with tolerable accuracy, Helvellyn and Skiddaw are only two
hundred feet or so amiss, but the Yorkshire hills of
Whernside and Ingleborough, he doubles in height, placing
them far above Snowdon and nearly a thousand feet above
the Lake mountains !
We are now traversing the four miles of road between
Penrith and Pooley bridge at the foot of Ullswater, and I
ventured on the foregoing disquisition, since so far we have
been covering old ground. Now, however, we are across the
Eamont again into Westmoreland, and turning to the right
abruptly leave our route of yesterday. The sun is bright, and
the sky is clear, for it does not always rain in the Lake country.
On the contrary, these mountain fringes of the island with
their watery reputations are, in my experience, apt to be as
38
THE BLESSED CYCLE
CHAP.
dry as Kent or Sussex in the spring and early summer.
Some seasons I have known them to be drier, and this
was one of them. Need I indicate my method of pro-
gression ! There are coaches travelling this easy undulating
stage, even now with much regularity— but I have not yet
come to that, while the most ardent pedestrian in these
days does not waste his powers, as of old, upon dusty
highways, but uses the choicest gift that the gods in recent
years have conferred upon mankind, to place himself with
Ulhwater, from near Gozuharrmv.
expedition where his legs may be utilized to the best pur-
pose, and the greatest enjoyment of his eyes and brain.
There are still belated beings here and there, who affect
to sniff at the cycle, but they really are not worth powder
and shot, for within easy memory, there was still a prejudice
against railroads, and the one will go the way of the other.
There is the young person of either sex whose supreme
ambition is to be thought horsey and to whom a few cheap
sneers at the cycle seem calculated to foster the delusion.
Then, there are the old people, God bless them. Human
II CYCLES VERSUS COACHES 39
nature is on their side and they have, upon the whole, been
extraordinarily tolerant. Lastly, we have those who would like
to ride and for various reasons cannot. To many of the latter
the situation of a cyclist in motion appears one of perennial
tension and anxiety. They do not realize the secret of habit
and balance, nor that at an easy pace of seven or eight miles an
hour along a country road, the most ordinary rider experiences
no sense of effort whatsoever, and can look about him with al-
most as much ease as a pedestrian, and very often see over
fences that hide the country from the latter's view. Nor need
I dwell on the supreme advantage that pertains to the cyclist
when a few miles of dull or very familiar road have to be travelled
and a journey that on foot is wholly tedious and wearisome is
surmounted with brevity and exhilaration. I think I hear some
carping souls exclaim. Fancy a bicycle in the Lake country ! as
if one were proposing to take it up Skiddaw or vScafell, or
over Black Sail pass. The fact is, a cycle, to those who use
one, is never a superfluity. If you elect to walk upon the
mountains for a week or fortnight, as any one with strength
sufficient would surely do, the iron horse, secure in the Inn
coach-house, requires neither food nor thought and is at hand
for those less ambitious expeditions by road, that play a greater
or a lesser share in almost every programme of Lakeland-travel.
Look at the coaches again, which go lumbering past us,
always in a hurry, and bound for some train or steamer, when
one would fain loiter, or at other times leaving one to kick
one's heels for half a day, where an hour would well suffice.
If we were a passenger, we could not cry halt just here, for
instance, and leaving the road for a few minutes cross this ox
pasture on the right to where the screen of trees yonder marks
a spot worth seeing. I would not stop for a mere cromlech or
an ordinary so-called camp, for their name is legion in these parts
and unless you approach these prehistoric matters as a separate
subject and with becoming seriousness, it seems to me there is
nothing to be done except allude to their situation. But what
40
THE MAYBOROUGH CIRCLE
CHAl',
is known as the Druid Circle at Mayborough challenges one's
attention in no ordinary way. It is a massive rampart of loose
stones, though for the most part overgrown with turf, and en-
closing a circle of about one hundred yards in diameter. In the
centre is a huge stone twelve or fourteen feet in height, the
survivor I believe of several which once upon a time stood
round it. It is a fortuitous circumstance perhaps that makes the
spot more suggestive to the ordinary eye than other remains oi
a similar kind. For on the ridge of the high encircling bank a
Head of Ulhwater.
growth of timber, oak, ash, and sycamore, has sprung up, which
gives to the level grassy arena thus enclosed, a singularly realistic
look — while experts I believe encourage the notion that would
spring at once to the mind of the ordinary observer, namely,
that this was a place of high ceremonial in Druid times.
