The Lake District has been inspiring writers for centuries and on a long ramble for a new hiking book, it wasn’t just the scenery that caught the eye.
Fifty years before William Wordsworth was born, the novelist William Defoe reached the edge of the Lake District in the 1720s for his entertaining travel book A Tour Thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain. The creator of Robinson Crusoe was not impressed. The fells ahead, he declared, were “unpassable” and “all the pleasant part of Britain was at an end”. The mountains were “horrid”. He wanted nothing to do with them. He turned around and headed to less treacherous parts.
That was not how I felt before visiting last year for my new book Lost in the Lakes: Notes from a 379-Mile Hike Around the Lake District. Quite the opposite. Having visited a friend many times in the small village of Threlkeld in my late teens and later coming often in my former role as the hotel reviewer for the Saturday Times travel section, I was more than fond of this mountainous corner of the country. Every occasion I went on assignment – while reviewing the likes of the Forest Side hotel in Grasmere and Brimstone Hotel in Great Langdale – it had offered the opportunity to explore another piece of the dramatic landscape. I always took my hiking boots and, even with only a couple of hours spare, would set off into the fells.
Put simply: I loved the scenery. I was a sucker for it. Much earlier than my teens I had come with my parents; my mother was brought up in Ormskirk, so it was not so far away when visiting her mother (as a child I lived in London, as I do now). We sometimes visited the Lakes, and I have vague recollections of walking up windswept hills when very young. A fondness for the terrain seemed somehow engrained from then.
Yet the Lakes had always felt hard to grab hold of in a single visit. Yes, you could conquer (or bag) the Wainwright peaks one by one: all 214 of them. But that would take ages, plus doing so seemed hard going. Was there not a less strenuous way to enjoy the Lake District on a long hike with a month to spare (which is what I had)? To go on a tour while not obsessing about reaching summits?
Looking at a map I drew a wobbly circular route from Penrith and back via Ullswater, Patterdale, Keswick, Cockermouth, Eskdale Valley, Coniston and onward to Windermere, Cartmel, Grasmere, Thirlmere and Shap, with many places in between. The idea had occurred to use the 16 main lakes as the focus, covering each and climbing any peaks that caught my eye. These turned out to include Haystacks, the Old Man of Coniston, the Pike of Blisco, Scafell Pike (the biggie at 978m) and a few others.
So I set off on a casual ramble of a hike. My preconception was only that I very much enjoyed the landscape, although I hoped also to talk to folk along the way about what life was really like in the Lakes, not just rely on the perspective of a tourist/outsider (ie, me). I was seeking a more nuanced understanding.
Luckily, from day one in Penrith people opened-up – and an unavoidable theme rapidly emerged. This was of the complicated love-hate local relationship with tourism. It was loved for the commerce it brought – the jobs, the boost to the local economy – but less appreciated for its many pernicious knock-on effects. Of these, aside from dreadful traffic jams at peak periods, one hot topic stood out from Penrith onward: the seemingly inexorable rise in housing prices caused by holiday and second homeowners.
Communities were at risk of falling apart as so many houses were sold to outsiders making it nigh on impossible for local youngsters to get on the property ladder, I was told. Many were having to move out. This meant fewer young couples and that schools were not filling places, some sports clubs were struggling for numbers, many pubs in remotest areas were struggling, and there was generally less socialising. With second homes empty for months on end and holidaymakers using so many properties, communities were under pressure.
The rise of Airbnbs, which made more for landlords than private lets, was not helping. Meanwhile, those who worked in the tourism industry were often having to travel from miles away. This was pushing up transport costs and making jobs less financially appealing. Because of this a staff shortage was evident, with “we’re hiring” signs just about everywhere.
During my long ramble, many talked of these difficulties from barmaids to waiters, B&B owners, hoteliers, farmers, local businesspeople, youngsters caught in the property trap, and on one occasion during an entertaining pub crawl, the then mayor of Keswick. The urgent need for more affordable housing was on almost everyone’s lips. The local MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale, Tim Farron, told me on a visit to his constituency that he was campaigning for new regulations for holiday lets and second homes. The situation had become “catastrophic”, especially since the pandemic when many city dwellers had got the idea to buy second places in the countryside.
So on my long walk around the Lakes, my long-held love for fells and the peace and solace they offered was renewed, as was my enjoyment of the camaraderie between hikers on the trail. But other matters had come to the fore as well. The result in Lost in the Lakes is a reporter’s ramble, if you like, taking a new way round the Lake District while covering the region warts and all.
By the end my feet may have been a bit sore, but my appreciation for the landscape was stronger than ever, alongside a new awareness of its many troubles too.
* Tom Chesshyre is the author of Lost in the Lakes: Notes from a 379-Mile Hike Around the Lakes (Summersdsale) which is out now.
