as young as 10) running the fells around the county.

The English Hill Championship Race at Grasmere Sports & Show

I witnessed several races at the Grasmere Sports & Show last weekend. While it took me nearly 35 minutes to climb to the summit of the race route (admitedly I was carrying the 5×4 and a rather heavy tripod), the winning runner in the English Hill Championship Race, Rob Jebb, finished the race in a staggering 12 minutes and 38 seconds – only 17 seconds outside the record!

Such are the passions surrounding the sport, the fell running legend Joss Naylor recently urged the organisers of the Olympics to include the sport in the 2012 London Olympics. Joss, 72, made his comments after he joined Sir Chris Bonnington in climbing to the top of Scafell Pike on Sunday to raise the Olympic flag. 

To find out more about the sport, read Richard Askwith’s critically acclaimed book Feet in the Clouds: A Tale of Fell-running and Obsession. 

 

Posted in EVENTS & PASTIMES | 1 Comment »

One of the highlights of a county show in Cumbria is the traditional local sport of Cumberland & Westmorland Wrestling. C&WW has an ancient history, it is thought the Vikings brought the sport to England, however its glory days occurred in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Wrestlers at the Grasmere Lakeland Sports & Show, 1903

In the mid-nineteenth century, wrestling had acquired a very wide popularity, attracting both competitors and spectators from inside and outside Cumbrian boundaries. In 1851 at Flan How, Robert Atkinson of Sleagill, Westmorland, met William Jackson of Kinneyside, Cumberland, for the Championship of England. The contest, for a purse of £300, attracted one of the largest crowds ever to witness the sport with an estimated 10,000 spectators. Atkinson won, by three fans to one.

Two junior wrestlers in traditional costume compete at this year’s Gosforth Show

To begin a match, the wrestlers must “tekk hod” – linking their fingers together behind the back of their opponent. This can take quite a while! The contest is ‘best of three falls’. If the hand hold is broken, that also constitutes a fall. In the 18th and 19th centuries, men competed for substantial cash prizes and local status. In these centuries, match fixing was a problem – it was known as ‘barneying’. Wrestling always takes place on grass.

18649 Private Henry Walsh 

While researching the sport I discovered that one of my distant relatives, Henry Walsh, (my Mum’s cousins grandfather) was a champion Cumberland wrestler winning between 1910-12. Born in Cleator Moor, Walsh was brought up in the town of Frizington. His wrestling career came to an abrupt end with the onset of the First World War. He enlisted with the Cumberland 3^rd Border Regiment and was one of many soldiers gassed in battle. Sent back to the UK to recuperate, he died soon after aged just 27.

George Steadman

Of all the heroic figures celebrated in the annals of wrestling, none can equal George Steadman of Asby, near Appleby. In 1900 at the age of fifty-four, he decided to quite the ring having won the Heavyweight Championship at Grasmere on no fewer than seventeen occasions.

 

Posted in EVENTS & PASTIMES | 6 Comments »

I’ve found the community noticeboard – often found outside shops, churches and village halls, as well as in the local newspaper – a valuable resource, both in terms of finding out about events happening during my stay but also as a gauge of local interest.

 

For instance, here are a few events listed in the Whitby Gazette, August 12th –

• St Hilda’s Church garden party will be held in the grounds of the Old Recotry in Sneaton by kind permission of Ian Buckle, today at 2.30pm. There will be the usual stalls, tombola and competitions and farmhouse teas will be served int eh village hall.
• The Goathland Walking Group meets at the shops on Thursday at 10am.
• Sleights Horticultural and Industrial Society will hold its 127th annual show on Saturday on Sleights sportsfield, Lowdale Lane, 1.30-4pm. Admission adults £1.50, children 50p, concessions £1.
• Whitby Young Farmers’ Club sponsored walk in aid of Pancreatic Cancer UK – Gallon walk from Mallyan Spout, Goathland is on Friday, for sponsor forms and details contact Kathryn on 810202.
• The Dalesmen are holding their annual garden party on August Bank Holiday, Monday 25 August, 10am-4pm, at Waites House, Goathland, the home of the choir’s president, Audrey Smith. Admission is free but cream teas are available for purchase throughout the day. There will be a cake, plant and bric-a-brac stalls and a tombola. The Dalesmen Singers will be doing two singing spots during the day at noon and 2pm.
• Robin Hood’s Bay Bowling Club Tuesday afternoon whilst drives taken place at 2pm in the bowling club. New players welcome.