Indeed, it would be difficult to conceive a spot more suitable
for a great gathering to-day. The Welsh possess some British
camps more interesting than this, but the Welsh bardic societies
would give much for a gathering-place at once so accessible and
so strikingly appropriate as the Mayborough circle. But the
II POOLEY BRIDGE 41
Dane and the Saxon are stronger far in Westmoreland than
the Celt and a wrestling contest would, I fear, draw much larger
crowds to Mayborough than any amount of musical or intel-
lectual exercises suggestive of the spirit of the place and of the
past.
A smaller circle lies across the way ; but we must on to
Ullswater at best pace along a pleasant undulating road. The
Eamont valley lies upon our right. Beyond it spread the
woods of Dalemain where Hassels have lived since the days
of the Tudors, and not far behind in a secluded valley stands
the beautiful Peel tower manor-house where Huddlestones
have been their neighbours for at least as long. In the
morning light against the western sky lie piled the pale grey
and shadowless masses of Blencathra and its satellites. Close
above us rises the wooded height of Dunmallet which Gray
climbed for his first view of Ullswater and in less than no
time we glide through a cluster of snug-looking inns and a
cheery commotion of horses, ostlers, and coaches in various
stages of their day's work and so out on to the old stone
bridge of Pooley under which the Eamont rushes from the
shining lake beyond. There is no choice of sides for those on
wheels of any kind who like ourselves would penetrate to
Patterdale at the head of Ullswater nearly nine miles away,
for the road by the eastern bank only extends to Howtoun,
less than half the distance. It would be no bad plan indeed
to take the little steamer which is even now puffing at the
pier end as if in a hurry to be off with the score or so of
travellers that the Penrith coaches have set down. But the
lake side road is not one to be missed, whereas I will assume
that the traveller who reaches Patterdale will have the good
sense to linger there, and thus doing will take boat at some
time and contemplate with a mind at peace from the jingling
of wandering minstrels and the flavour of orange-peel the
noble proportions of the finest of English lakes.
We have a smooth road before us, a luxury, let it be said
42
LEAFY JUNE chap.
at once, not too common in the Lake country. For a region
whose life-blood is locomotion, it is surprising how diseased
are some of its arteries. The roads of North Wales as a
whole are better graded and better kept. But there is no
cause for complaint here, even if one were in the mood for it
on such a day and in such a place. It is good to be any-
where away from bricks and mortar, when a bright May is
merging into a brighter June, but above all it is good to be
among British hills and mountains. There is no season like
it and there are surely few regions elsewhere so perfect and so
entirely fair. Why, it may be said, thus tantalize the reader by
discoursing of June woods that blow along the feet of moun-
tains and glimmer in the rippling surface of May-fly haunted
lakes, or of June streams which shine amid leaf and blossom
as they will assuredly never shine again. For it is few people
now-a-days that the demands of business or pleasure ever
permit to see the best of England at its best. But there are
compensations in the reverse and the traveller who has to woo
nature in her late maturity or in actual decay may well find
them voiced in Keats's famous lines :
" Where are the songs of spring? Ah ! where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too."
Ullswater possesses a peculiar charm in the way it
gradually unfolds its glories to those who pursue its winding
course upwards from Pooley Bridge. It is rarely more than
half a mile wide and is divided into three distinct reaches,
each one of which exceeds the last in beauty, till the blend
of wild overhanging mountain and rich homelike foreground
which marks its head fills the visitor with a delight that is
perhaps the keener from the skilful way in which this great
masterpiece of nature has drawn him into her presence. For
the first few miles our road lifts us up at times to some height
above the lake and gives us glimpses of the distant mountains
clustering thick about its head, with Catchedicam's pointed
II THE MIDDLE REACH OF ULLSWATER 43
peak, posing for all the world like the monarch of a group
which the broad summit of Helvellyn in actual fact easily
dominates. We pass the high-perched inn at Brathenrigg,
drop down past Watermillock towards the lake edge and thence,
once more thrust inland by the intervening woods and park-
lands of Hallstcads spread beautifully along the margin of the
water, go rising and falling in gentle fashion along a quiet and
leafy road, till a final descent to the lake shore leaves us there
for the remaining five miles of our journey.
