steam yachts at Lakeside. This is the entrance to the district from the south. The pastoral, comparatively tame country hereabouts is a fitting introduction to the more impressive scenery which meets us as we sail up the lake towards Bowness and Waterhead. The steamers run in connection with the trains and the pier is alongside the railway station. The view up the lake gives promise of the good things to come. A wide expanse of water, with luxuriant woods running down to its very edge, and in the distant blue the fells of Lakeland! Hereabouts the lake is very narrow; in fact it is literally “Wooded Winandermere, the river-lake” of the poet.
For a mile or so after starting, the scene changes but little and then gradually it unfolds itself like the opening petals of some gorgeous flower. The shoulder of the “mighty Helvellyn” thrusts its bare mass above the trees on the left; further round is the flat-topped Fairfield mountain, then the rounded back of Red Screes dominated by the High Street Range and the conical spur of Ill Bell. These are the dim blue fells we noticed from Lakeside. If we keep a sharp eye above the wooded ridge on our left, Finsthwaite Heights, we shall catch a glimpse of the top of Coniston Old Man. This has hardly disappeared before, looking up to our left front, the Langdale Pikes are momentarily seen—an elusive little peep which causes us to keep a look out for them as we sail further up the lake. They are the shapeliest and most distinctive mountains to be seen from Windermere; indeed, it is the opinion of many that Lakeland itself has nothing more beautiful to show than these Twin Peaks.
On our right the white walls of Storrs Hall gleam through the trees. It is now a hotel, but it will always be reminiscent of the historic occasion when Wordsworth, Southey and Christopher North foregathered here to welcome Sir Walter Scott and Canning to a yachting regatta held in honour of the “great Northern Minstrel.” Ere long the islands claim our attention and then we touch at the Ferry, “one of the sweetest spots on Windermere.” The steam ferry-boat which plies all day long from shore to shore, carrying objects of all possible descriptions—pedestrian and otherwise—motor cars, carts and char-a-bancs, possesses an antiquity that renders it in keeping with the surroundings.
After leaving the Ferry pier we pass the largest of the islands, Belle Isle, with the cupola of a residence peeping through the trees. The islands, apart from their picturesqueness, supply one of the few “stirring incidents” that have happened hereabouts. On Belle Isle, Major Robert Philipson, locally known as “Robin the Devil,” withstood for eight months a siege carried on by a certain Colonel Briggs, an officer in Cromwell’s army and a magistrate of Kendal. Briggs ultimately failed to apprehend the gallant major and tiring of his job, withdrew to Kendal. Major Philipson followed him with a small body of picked men. They reached Kendal on a Sunday and all its inhabitants had gone to church. Not quite all, however, for Philipson went to church and, to the surprised horror of the congregation, rode his horse up one aisle and down the other in quest of his enemy; but Briggs was not there, a defection which no doubt saved his life. Philipson had reached the door again in safety when someone, plucking up courage, made a grab at his girth and succeeded in unhorsing the daring intruder. Him the major killed on the spot, succeeded in regaining his girthless saddle, mounted and was away through the church porch without further hindrance, and thence to Windermere. His head violently struck the top of the doorway as he dashed out, however, and his helmet was knocked to the ground. This was all his assailants secured, and until quite recently it hung, as a voucher for the truth of the story, in one of the aisles of Kendal Church.
To resume our sail, the pretty little village of Bowness and the
Windermere from Furness Fell
The large island is Belle Isle, Bowness being on the far shore, with the village of Windermere on the hill above.