1. Turner’s Buttermere
Cumbria
Julia Bradbury
climbs the gells above Buttermere for a picture perfect view
The grandeur for the Lake District has inspired
artists and poets for centuries.
The grandeur for the Lake District has
inspired artists and poets for centuries. JMW Turner painted many watery
landscapes there on his northern tour, Joseph Farington’s Vies of the Lakes was
produced in direct response to the massive demands of tourism in the area in
the 18th century, and Beatrix Potter, the creator of some of the most famous
children’s character’s characters of all time, would write and draw
inexhaustible at her Hill Top Farm near Ambleside. Lakeland Poets, William
Wordsworth (Born in the Lake District) Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert
Southey nestled there for months at a time to poetically ripen.
The Lakes are truly captivating and many
have fallen prey to their charms, but I don’t think there is a more emphatic
admission of everlasting love and contentment than that of Alfred Wainwright .
He may not have penned “I wandered lonely as a cloud” but from the moment he
set foot in the Lake District as a young man from Blackburn aged 23 an 1930, he
was smitten. “Many are they who have fallen under the spell of Lakeland, and so
many are the who have been moved to tell of their affection, in story and verse
and picture and song,” he said.
Heavenly Haystacks
The
fell of Haystacks in particular stole Wainwright’s heart
The fell of Haystacks in particular stole
Wainwright’s heart. It stands at 580m (1.900ft) in the western area of the
Lakes on the edge of Buttermere
“One can forget a raging toothache on
Haystacks… For beauty, variety and interesting detail, for sheer fascination
and individuality, the summit area Haystacks is supreme. This is fact the best
fell top of all,” Mr Wainwright said of it. Don’t forget that he spent 13 years
documenting his love of the area over the course of seven beautifully,
painfully detailed guides, which stand alone as works of art – and yet, for
him, Haystacks was ‘the one’.
One of many wonderful things about this
fell are the views of Buttermere and Crummock Water it offers on the way to the
summit. Turner captured these crystal waters in oils, and I can’t help wishing
I’d brought a few paintbrushes and an easel to have a go myself.
The cost of fame
Buttermere
– its name meaning the lake by the dairy pastures – is the stuff of poetry,
too.
Buttermere – its name meaning the lake by
the dairy pastures – is the stuff of poetry, too. The Maid of Buttermere is
mentioned in Wordsworth’s magnum opus The Prelude. She was the beautiful
daughter of an innkeeper who became famous through guidebooks. He described her
as the “artless daughter of the kills who represented a woman shaped by nature,
living without contamination. She unspoiled – a product of the natural
environment, free from artificial influence.”
Sadly, because of this fame, Mary Robinson
the Maid, fell four of a fraudster called John Hatfield purporting to be a
well-to-do Colonel Hope. He fooled the community and married poor Mary, until
he was exposed as a bigamist, forger and imposter and hanged in 1803. Mary went
on to marry a local farmer and have four children. It is however a cautionary
tale about the perils of celebrity – even back then.
Wainwright was not a celebrity, or truly
recognized as an artist in his day. He always maintained that he began writing
the guidebooks for his own memory of the places he had visited and loved.
It
is however a cautionary tale about the perils of celebrity – even back then.
Wainwright’s maps are not strictly plan or
elevation views. He deliberately distorted perspectives and scales in order to
get in all the information he thought would be valuable for any walker. And his
drawings are laden with detail – lovingly sketched over his many ascents of
every fell. Just in case there’s any doubt about Haystacks being his all time
favourite fell, Wainwright paid it the ultimate compliment in his absence – he
had his ashes scattered on the summit, near the superbly named Innominate Tarn.
I climbed Haystacks several years ago and
found the tranquil pool of water where Wainwright’s ashes are scattered, and I
read from Book 7 The Western Fells: “And if you, dear reader, should get a bit
of grit in your boots as you are crossing Haystacks in years to come, please
treat it with respect. It might be me.” If that isn’t art that lives on, what
is?
Haystacks
