A morning walk on the western shore of Lake Windermere, from Ferry House to Wray castle.
Windermere looking north to Wansfell. The tree provided a frame and a lead-in to the panorama.
The fallen tree has lifted fragments of the flaggy bedrock.
In colour the contrast was the wrong way round from the point of view of atmospheric perspective with a high key background and a monochrome foreground. Converting the image to grayscale reminds me of the high contrast prints that I aimed to make in the darkroom when I developed my own film. Photoshop is streets ahead of anything that I ever managed to do. Although I notice that I’ve over-sharpened the image; pixels don’t behave quite like film grain.
After we’d photographed the tree we turned to see this bullock standing precariously on an adjacent rock.
The bullock soon decided that the shoot was over. I think that he could be a crossbreed with some Jersey in him
I couldn’t resist attempting this rock crevice with saplings but I knew the strong contrast of sun to shadow would be too much for the dynamic range of my camera.
I had to stand in the stream to photograph the sunlit ripples without casting my shadow across the frame.
Warmth and wet had brought out fungi in Heald Wood including these growing on a tree.
A perfect clump of fungi further up the same tree as the previous photograph.
I LOVE the 30x zoom on my new camera. There’s an element of luck in what the autofocus chooses to latch on to but you can take several shots and hopefully one will catch something. The 4600 pixel wide images give plenty of scope for cropping in to find some suitable composition, like this Greylag keeping a wary eye on me.
I knew the Canada Geese would head for the water if I got too near. Having the zoom on maximum flattened the perspective and emphasised the pattern of black and white, like musical notes on a stave.
If I can get such close ups as this in a few minutes just ambling along the lakeside path imagine what I might be able to do if I spent a morning in one of the hides at a wetland reserve.
It would be interesting to try a catch bird behaviour on film – like this juvenile Black-headed Gull diving into the lake, possibly to catch fish or perhaps even small freshwater mussels. A series of images might provide some clues. The camera has a continuous mode for capturing movement.
Water birds are good subjects to experiment with as they’re large and usually not hidden by foliage so when we saw a Carrion Crow in a waterside willow I tried photographing it.
Grey Heron
I was struggling to keep the camera steady when I tried to photograph the Grey Heron preening itself in a willow at the other side of the lake. The image is rather blocky but it would be useful if I was gathering reference for an illustration.
It’s good to see a heron engaged in some kind of activity rather than standing at rest.
Fungi
Not surprisingly after the warm humid weather that we’ve been having there were one or two fungi about. The toadstool with the scaly cap is a relative of the Fly Agaric while the purplish, smooth capped and much eaten into toadstool (below, right) looks to me like one of the Russulas.
But today I’m content to get to know my camera. I’m looking forward to using it to get to know the names of a few more fungi in the autumn.
IT’S GOOD to be back at Newmillerdam and on a morning like this I can’t resist at least trying to paint a lightning watercolour (below) when we stop for coffee and, as we set off back along the lakeshore, I’m tempted to try to photograph a couple of families of waterbirds.
Much as I like my Olympus Tough, it does struggle with anything animate as several seconds can pass between pressing the button and the photograph actually being taken, so there’s always an element of luck involved.
Newmillerdam lake from Becket’s Cafe.
A few weeks ago we saw one of the mute swan cygnets tucked between the wings of one of the parents as it swam along, a wise precaution as some of the pike in Newmillerdam are enormous and would be capable of pulling a young cygnet below the surface. The other cygnet followed closely in it’s lake with the other parent bringing up the rear and keeping a watchful eye on the family.
I notice in this morning’s photograph that the male, the cob, is leading. He’s got that projection above his bill.
Counting Coots
I squat down to see if the coots near the boathouse will feed their young on freshwater mussels again, as they did last month. One of the parents dives down a couple of times but in the short time that I’m watching catches nothing. As I’m kneeling there a toddler, who has just picked up a feather, and his mum come and stand alongside us.
‘Can you tell me how many baby birds there are?’ she asks him.
‘One, two, three, four . . . and two mummy birds.’
‘They could be a mummy and a daddy?’ suggests his grandad.
‘Are you allowed to say that nowadays?’ I ask.
‘It’s not P.C.’ says grandad, ‘but I think with coots we can be fairly sure.’
