GAITS WATER AND DHU CRAGS.
You will find the descent of Walna Scar worse than the climb, for, on the Seathwaite side, the road is good and smooth, but, on the Conistone side, it is less like a road than a superannuated water-course, and that not of the “gentlest conditions.” After you have safely descended the steepest portions, and crossed by a primitive stone bridge over a brawling brook, pray leave your road for about half a mile, to look at Gaits Water. You will find it to present a scene of savage desolation approaching the terrific, and I know nothing equal to it for wildness in the Lake country. It is an oval Tarn, about half a mile round, on the eastern side of which the Old Man rears his most rocky and precipitous side; at the head is a steep, high pass, connecting the Old Man with Dow, or Dhu Crags, which last rise on its western side, high, barren, verdureless screes, surmounted by a coronet of tremendous black rocks, partly mural and partly columnar, of vast altitude, with rough jagged edges, and bisected here and there with awful-looking chasms, which, with the borrans formed by the accumulation of huge fragments of rock along the south-west of the shore, form a favourite DRAWING A FOX.harbour for foxes, against which the shepherds wage a constant war of extermination. They have an extraordinary method of taking the fox, when they trace him to one of these rocky hiding-places; they draw him out with a screw, like a cork from the neck of a bottle. They have a gigantic cork-screw upon the end of a pole, which they sometimes succeed in insinuating into poor reynard's corpus, and so ruthlessly screw him to destruction. On the three sides I have pointed out around Gaits Water, the walls of the dungeon come sheer down to the water-edge: the fourth is fortified with a grotesquely-piled accumulation of rocks of enormous size. Altogether, it is a scene to make a man shudder, and wish himself anywhere else;—so return to your road, and prick along under the southern slope of the Old Man to Conistone.
As you approach the village, you have a view of all the vale of Yewdale, shining sweetly in its setting of dark brown hills and moors. You reach Church Conistone by an abruptly-descending road, lined and over-arched by a long grove of flourishing oaks. Of the village itself, through a portion of which you take your way, we will say more anon; meantime, your mind’s eye is doubtless gloating upon the good things awaiting your attack at the Inn.
CHAPTER VII.
THE VILLAGE.
Walk to the Village—Bannockstone Bridge—A Wild Legend—The Church and Schools—Inns—The English Opium Eater—Mrs. Robinson—Jenkin Syke—Hause Bank—Parkgate—Highthwaite, &c.
As you will, most probably, be rather stiff, not to say saddle sick, with your last long and rough ramble, I may calculate upon your being disposed to make this a short and easy one; so what say you to a saunter through the village of Church Conistone? You are possibly aware that there are two Conistones, the designation of each possessing an ecclesiastical character. The district around the uppermost part of the lake, and for half a mile down the western shore, and two or three miles down the eastern, is called Monk Conistone, and forms a part of the parish of Hawkshead; whilst Church Conistone, lying on the west of the lake and Yewdale beck, and extending to Torver in one direction and Fell-foot in another, is a chapelry in the parish of Ulverstone.
The road leading from the Waterhead to the village runs for some distance along the edge of the lake, and is delightfully shaded with trees, chiefly oaks. On the right, a single range of extensive level fields divides it from the finely-wooded Guards hill; on the left, the wavelets of the lake run upon a gentle grassy slope close up to the roadside, and, occasionally, in very wet weather, the lake extends its waters across the road and the fields beyond it, leaving pedestrians no other choice but wading or walking back.
THE ROADSIDE.
Where the road makes a sudden sweep to the right, and leaves the water side, you may notice the miniature docks and piers where slate, &c., are shipped for the lake foot on its way to the sea, and the scene of the only fatal accident known to have occurred in Conistone lake. The first houses you approach are the buildings belonging to the Thwaite farm, sheltering prettily under its wooded eminence, and, adjoining them, the neat old-fashioned residence, called Thwaite Cottage; a little further still, occupying a natural terrace on the southern declivity of the aforesaid eminence, stands Thwaite House, or “The Thwaite,” which commands a most comprehensive view of the vale, the village, the mountains and the lake, in one ocular range. Saunter on, and you soon come to a group of singular-looking buildings—built, a few years ago, by Mr Marshall—surrounded by pretty flower-gardens which, in the season, agreeably relieve the dismal effect of the dark blue, or rather light black stone of which the walls are constructed, with very little mortar, lest the white should disagree with the character of the scenery, as Mr Wordsworth avers it does: but the ivy, with its bright green tapestry, is now rapidly covering the nakedness of these comfortless-looking walls.