On travel and the Lake District.
Jul. 16th, 2007 11:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tree_and_leafI have now returned from a weekend in the Lakes, which was splendid, despite the general awfulness of the weather in the central Lake District. I have, however, no objection to leisurely walks along the beach at Walney (and I even saw the Isle of Man!), or to a somewhat tame ridge walk along the Helm by Kendal - and who on earth left the posy of roses and freesias in a glass on the trig point? - or, come to that, to coming back from church to drink Pimms and sit under a tree.
I wrote the following on the train coming back; it's somewhat purposeless, but it amused me.
The best description of the approach to the Lakes by train from the South is, undoubtedly, the one with which Pigeon Post opens, and in many ways it hasn’t changed in essentials, though the trains are different – but not noticeably faster and certainly no more punctual. The rather sickening smell of overcooked bacon drifts through from the ‘onboard shop’, and you are slightly squashed, because there was no room for your luggage in the rack. This summer, too, there is no need to fear a drought, and the undergrowth by the sides of the lines is rankly lush and becoming overgrowth.
Nonetheless, the essentials of the journey are not so very different, You see the first sign that you are getting close far away to your left, in a flash of sun on the slick wet sand of Morecambe Bay. Around Lancaster, where the station sits just behind the castle, the countryside changes, You are in a limestone landscape: the ground is lighter, the soil drier even in a year like this one. It will be grey if it is cloudy, but when the sun shines, the landscape shines too, like light off snow. The buildings are limestone, too, not brick. You may have to change in Lancaster; if you do, you could instead get into the coastal train, and be off over the wet desert of the Bay, to the old age pensioners and the grass flats at Grange, to Ulverston, where, as the woman clutching the squeeze-box informs you, there is a folk festival, in the little town beneath the crag of Hoad Hill, incongruously topped by a lighthouse, though the Bay, here, is a gleam in the distance, and further round to Barrow, where the proud shipbuilding halls still dominate the town, and perhaps on even further to Millom, where Nicholson the poet lived and died, and further yet to the ominous ‘toadstool towers’ at Windscale, to use the name that is no longer spoken. But you are for the hills, and by the straightest road.
And the train races on, past Carnforth. You have just time to take in the bewildering emptiness of the Bay, which is neither land or water, and which, surely, is where CS Lewis found a home for his Marshwiggles, before the train slips behind the wooded mass of Jenny Browns Point. The hills you pass are now all limestone, spectacular blocks of fractured stone tilted at an angle by the movement of the earth, and where they are not covered in trees or short, springy turf, you see the cliffs with the stratification running off at thirty degrees to the horizontal. It is a country worth exploring, and one with secrets and corners it does not easily open up, a country full of rare plants and creatures – and yet you can be forgiven if you do not take much notice, for now the whole Lake country begins to be visible in the distance, distant blue hills drawing closer every moment, the old familiar shapes unchanged since – well, let us say, unchanged since the Neolithic, and the busy hands that felled the trees and exposed the bones of the place. The jagged teeth of the Pikes, Dow Crag and the Old Man like a beheaded stone lion, Weatherlam, and all the others. But there is no time to stand and stare; the train is nearly at Oxenholme, flashing past more limestone and mudstone hills, and neat little settlements with their tidy grey churches, which you miss altogether as you collect your luggage. And before you know it you are out on the platform of the old-fashioned little station, high and inconveniently situated above Kendal, and whether or not you mean to wait another twenty minutes for the connecting train to Windermere, or whether your final goal is easier reached by road through Kendal, there is no doubt that you are here, in the Lakes, though still a good deal south and west of any lake or water worthy of the name. You are here, and if, you are lucky, your feet will take you toward the hospitable back room of the Station Inn, where local beer and local food will dull the memory of the difficulties of travelling by rail in these days. But actually, it doesn’t matter: however bad your journey, it is worth it to be here, with the glories of the fells spread out before you – and that, too, is unchanged since Ransome’s day.
I wrote the following on the train coming back; it's somewhat purposeless, but it amused me.
The best description of the approach to the Lakes by train from the South is, undoubtedly, the one with which Pigeon Post opens, and in many ways it hasn’t changed in essentials, though the trains are different – but not noticeably faster and certainly no more punctual. The rather sickening smell of overcooked bacon drifts through from the ‘onboard shop’, and you are slightly squashed, because there was no room for your luggage in the rack. This summer, too, there is no need to fear a drought, and the undergrowth by the sides of the lines is rankly lush and becoming overgrowth.
Nonetheless, the essentials of the journey are not so very different, You see the first sign that you are getting close far away to your left, in a flash of sun on the slick wet sand of Morecambe Bay. Around Lancaster, where the station sits just behind the castle, the countryside changes, You are in a limestone landscape: the ground is lighter, the soil drier even in a year like this one. It will be grey if it is cloudy, but when the sun shines, the landscape shines too, like light off snow. The buildings are limestone, too, not brick. You may have to change in Lancaster; if you do, you could instead get into the coastal train, and be off over the wet desert of the Bay, to the old age pensioners and the grass flats at Grange, to Ulverston, where, as the woman clutching the squeeze-box informs you, there is a folk festival, in the little town beneath the crag of Hoad Hill, incongruously topped by a lighthouse, though the Bay, here, is a gleam in the distance, and further round to Barrow, where the proud shipbuilding halls still dominate the town, and perhaps on even further to Millom, where Nicholson the poet lived and died, and further yet to the ominous ‘toadstool towers’ at Windscale, to use the name that is no longer spoken. But you are for the hills, and by the straightest road.
And the train races on, past Carnforth. You have just time to take in the bewildering emptiness of the Bay, which is neither land or water, and which, surely, is where CS Lewis found a home for his Marshwiggles, before the train slips behind the wooded mass of Jenny Browns Point. The hills you pass are now all limestone, spectacular blocks of fractured stone tilted at an angle by the movement of the earth, and where they are not covered in trees or short, springy turf, you see the cliffs with the stratification running off at thirty degrees to the horizontal. It is a country worth exploring, and one with secrets and corners it does not easily open up, a country full of rare plants and creatures – and yet you can be forgiven if you do not take much notice, for now the whole Lake country begins to be visible in the distance, distant blue hills drawing closer every moment, the old familiar shapes unchanged since – well, let us say, unchanged since the Neolithic, and the busy hands that felled the trees and exposed the bones of the place. The jagged teeth of the Pikes, Dow Crag and the Old Man like a beheaded stone lion, Weatherlam, and all the others. But there is no time to stand and stare; the train is nearly at Oxenholme, flashing past more limestone and mudstone hills, and neat little settlements with their tidy grey churches, which you miss altogether as you collect your luggage. And before you know it you are out on the platform of the old-fashioned little station, high and inconveniently situated above Kendal, and whether or not you mean to wait another twenty minutes for the connecting train to Windermere, or whether your final goal is easier reached by road through Kendal, there is no doubt that you are here, in the Lakes, though still a good deal south and west of any lake or water worthy of the name. You are here, and if, you are lucky, your feet will take you toward the hospitable back room of the Station Inn, where local beer and local food will dull the memory of the difficulties of travelling by rail in these days. But actually, it doesn’t matter: however bad your journey, it is worth it to be here, with the glories of the fells spread out before you – and that, too, is unchanged since Ransome’s day.
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Date: 2007-07-17 04:25 pm (UTC)MM