The English Lakes :: CHAPTER X CRUMMOCK WATER

CHAPTER X CRUMMOCK WATER

Two chief routes bring you easily to Crummock Water—the first to Scale Hill at its foot, the other to its head, over Newlands Hause. From northward, as you approach, the hills on either side the vale of Lorton rise to higher flights, to greater ruggedness. At Scale Hill there is a sudden glimpse up the lake, a silvery level stretching far into the mountain land. Your way has wound round a great tumulus of rock and larch and oak which chokes the vale, to bring you so quickly to this lovely view.

CRUMMOCK WATER, FROM SCALE HILL

Wild and stern is Crummock. All is particularly gloomy and forlorn on an afternoon threatening snow. The hillsides start up grey and stark and desolate. The only sounds you hear are the occasional yelp of a sheep dog in the fields near by and the sulky croak of a raven, a black spot up there where a grim cloud is hovering, shutting out the life of day, and sending the weather-wise sheep cluthering to sheltered spots by ghyll and fence. Suddenly the grey firmament above drops on to the hilltops and smothers them. Then snow begins to flutter, first in single flakes, then in a small shower which grimes the nearer fields and paths. Finally the storm giant asserts himself and a continuous shadow of white falls around. That far-off mist-wall which showed the head of the vale is shut off; only a few yards of grey lake trembling and tossing into little waves as the north wind harries it. At such a time it is well to seek shelter, for the gale may be wild and strong as day dies, and the snow fall in winding sheets. Rather, then, turn indoors and listen to stories of stress—the shepherd can tell you of peril faced for the sake of his flock; the postman, of danger in his daily round: men as wild and strong and devoted in their way as pioneer-heroes in a cannibal land, and as deserving to furnish matter for stories of renown. Through rain and shine, when torrents brawl havoc, rending bridges like straws, when drifts hide even the tall tree tops,—

“The service admits not a ‘but’ or an ‘if’”

and the gritty postman, by one device or another, wins through with his mails to solitary farm or wild moorland hamlet. And they live long, despite their hardships, as witness one who, after a day’s wrestle with the unbanded elements, was asked how he fared.

“Why, man, it’s wild on t’ top. I tried to git ower t’ moor, but I couldn’t. I gat to that lile [little] black planting, hooivver, aboot halfway, and I rested a bit. Then I said to mesel, I said, ‘Noo, Wat, thoo’s faced it four and fifty year, thoo sureli isn’t gaen to gie in noo.’ And at that I set tull again, and I gat ower; but it was hard wark, mindst ta.”

By calm hearth the dalesmen tell their stories; the gale rumbles against the house, and the windows tinkle to the driving of snowflakes. By morning the storm has passed, the ground is deep in snow, sky and hilltops are clear, stars still shine down on a scene of quietness and savage peace. Soon dawn-beams fire the east, and the summits are touched with rose. With full day the greyness clinging to the mountain flanks disappears, revealing riven glens and beetling crags. A boat is being launched for an expedition to seek what wild fowl may during the storm have taken refuge on the lake, and on it we go. On the open water the cold is terrible; pulling with might and main would hardly relieve the numbness of hands and feet, but our game is wary and any incautious rattle of oars would send them beyond reach. For half an hour we put up with the discomfort, then find that the boat is leaking badly and that a baler has to be used freely to keep the floors from floating. We ask to be put ashore!

On the road, walking is less difficult than we had imagined. At one place is quite a hundred yards of wind-swept path, but at a gateway the soft snow is piled deep. It is hard work passing even occasional drifts where you wade waist-deep for yards. At places the road between cliff and lake is so blocked that we climb along the open hillside. Now from an outstanding crag above the road we have a view of the lake and its surroundings. The water lies in a huge trough, bounded by immense walls of mountain, hardly ever falling far enough back to allow an alluvial meadow to slip between. Mellbreak! What a mighty mass! White are the wide fans of scree, but black and frowning the tiers of precipice. Above in a grand sweep comes the head of the mighty monarch, from which the sunshine is striking a thousand frost spangles. The sky is deep blue overhead. Hark to the croaking of the ravens; they seem to have found some carrion—perhaps a dead sheep—in yonder ghyll, and down they come, one, two, three, in all six, a crowd for these unsociable birds. Some of the ghylls are choked with snow, but others show black, rocky rents in the snowfields. Particularly I look for the great ravine down which comes Scale Force, the highest of our waterfalls. Once I climbed that gorge on a moonlit night in winter. Never to be forgotten that scene! An opal sky streaming with faint beams of aurora, tall crags closing the chasms, the fern-like alders limned against the starry glow above, the water rolling in pearly waves over the rock-edge toward me, then falling through an unseen zone to trouble the darkling pool at my feet.