The banks of Ullswater are practically unspoiled. The
villas that in some other lakes have seized upon conspicuous
points and contributed nothing to the landscape but their own
inharmonious presence scarcely trouble this one. Such
habitations as are here have the dignity of broad acres and of
sufficient age to have surrounded themselves with woodlands
that now spread far and wide in rich maturity. Across the
lake is the leafy bay and snug hamlet of Howtown, where road
traffic upon the further shore terminates, and the mountain wil-
derness, over which the only wild red deer left in the north have
still a range of some forty square miles, begins to rise with some-
thing of savage grandeur from the water's edge. With a bend to
the right the second reach now opens up to view. A single sail,
barely tightened by the light and fitful breath of the south-
west wind, makes a charming picture, drifting idly along, the sole
object it would seem on the wide expanse of blue water. If
you look closely, however, you may make out a boat or two
here and there lying motionless against the greenery of the
further shore. Each of these will contain a trout fisherman,
sore at heart and whistling for a wind, for Ullswater is the
best of all the larger lakes for trout, for the simple reason
that it enjoys a blessed and rare immunity from that water
wolf, the pike.
But here is Gowbarrow park ; no tract of ox-fed pastures, no
stiff rows of elm and limes, but a real chase is this in all its
pristine wildness and a seat moreover of ancient time. Indeed
44 GOWBARROW PARK chap.
the chieftain Ulpho who is supposed to have given his name to
the lake once Hved here, and, where his keep stood, a Duke
of Norfolk early in the past century erected a small castellated
shooting lodge which time and ivy have contributed to mellow
into much harmony with the romance of its situation. The
present Lyulph's tower stands just above the road and lake,
while the deer park descending from steep and craggy fells be-
hind, leaps over ravines noisy with falling streams, spreads over
rocky slopes, the home of birch and thorn, to drop near the lake
shore into soft glades of grass and fern shaded by imme-
morial oaks. Within its limits too, and just above us, is Aira
Force, where the stream of that name takes a clear leap of 80
feet into a rocky chasm.
" List, ye who pass by Lyulph's Tower
At eve, how softly then,
Doth Aira Force, that torrent hoarse,
Speak from the woody glen."
This spot is the scene of a famous legend which it would
require some hardihood to ignore.
Now, in the predecessor of the present tower — how long ago
history does not say— there dwelt a lady of the house of Grey-
stoke to whom this estate, then as now, belonged. Her beauty
was famous throughout the land and she was betrothed to a
gallant knight. The lady's name was Emma and the knight's
Sir Eglamore. Though affianced to so fair a damsel this
young cavalier was not a man to sacrifice Mars to Venus and
so he set out after the custom of his kind to roam the country
in search of adventure, or in the words of one teller of the
tale, " to make children fatherless and their mothers widows."
He met with such success that his name was noised far and
wide and the fame of his deeds even filtered through the
wilderness behind which Ullswater lay. A betrothed maiden
must have had many heart-pangs while her lover was scouring
the country as the professed champion of ladies in distress.
Sir Eglamore was so industrious in this pursuit and so long
11 THE LEGEND OF LYULPH'S TOWER 45
absent, that grave doubts of his fideUty preyed on the mind of
the gentle Emma, and she contracted the dangerous habit of
walking in her sleep, the object of these midnight rambles
being always a spot upon the banks of the Aira where she
had first plighted her troth to this adventurous knight errant.
In the meantime, the latter still faithful and now full of
honour and crowned with laurels, was wending his way home
again, to lay them at his mistress' feet. It was so late at night
when he arrived within sight of the tower, runs the story,
that unwilling to disturb its inmates, he decided to rest by the
stream till morning dawned and the world awoke. It was
natural enough too that he should be drawn to the spot most
closely connected with his present mood ; and it so happened
that on this very night the fair somnambulist made one of
those weird excursions to which anxiety had unconsciously
accustomed her. The knight was aroused from his musings
by a figure clad in white which he took for a phantom, but
with a hardihood not too common in that superstitious age
he undertook to put the matter to the test of touch. His grasp
however awaked the fair sleep-walker so suddenly and with
such a start that she fell headlong into the foaming torrent
before her lover could realize the situation. When the terrible
truth flashed upon him he lost not a moment but plunged into
the stream, only however, to bring the maiden's bruised and
dripping form to shore in time to receive a single glance of
recognition before the gentle spirit fled. The knight it is said
turned hermit on the spot, and a better locality for this par-
ticular calling could hardly have offered itself than the place
which witnessed his bereavement.