‘Even a coot is entitled to life choices.’ I suggest.
‘We’re not doing mummies and daddies yet,’ explains mum, ‘just the babies.’
It’s good to hear parents and grandparents encouraging young children to explore the world of nature and not to put them off with too much health and safety.
This brood of coot youngsters have lost their ginger top-knots and the hint of red on their beaks that they had a month ago and they’re now in the sober plumage of adolescent chicks.
Further up the lake we see a single great-crested grebe. We’ve previously seen a pair here and I hope that some day we’ll see them with their stripy young again.
THERE ARE more bare trees and those that are still holding onto their leaves are turning from green to ochre. The first overnight frosts seem to have put a check on the variety of fungi that appeared in October.
Usually Canada Geese are the most conspicuous birds on the lake but today they’re gone. Perhaps it was last night’s frost that persuaded them to head elsewhere. Three red-headed Goosanders (females or juveniles) are swimming near the boathouse, one dipping its head below water, perhaps looking for a small fish. Black-headed Gulls perch in dead trees by the shore.
A RAINY DAY so instead of walking we try a Cross-Lakes route, taking the small passenger ferry from Bowness to Ferry House, the Mountain Goat bus to Hawkshead and the Stagecoach bus to the Waterhead Hotel at the top end of Coniston Water. At Water Head Pier we waited for the ferry Campbell which makes a round trip of the northern end of the lake, stopping at Hoathwaite Landing, Brantwood and Coniston village.
This damselfly nymph was climbing along the handrail at the landing stage at Waterhead. It still had its featherlike tail gills. On this damp, drizzly day life out of the lake must have seemed almost as wet as in it.
This pondweed(below) with filmy dull green leaves about 2.5 inches long and a yellow green stem was growing from one of the timber piles of the landing stage.
Steam Launch Gondola
Passengers are asked to raise their hand if they want the ferry to stop, so when we saw one sailing by we tried to flag it down. It continued full steam ahead. It turned out that this was another ferry, the National Trust’s steam launch Gondola; a replica in modern materials of the Victorian original which sailed on the lake from 1860 to 1960 when it sank in a gale.
Brantwood
I had a brief chance to draw Brantwood, the home of John Ruskin (1819-1900), as we returned to Coniston village.
WE TAKE the Mallard car ferry to Waterhead then walk along the lakeside path through the woods, following a trail of snack packets as there’s a school party ahead of us, some of whom have brought their own music with them. The way through the woods must be so boring for them without the music and snacks!
Columbine
For us though, it’s a break for coffee and a scone at the newly reopened National Trust property Wray Castle. The steam launch Columbine is down at the landing stage as we wait for the ferry to Brockholes.
Monkey Puzzle
While a second school party disembarks and heads for the treetop walk (now that does look fun) we decide it’s time for tea and a toasted teacake on the terrace by the house, where I draw this Monkey Puzzle. Monkey Puzzles, Araucaria, evolved at a time when dinosaurs roamed the Earth and you can appreciate that only the tallest sauropod, standing on its hind legs, would be able to browse the scaly foliage on its top branches.
Deep in the Wood
The last time that we were at Brockholes was in 1987 when I launched my children’s book Deep in the Wood. Barbara and I organised the event with the Lake District National Park, informed the local press and booked ourselves into a bed and breakfast at Hawkshead. All the publishers had to do was supply the books and we’d seen them a few days before and their top rep had promised to do that.
‘Have the books arrived yet?’ I asked in eager anticipation when we called in at Brockholes the day before the event.
‘No, no sign of them, have you got copies with you?’
I had yet to even see a copy so we phoned the publishers who told us that, yes, they were going to send them but when they went to the stock room they found that the book had sold out in the first few days of publication, so they couldn’t!
They rounded up a few copies from around the office and sent them on via overnight courier. I think this was when I realised that my future lay in self-publishing!
As it happened, it rained heavily all weekend so we had sufficient books for the few visitors who braved the weather. As a consolation, the Lakeland National Park Authority invited us to take a stall at their annual national show at Chatsworth. Princess Diana opened the show and on her tour of the marquees took a brief look at our stall. But she didn’t buy a copy of the book for William and Harry. She seemed rather shy but we’d been instructed not to talk to her unless she spoke to us first. I was equally nervous; I’d been determined to be drawing when she came to the stall but I just froze as she stopped to take a look. This awkward moment ended when a child, peeking in through a gap in the canvas behind our stall, waved at her. Diana smiled and moved on.