Part of our homeward route lies through woodlands, where we watch a busy squirrel visiting its cache of nuts, and where, among the snow-laden branches, scores of little birds flit and twitter. Once we hear a buzzard mewing high above, and a sparrow-hawk’s raucous voice, but neither bird is seen.

Crummock in midsummer is a dream of delight. Once lately, on a warm summer evening, I cycled up its shore from Scale Hill. The road is rather gritty and loose of surface, but quite ridable. The sun was dipping toward the mountain ridges, pouring a flood of glorious light into the valley. From the lake came the chunk-unk of oars; two heavy-laden boats were being pulled toward the foot of the lake, and soon a clear young voice rippled across the water to us the charming strains of “Killarney.” What a sublime scene! Lofty Mellbreak sheering from the water’s edge, Grassmoor and many another craggy giant sweeping up to invisible heights above us, the golden green of new bracken, the purple bloom of heather, here and there an emerald patch of larches. To me there is infinite change in a view over a wide lake. Those huge, irregular phantoms are the shadows of a cloud above: they sweep across the lake, then dull the mountainside; drop away into some deep glen, pass on to dim far-away summits ere they slide over the horizon. The emotions of the heavens are reflected in God’s mirror beneath. Should a thunderstorm gather, then the lake is cast in gloom, sable ripples heave and fall. To the roaring of heaven’s artillery and the blinding flare of lightning, the fury approaches, passes, and the water wimples and rejoices in the falling curtains of rain. After storm, how noble and sweet that restful bosom! With fresh sunlight the land renews life and hope. The down-bent harebell rises again to dance in the gentle airs that play about; the heather casts off its gleaming pearls—down the sinewy fronds of bracken runs a tribute to the thin soil. Birds burst forth in wild chorus: the throstle and the blackbird make the rowaned ghylls resound; wagtails, wrens, linnets, each pipe their tuneful parts. To these from on high joins in the ringing of the skylark—a wild song of defiance to the storm, of thanks for coming calm to the Most High. And the lake, ruffled with passing breezes, seems to rejoice as well. There is a fragrance of earth and air and land after a summer storm on Crummock Water.

CRUMMOCK WATER AND BUTTERMERE

Away across the lake, by the bouldery ness the torrent of Scale has driven into the mere, are two islets, and from one a smudge of smoke is travelling lazily. What more delightful than to have a foretaste of the joy of picnicing there? The road now inclines from the water, and we climb toward the village of Buttermere where a new series of views awaits.

Perhaps fewer people live by Crummock than by any other lake: the fells hem it in too closely for farms to be settled. There is much shepherding on the commons, where flocks wander unchecked over wide areas. It was in a scene similar to this that a touring Devonian ventured to tell his Cumberland host that he did not think much of this sort of country, for, he explained:

“Down in Devonshire we have land, we can grow apples, and we have green meadows.”

“Div ye mean ther’s nae land here?” said the Cumbrian, sweeping his hand toward jagged crag, sleeping lake, and boulder-strewn field. “Why, man, ther’s that mich land here that it hes to be piled togither, one farm on top o’ t’other. Why, man, ther’s eneu’ land to mak’ fifty farms i’ Benkle Crag theer.”

“Aye,” assented the Devonian grimly, “and enough waste water to till the lot there,” pointing to the shimmering lake.

The wild moorland above the lake is one of the few remaining English breeding-places of the dotterel. This is a migrant of the plover type from high latitudes; odd pairs are apt to stay all summer, and to rear broods. The nest is increasingly rare: for collectors will give long prices for a complete clutch of eggs, and the native shoots the bird on sight, for no more successful lure for trout exists than a fly made from the underwing of a dotterel. I have declined £5 offered to disclose the whereabouts of a nest. Once I undertook to show a naturalist a nest, but though I had marked the place ever so carefully I failed to give him “the sight of a lifetime.” There are great difficulties in the way of a non-resident again finding, in a maze of benks and boulders, ghylls and riggings, so small an object as a dotterel’s nest. Other summer birds of the mountains are the ring-ouzel, a white-throated blackbird, the peregrine, the kestrel, and the sparrow-hawk. The bittern no longer booms in the upper glens or by the lake; hen-harriers and their kindred are also gone. But the wailing of the curlew still rings in our ears, the plover is never at rest, and the sinister “dowk” or carrion crow gorges on every dead carcase on the uplands. Of lesser birds, by every rill you see the pretty dipper in his uniform of brown and white, and less often the bright metallic sheen of the kingfisher. Winter brings the fieldfare and redwing to the mountain valleys, with now and then a flock of snow buntings. On the lake too come the pochard and the golden eyed ducks from the frozen North, with rarer species such as the sheldrake, the wigeon, and the shoveller.

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