From the mountain parkland of Gowbarrow, still clinging to
the lake shore, we pass almost at once into the woodlands of
Glencoin. Here upon every side of us are tall forest trees, oak
and beech, ash and sycamore, elm and pine, spreading their
fresh leaves over banks of fern, over outcrops of grey lichen-
covered rocks, over glades of short and dewy turf. Upon every
46 THE HEAD OF ULLSWATER chap.
side is the hand of some long-departed planter, whom all
generations who visit Ullswater shall rise up and call blessed.
Rabbits dash across the unfenced road, cock pheasants call
from the depths of the wood, and the squirrel scuttles on the
bough, while just below us the clear waters of the lake sleep
quietly in rocky coves and reflects the colour and the motion
of the green leaves that quiver above its surface.
For the second time to-day we are passing from Cumber-
land into Westmoreland, and it was just here where the
rocks press closely on the lake that a troop of Scottish moss-
troopers was once repulsed with much eclat by one Mounsey at
the head of his brother statesmen. Now the Mounseys were
the largest landowners in this remote community of statesmen,
and for this exploit the hero in question was dubbed the King
of Patterdale as we shall see. What is more, however, the title
became hereditary, and Patterdale had its royal dynasty till the
last sovereign some fifty years ago parted with his property and
consequently with his crown. Of this, however, more anon,
for we have turned the last corner of the lake and the upper and
shortest reach breaks finely into view. The eastern shore has
now assumed the full measure of its wildness in the fifteen
hundred or two thousand feet of rugged front that rises up
from Silver Bay and culminates in the rocky crown of Place
Fell. All round the lake end which is now before us the
mountains crowd in grand and dominating fashion. Many
regard this as nature's greatest masterpiece in all Lakeland, a
rare distinction indeed if it be admitted. It is not my business
to catalogue the wild array of mountain tops that on south and
west and east shut out the world and fill the sky. It will be
enough to know that yonder ridgy hog-back overtopping
everything on the right, with the shadow of a precipice on its
hither side, is Helvellyn, and that it starts the long procession.
Low in the foreground the mouth of Patterdale spreads a rim
of gleaming meadow, and a fringe of dainty woodland along
the shining margin of the lake. Thence lies the only outlet to
11 PATTERDALE 47
the south, to Ambleside and Windermere and Kendal, and
you might well wonder where any road could break its way
over such a barrier as seems to shut out the further world. And
indeed, when four miles up the dale you understand how the
coachroad contrives its exit, and mark its strange contortions as
it zigzags up the Kirkstone pass, the desire to stay in Patterdale
which takes hold of every one who enters it will probably grow
still stronger. Many are the cyclists who, dropping down here
in too reckless fashion from Kirkstone, remain against their will,
and a local doctor tells me he regards the lunatics who in the
teeth of warning and past mishaps come to perennial grief on
this precipitous descent, as quite a regular asset in his income.
But how describe the wealth of colouring and of detail, of
hill and meadow, of rock and wood, that is so marvellously
grouped around the head of Ullswater, between the mountain
background and the glittering lake. Let us rather look at
it and enjoy ourselves instead of boring the reader with a page
or two of futile word painting.
The abundant life that in village, hall, and farmhouse clusters
by the lake head and straggles up the dale beyond, seems so
contrived as to be free from all offence and to form part of a har-
monious whole. The delightful seclusion from the outer world
that distinguishes Patterdale above all other Lake districts of
equal population, contributes something doubtless to its charm.