 

 

And in a round-up of last week’s events The Westmorland Gazette, August 29th, reports –

• Despite the recent poor weather, the Barbon and Middleton Flower Show had more entrants than usual. A new class for oven-baked cakes by men only was well supported, and for the first time a visitors’ choice was held and was won by Janet Greenwood with a knitted Herdwick wool throw.
• Beetham WI celebrated its 90th anniversary year with a garden party in a member’s garden. Jane Binney, vice-chairman of the Cumbria-Westmorland Federation, gave a resume of the 90 years of its existence, and thanked past and present presidents and members for their help in keeping alive a worthwhile institute.
• Kendal Fellwalkers explored the fells near Wasdale during their B walk. From the roadside near Santon Bridge, they climbed to the little-frequented summit of Irton Fell. There were good views of Wastwater as they made their way along the grassy ridge above the Wastewater screes.
• Geoff Harrison won the Bowling Leasgill Trophy in a closely fought contest. Gordon Coleclough was runner up.
• The latest STEPS walk was through Trowbarrow Quarry to Hazelslack Tower and back via Haweswater. Those take part saw dragonflies, butterflies and hardly any people.

 

Posted in EVENTS & PASTIMES, RESEARCH | Comments Off on COMMUNITY NOTICEBOARDS

There’s an interesting article in today’s Daily Telegraph by Jack Watkins where he explores the enduring appeal of the Shell travel guides, which published in the first half of the past century.

The Shell Guides were aimed at a new breed of car-driving metropolitan tourists. They were for those who sought guides that were neither too serious nor too shallow and who took pleasure in the ordinary and peculiar culture of small town Britain. In the three decades after the Second World War the Shell Guides provided a “surreptitiously subversive synthesis of the British countryside,” says Dr David Heathcote, curator of an exhibition on the books at the Museum of Domestic Design & Architecture (MODA) in Hertfordshire.

As Watkins notes, “it was the Shell Guides, with their sharp writing and atmospheric black and white photos and pictures, that elevated the medium to an art form.” The first one, on Cornwall and penned by Sir John Betjeman, was published in 1934. It was quickly followed by volumes for Devon, Dorset and Derbyshire, and the series grew, undergoing various revisions, into the 1980s.

 “These slender tomes, long edited by Betjeman, were at their best when focusing on small towns and villages”, says Heathcote.

 “Metropolitan cities were mostly ignored and instead they plunged enthusiastically into the local, the particular and – above all – the peculiar. Today we’ve got the likes of the Rough Guides, which are only interested in places they regard as ‘cool’ and thus dismiss swathes of Britain as not worth visiting.”

I’m particularly interested in this assertion by Watkins: “The assumption that tourism is merely a glorified consumer experience is bad enough when applied to our oldest towns. It turns them into ‘anywherevilles’, with shopping and eating as the main end purpose. But, in a subtler way, it has even happened to rural parts of Britain. The plethora of national parks and conservation areas does protect fragile aspects of the natural or built heritage, but by default has led to superficial branding by marketing bodies. It has dangerously eroded an appreciation of the locally endearing, or what Betjeman might have called the ‘superficially mundane’.”

For similar discussions on the blog regarding branding and the heritage industry see my previous posts here and here.

The Shell Guides: Surrealism, Modernism, Tourism is at MODA until November 2 (020 8411 5244). The exhibition explores the creative forces that created the Shell County Guides. It considers their widespread cultural influence on our shared understanding of Britain and British-ness.

Posted in REPRESENTATION, RESEARCH | Comments Off on SUPERFICIALLY MUNDANE VS ANYWHEREVILLES

On Monday night, Panorama looked at the issue of Britishness in a program called True Brits. Unfortunately I missed it, but here is the background information on the program, taken from the Panorama website.

“In June this year, Liam Byrne, home office minister for borders and immigration, mooted the idea that the August bank holiday be made Britishness Day – a day of national celebration of our country along the lines of America’s 4 July holiday. His suggestion was instantly dubbed a “blunder” by the Scottish National Party, which was quick to point out that the August bank holiday is at the start of the month in Scotland, while in England and Wales it is at the end.

But even if this scheduling glitch could be overcome, huge questions still remain about how Britishness should be defined. So, on the very day which Mr Byrne suggested should be Britishness Day, Panorama: True Brits tries to answer the question what exactly is Britishness? And just as importantly, why is the government suddenly talking about it? However, as Panorama reporter Vivian White soon finds, virtually everyone seems to have a different definition of what Britishness is – that is if they are able to come up with one at all.

‘Loss of freedoms’

Prime Minister Gordon Brown – who revealed this month that he is preparing to write a book on what it means to be British – has said that it is all about shared values: “We share the same values about liberty, about democracy, about the need for social cohesion and for people to work together co-operatively,” Mr Brown said.

British National Party (BNP) chairman Nick Griffin says being British is about being of British stock, in other words white. But in recent decades the ethnic makeup of Britain has been transformed by mass migration.

