From the realms of fancy to the domain of beauty and to Kentmere tarn. This laves the lower screes of Hillbell and Froswick, but Nature’s Kentmere was four miles down the glen. Thirty years or so ago the landlords organised draining operations, and found that they had exchanged two hundred acres of beautiful water for as much useless marsh. Nature, interfered with, had retaliated. The upper reservoir is more strikingly situated. Great mountains leap upward from its shores, scores of brawling streamlets force their way down the sides into it. There are two favourite times for fishing this mere—when a gentle sou’wester ruffles the surface and you get out your fine river tackle, and when after rain the fish scent a feast. It is a case of knowing where the shoals lie thickest for making a pannier.
As we stroll by the water, we have in front the tallest buttress of High Street, about the flanks of which are studded four beautiful waters—Small Water, Blea Water, Hayes Water, and Angle tarn. The nearest of these is reached over Nan Bield pass by which a fair amount of inter-dale traffic passes. One day a flock of sheep will make the grey rocks ring with their plaints, another they may resound to the mellower lowings of driven cattle. My first glimpse of Small Water was at sunset. Afternoon was far spent when we faced the mountain ways. Along the hilltops the sun flashed golden fire, the fells to eastward were haloed in bright mist, cool shadows fell and spread around. Then after an (it seemed an interminable) hour, we came here. Not a spark of direct light fell into the hollow of the hills, but the waters shook off responsive glows to day’s aftermath reigning in the skies. The air was hushed, the wagtails flittering about the grey stones were soothed to cuttering monotones. Oh, to stay were glorious indeed, to watch the now radiant vault fade through most subtle hues to grey and then to clear blue of night and starry rest. But on we had to go—often the most ravishing scene has to be inexorably hurried through, for man has many interests, and the most peaceful, the most soul-filling, are not in the way of the world the most important. Would that more of us could, like the poets whose dreamings inspired the mighty deeds of old, and of to-day as well, sit by the hour in these realms of beauty and delight, and calmly let their spirit sink into us. We would write better, live better; but what we call duty intervenes and the inner pulsations of living nature remain unknowable. Nature as seen indoors with the microscope is unfolded to us every day by our great leaders of thought; but few of these great minds care for or have the leisure to instil into themselves, and thence transmit to us, the broader splendours of field and fell and mere.
BLEA TARN AND LANGDALE PIKES
Small Water fills a tiny depression in the mountain; it is well stocked with trout, many of which have a curiously large number of vermilion spots on them. The angler who comes here on an evening in late July may find recompense for his trouble, but a rodman’s panoply is no light weight to bring those three miles from Mardale, or six from Kentmere.
From the upper crags of High Street one looks into a deep well, bounded by rock and scree, to see lonely Blea Water. Its shores are fringed with great fragments rent from the rugged heights which almost overhang. The raven nests in inaccessible gullies above the rippling waters, and one associates their solemn croakings with the shadow-filled basin of crag. A few stunted perch exist in the sterile mere: what hope of rich life can there be from rain-flooded ghylls and mist-moistened crags? Only at sunrise does the scene become joyous. From beyond the Pennines the day’s first warming beams kiss life into seams and rents, signs of wild winter nights and gloomed, frosty days. One great rock-sentinel has a story of the dalesman sport of fox-hunting to tell. Its front is split up by a score ravines, where the stone is rotten and weather-worn. Ledges where a fox can lie at peace from the baying pack are there in scores: Reynard can climb up and down where the agilest hound dare not approach. During one long chase the fox, sorely pushed, attempted to “benk” in this crag. The pack, to prevent accidents, were “whipped off.” The followers essayed to examine the rock-face to discover the redskin and, if possible, to oust him from his refuge. In his eagerness one Dixon, scrambling in a rotten ghyll-head, slipped and fell headlong to a great depth. His body rebounded thrice from the rocks—hence the shattered watercourse is known as “Dixon’s Three Loups.” With both legs broken, the fallen sportsman came to rest, jammed behind a pinnacle of rock. Espying the fox making cautiously over the vertical rock he called to his friends, who were with the hounds, “It’s cummen oot be t’ hee end; lig t’ dogs on.” Reynard’s ruse was frustrated, and a kill made in due course. Dixon’s injuries, beyond the fractured legs, must have been confined to contusions, for, years afterwards, he joined in the hunt with unabated keenness.
Hayes Water has no story to tell the wanderer: it is out of the way of history and legend. Many a hunt passes along its glen, but no commanding crags claim adventure and peril. It is among the most beautiful of our tarns, and the ghyll by which its outflow passes to the Goldrill is a paradise. Cataract and dimpling pool, lush moss and clinging ivy, alder, rowan, ash, and birch; here the beck gurgling in a deep channel, there, in the realm of bracken, sliding down the hardened stone it cannot pierce. The stream is a playground of the dipper, the wagtail, the kingfisher. Suddenly the rivulet charges down a rocky ravine, and emerges, as a clear, calm brook, in the level glen of Goldrill. But one hardly yet follows it, for across the heather and towsled grass there is an Angle tarn to see. This small pool on the level moor is a haunt of the wild red deer from Martindale. Skeletons of several of them were found here after the terrible winter of 1895, when for weeks the ground was frost-bound, and the heather buried in snow. But Angle tarn, as well as Hayes Water, is famous to the angler; permission to enjoy this sport must, however, be sought from the lord at Lowther Castle, in whose manor both lie.
A SUDDEN SHOWER, BLEA TARN
Brothers Water, up a branch of the Goldrill, affords fair sport to the rod. Its shores the wandering kind would think, but erroneously, tame. No huge crag leaps up from it, but its surroundings are of singular ruggedness. The lofty, bristling front of Red Screes, and the purpled fields of broken crag on Kirkstone fell, face the nobbly Hartsop Dodd. The ridges are cut up by narrow chasms down which in flood-time, like hordes of wild horses, unbridled torrents fling. The glen above the tarn is given over to one of the largest sheep-farms in the district. Its acreage is counted, as its fleeces, by the thousand.