And I use the word seclusion strictly in its geographical sense,
for it would be idle to deny that the world, in a touring and a
tripping sense, is partial to the head of Ullswater. But after all
how transitory and how trifling is this ebb and flow of human
ants when measured by the scale of the surrounding hills and
vales, and yet more when the gregarious and unadventurous
habits of most of them are taken into account. The man would
lack enterprise indeed, who sought solitude and could not And
it here even in August, and at this early season he may have more
of it, perhaps, than is precisely suited to everybody's taste. There
are two hotels near the waterside, both of which in their respec-
48 A TYPICAL LANDLORD chap.
tive ways are unsurpassed in Lakeland. The larger of these is
the Ullswater, a celebrated house, at the foot of whose gardens
the steamer discharges and receives its passengers. In the
Lake district, where the hotels are almost invariably good and
their landlords, unlike so many in the far north, invariably
obliging and never extortionate. A hotel with a reputation needs
no word from any one. But I am not myself over partial to being
a number in the best regulated establishment, and always, when
possible, seek out some house of entertainment conducted
upon personal lines, if on a less palatial scale, and where some
sort of local atmosphere is floating about. I like too, to be in
touch with mine host, whose discourse is apt to be more pur-
poseful and to the point when one's interests are worthily
engaged in local matters, than that of the most genial guest
from Liverpool or London in immaculate dress clothes.
And in countries like this your landlord of the better sort
is apt to be a sportsman, a farmer, and a stockbreeder, as well
as a man with infinite opportunities of observing his fellow
creatures from outside. His local interests are of necessity
far reaching, and he not only knows the country round for
many miles, but everybody in it. He deals in sheep or
cattle with the larger farmers, and takes eggs or poultry from the
humble dalesman. Many months of comparative leisure fall
to his lot, and he hunts with the mountain hounds, and is
familiar with every fell and crag, as well as with the trouting
capacities of each lake and stream. The very eccentricities
and differing tastes of successive waves of guests make him a
many-sided man, and bring him all sorts of odd adventures,
not of his own seeking, by flood and field, and such as would
hardly befall the average mortal. As likely as not, too, he is the
parson's right-hand man, for when the fair-weather gentry have all
fled, and the snow lies deep round their deserted lodges, and
the little stone church, so crowded at other times, is now cheer-
less, mine host will be there to a certainty, with the offertory
bag in the corner of his pew, and supported by his domestic
II GLENRIDDING 49
circle. Very often he will be the saving of the situation,
from a congregational point of view, for a month of Sundays at
a time. Such indeed, with more or less completeness, are
many landlords of my acquaintance, and they seem to me a
vastly more interesting type than the bottle-nosed individual,
of rotund person and torpid habits, that has been the subject of
so much prose and verse.
But I must not be suspected of applying these general
observations in quite literal fashion to the management of
the private hotel at Glenridding. I was but picturing a type
wqth which many of us, I am sure, are familiar. I shall merely
remark, for the benefit of any one who, like myself, prefers to
be a name to a number, when taking his ease at his inn,
that he will find here a regard for his comfort and welfare
such as would be an admirable object lesson for many landlords
who are accounted well up to their business and certainly
account themselves to be so.
It is a milky stream, alas, that comes prattling past the door
at Glenridding and tells a tale — happily the only one hereabouts
— of lead-mining desecration in the once beauteous dale that
wanders up towards the mighty shoulder of Helvellyn. One
route to the top of the famous mountain leads this way, or you
may pursue the high road for half a mile and turn up Grisedale,
whose unsullied charms are accounted the fairest of all the
glens that cleave the steep sides of the Helvellyn and Fairfield
range. You will make acquaintance here with the ancient little
church of Patterdale (Patrickdale), one of the rare dedications
to St. Patrick, and supposed to be a survival of the fifth-
century Christianity of the Strathclyde Britons. It is probable,
however, that the beautiful w^oods and grounds of Patterdale
Hall, with the Grisedale beck glittering through them with
merry music, will hold your fancy more, for a fairer foreground
to the chequered hills that in their summer dress rise green
behind, and the dark crags that far above them again loom
silent and solemn, it w^ould be ill to find. If the poets who
E
50 BENEFICENT TREE PLANTERS chap.
have sung of this Lakeland deserve such immortality surely
those also who have been conspicuous in preserving and
adorning it should have their meed of recognition. The
Marshalls came into the Lake country, bringing wealth and taste