In fact the only person who she talked to in the whole marquee was a watercolourist, who was the only exhibitor who had her back turned to the public, as she was working on a painting. Diana leaned over to take a closer look and confided to her; ‘I’m hopeless at that!’ (unlike Prince Charles who has painted watercolours for years).
Birds at the feeding station included Nuthatch and a juvenile Great Spotted Woodpecker.
Return Trip
Langdale from Brockholes landing stage
The return ferry, taking an anticlockwise route around the northern end of Windermere via Ambleside back to Bowness gave me an opportunity to draw the landscape, and add some watercolour.
Hills to the north east of Ambleside
Western shore of Windermere, Ambleside to Bowness.
Bowness on Windermere, Cumbria, 5.35 pm 1/7/12 OS REF. SD 402967
VIEW FROM our 2nd floor room at the Belsfield, looking south to Storrs (108 metres above sea level), the little knoll below the Jackdaw to the left of centre of my sketch, two miles (3km) away, on the eastern shore of Lake Windermere. I’ve heard it said that Storrs means ‘the stony place’ but the Old Norse storõ refers to a young plantation or wood, a common element in Pennine hill-country. It makes sense here because this Storrs is flanked by Birk Head wood on it’s eastern (here left) shoulder, Black Beck wood on its western (lake) side slope.
A Jackdaw flying over the flat roofs of the apartments doubles back and drops down to join two more Jackdaws on the top branches of a sliced-off conifer. One of them turns to it in begging pose, lowering its head and wing-flapping. This begging bird appears from this distance to be an adult so perhaps this is a female demanding food from her mate.
Gargrave & Grasmere
We stopped at Gargrave(left) for lunch where I drew the view towards the river from the Dalesman Cafe. I was just starting to add colour when I noticed the ink ran immediately as I started adding the grey wash for the sky. I realised, luckily before I washed any of the pen and ink away, that I’d drawn with the ArtPen I keep loaded with ArtPen ink (water soluble) cartridges, not the one I keep filled with waterproof Noodler’s ink.
We stopped at Grasmere in the afternoon where I bought a couple of Hahnemüehle Travel Booklets from the Heaton Cooper Studio. These are to fit in my latest, and smallest ever, art bag; a small format camera case-sized Lifeventure Passport wallet. Even so, one of these 9x14cm stitched booklets only just zips into the case.
You can see in this wobbly first sketch, of the chimney of the Lamb Inn, drawn from the shelter of the Miller Howe tearoom, Grasmere village, that the ‘High Quality Sketch Paper, 140 gsm’, isn’t as white as the cartridge in the Pink Pig sketchbooks that I normally use. A suitably mellow background for my holiday sketches.
These booklets are an indispensable companion for retaining notes, thoughts, stories, impressions, sketches and anything unusual that comes your way.
Says the label. It makes you want to pop one in your pocket and set off on your travels.
This is the view from our table in the dining room at the Belsfield, overlooking the landing stage at Bowness. You can see why we keep coming back!
IF YOU represented Lake Windermere as an elongated clock face, today we walked from Ferry House at 9 o’clock to Wray Castle at 11, finishing up at Waterhead, Ambleside, at just past the top of the hour, so about a quarter of the way around England’s largest lake.
This didn’t leave any time for drawing, so I sketched our route from the ferry on the return journey to Bowness.
We had hoped there might be a cafe at Wray Castle, a Victorian country retreat built in the style of a toy fort, but it’s closed at the moment after plans to turn it into an upmarket hotel fell through. The National Trust plans to reopen it to the public . . . and open a cafe there.
Beatrix Potter celebrated her 16th birthday at Wray Castle when the Potter family spent a summer holiday here.
3.30 p.m.; View of Windermere from Costa Coffee at Pringles, Bowness.The small, sometimes winding, roads made sketching from the car difficult.
THE LAKE DISTRICT is so often moody, wrapped in clouds and mist, so today, with ranks of cumulus marching across a clear blue sky and sparkling panoramas unfolding before us, our regular journey was a different experience. After so many years of heading along the Leeds ring road to get on the road to the Lakes, the A65 via Skipton, we’ve found a short cut on smaller quieter roads following the ridges between some of the old woollen towns of the West Riding – Huddersfield, Mirfield, Halifax and Bradford – not far away in the valleys below.