Governments both past and present called on people to celebrate their differences and called it “multiculturalism”. In July 2005 projecting that rainbow world identity helped us to win the prize of hosting the 2012 Olympics.

But the very next day a few British citizens made it clear their loyalties lay elsewhere by mounting the 7 July suicide bomb attacks on the London transport system, forcing Britishness and a debate about what it means be British top of the agenda.

Radical view

However, as True Brits reports, when the government poses the question “are you really one of us?” the answer is often not a simple Yes or No. Mozzam Begg, a British-born radical Muslim, is best known for having spent two years in Guantanamo Bay, only to be finally released without charge. When being held by at the US detention facility his American guards were in no doubt as to his Britishness – referring to him by the name Great Britain and even making sure that he was kept informed when the Queen Mother died. He however, is not so sure, telling the programme that he does not “think anybody knows actually what Britishness is including the people who want to tell us what they think Britishness is”.

And north Yorkshire schoolboy Cameron agrees. He believes the government are asking us to define Britishness for them because they don’t know what it is and need our help.

When asked whether “being British is more important to my sense of identify than my family’s country of origin” 43% of young people from ethnic minorities disagreed as opposed to 29% of their white counterparts. In other words young people from ethnic minorities are more likely to plump for their family’s country of origin as their marker of identity than young white people.

Rite of passage

And they are not alone – as the programme reports, in 1974 when forced to pick only one national identity, 31% of people in Scotland said that they were British, but by 2006 this figure had fallen to 14%. In 2005 the government introduced new procedures for foreigners wanting to become British citizens whereby applicants have to read a book called Life in the UK and sit a 45-minute test on society, history and culture before taking part in a ceremony marking their change of nationality.

The programme asks if this kind of education about Britishness and ceremony should be extended to young people turning 18, to mark their graduation to full status as a True Brit. One of the teenagers Vivian speaks to says that the government should not be asking what is Britishness is at all because a British citizen will be different everywhere you look.

Perhaps this in itself is something to celebrate. But, as the programme reports, even if we could agree on what to celebrate we are unlikely to agree on how to – after all isn’t all of that Union Jack waving stuff frankly rather un-British?”

 

Here are some viewers comments about the program.

 

Posted in ENGLISHNESS | Comments Off on TRUE BRITS – PANORAMA

After nearly four months on the road we’ve now arrived in Cleator Moor, the small Cumbrian town where my mum grew up and where many of her extended family still reside. It’s been a place of pilgrimage for our family almost every summer since she left for London in her early twenties.

In his thoroughly researched book Cleator and Cleator Moor, Past and Present, which first published in 1916, Caesar Caine, Vicar of Cleator, wrote: “The ancient parish of Cleator lies midway between St. Bees on the Cumberland coast, and Ennerdale Lake which is embosomed amid the most westerly summits of the Cumbrian hills. From either of these beautiful, and deservedly popular resorts, Cleator can be reached by the pedestrian in about an hour. Nor is Cleator to be despised by the lover of nature and the sight-seer, in spite of its mines and manufactures of to-day. The place has many beauty spots, and boasts of an overshadowing mountain, rich in wild life….without its mines, manufactures, and rows of houses, [Cleator] has become most familiar to me, and I have learned to love it more, in some respects, as it was, rather than it is.”

Picnic on Lake Ennerdale

Joined by my mum and dad, we’ll be spending the next few days visiting – and photographing – some of the holiday spots around Cleator Moor, resurrecting old family traditions such as walking along St Bees Head, having a bbq on the shores of Crummock Water, attending some County shows, throwing skimmers into Lake Ennerdale and climbing some mountains (such as Scafell Pike- below).

Dad and I climbing Scafell Pike from Wasdale Head

Photographing climbers on Scafell Pike

 

Posted in PLACES | Comments Off on FAMILY TRADITIONS

I couldn’t resist posting up another picture from the nudist weekend at the Tan Hill Inn. This was the scene that greeted my daughter from the motorhome!

 

Posted in POSTCARDS | Comments Off on DADDY, THAT MAN’S NAKED!

Continuing my weekly dispatch in The Times, week 13 was taken in Tan Hill, Yorkshire Dales.

Tan Hill, Swaledale, North Yorkshire, 17th August 2008

Members of the British Naturism Society attend a pub weekend at the Tan Hill Inn, the highest pub in Britain. Despite the torrential rain, members took advantage of the fact that nudity was permitted in a private area of the pub as well as the camping area. The British Naturism Society has over 16,000 members and naturism is growing in popularity all the time.

This week we’ll be in Cumbria.

 

Posted in POSTCARDS | Comments Off on POSTCARD IN THE TIMES – WEEK 13