It was so clear that already, as we approached Howarth over the moors, we got glimpses of the sphinx-like peaks of Ingleborough and Pen-y-Ghent crouching on the limestone plateau of the Yorkshire Dales National Park.
Coming this way, along the smaller but slower roads, the Dalesman Cafe at Gargrave, 1 hour 20 minutes but only 40 miles into our journey, makes a timely coffee stop. They specialise in ephemera of the 1950s and 1960s so as I tried a local speciality, buttered Chorley cake, the tins and packages of the period brought back memories for us.
I sketched this shrimping net from an earlier period, still with its canvas bag stencilled ‘W EGLON, NEPTUNE FISH STORES, WHITBY, TEL. 60’. I wonder whereabout in Whitby that was . . .
The Eglons of Whitby
A Google search turns up this reference to the Eglon family from the 1891 census (http://mdfs.net/Docs/Whitby/Census1891/Whitby10), when they were living in four rooms in Elephant & Castle Yard, between Haggersgate and Cliff Street, so very near what is still the fish quay at Whitby. I guess that Neptune Fish Stores would have been there or very near.
4 Elephant & Castle Yard (4 rooms)
Eglon, Christopher - Head - M M 41 - Fish Merchant - YKS, Whitby
Eglon, Eliza - Wife - M F 41 - - YKS, Whitby
Eglon, Mary E - Daughter - S F 21 - Dressmaker - YKS, Whitby
Eglon, William - Son - S M 19 - Fisherman - YKS, Whitby
Eglon, Christopher - Son - M 14 - Errand Boy - YKS, Whitby
Eglon, Esther - Daughter - F 12 - Scholar - YKS, Whitby
Eglon, James H - Son - M 10 - Scholar - YKS, Whitby
Eglon, Margaret E - Daughter - F 7 - Scholar - YKS, Whitby
William, born in 1872, must be the ‘W. Eglon’ named on the bag but sadly his business, Neptune Fish Stores (Whitby) Ltd, was wound up in 1969, at a time when the traditional English seaside resorts had lost out to competition from package holidays to the Mediterranean.
Sunset across the Lake
Barn owl from Walney Owl Sanctuary, which along with a Little and an Eagle Owl was proving a hit with visitors to the Tourist Information Centre at Bowness.
I’m certainly getting in holiday mood today, I’m beginning to feel like a different person, as if a burden has been lifted from my shoulders, as we approach the Lakes and leave the distractions of home and work behind. As the rugged peaks of the Borrowdale volcanics come into view a Buzzard circles above the road.
Bowness can be as busy as a traditional seaside town – the Blackpool of the Lake District – but, as we’ve booked in for a few days at the Belsfield Hotel overlooking the Lake Windermere, we can stay after the weekend trippers return home.
There’s a perfect sunset, a clear sky across the lake. In this old hotel, originally the home of a wealthy Victorian industrialist, you have the feeling that you’ve got away from everything; as if you’re aboard one of the old, opulent ocean liners. When we walk down for our meal in the sumptuous dining room, past the reception desk, we glimpse sparkling water through the lounge window. You feel that the whole hotel might be gliding over calm waters. Hopefully with no icebergs on the horizon. The bustling piers where the ferries come and go are hidden away behind the grassy banks of the hotel gardens.
IT’S GOOD to return and re-walk the same route at this time of year as there are changes daily in plant and bird life. The glossy leaves of Bluebell are coming up in the woods around Newmillerdam and on the lake, frozen over only a month ago, there are three Goosanders, a male and two ‘red-heads’ (either females or juveniles).
Also putting in its first appearance (for us on our infrequent visits anyway) is a Great-crested Grebe. We’ve seen the Little Grebe or Dabchick but not its Great-crested relative. By the size of its crests and cheek feathers, I’m sure this is a male. It’s unusual not to see them together as a pair at this time of year. Perhaps she’s already on a nest on a quiet corner of the lakeside.
I knew the Canada Geese would head for the water if I got too near. Having the zoom on maximum flattened the perspective and emphasised the pattern of black and white, like musical notes on a stave.
