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A Lakeland Summer Find!

"A Lakeland Summer" was written by Elizabeth Battrick and is the story of a family holiday which took place in the Lake District early one summer in the 1930's. It tells of a young girl's introduction to the high fells, but more than that it introduces the reader to her wholly delightful, not to say eccentric, family and their friends. Dominating everyone - and everything - is Grandpa: a charmingly irascible old gentleman whose bible is Baddeley's Guide and whose whole life seems taken up by by bouts of enthusiasm and thwarting the various Aunts.

The family boarded in a house in the small village of Grange-in-Borrowdale and it is from there that Elizabeth and her younger brother Rob are introduced to the mountains and lakes by Grandpa. Their first excursion is a walk up Great Gable. 'The rest of the gentle climb to the top of the Sty Head was a boggy path by a stream of green water which slips smoothly over rock slides and swirls in rock cauldrons. My socks worked down inside my shoes and I felt sick, but Mother wasn't sympathetic, telling me to think of something else to take my mind of myself. So I watched the cloud shadows chase along the side of Base Brown and heard the curlew's bubbling call and smelt the scent of marsh grass in the spring sun. The sharp edges of the fells, still patched russet with autumn coloured bracken, cut into the blue sky with a clarity that startled me, used as I was to the muted views of smoke-dulled industrial Lancashire. Drunk with beauty I stumbled over a rock and went flat on my face. "For goodness sake look where you're putting your feet. We'll wash the blood off when we get to the tarn." I was a great trial to my family, though they tried to bear it with Christian fortitude.'

By the time they arrive back in Borrowdale both Elizabeth and Rob have fallen in love with the high fells. 'Craning for a last look at the high hills through the narrow rear window of the car as we drove slowly back along the road to Seatoller, it seemed unbelievable to me that we should have climbed up to those heights and arrived back safely and more or less the same people as when we started out. Not quite the same though, because when Grandpa, back at the house in Borrowdale and drinking his second cup of tea, enquired how we had liked it, I didn't even pause to consider the sickness, the exhaustion and the present stiffness. The glories of shifting cloud shadows, views from mountain eyries and the hiss of the wind through dry grass were all I saw as I demanded we went up another mountain tomorrow'.

The holiday continues with walks up Scafell, Glaramara, Robinson, Cat Bells and Loughrigg to name but a few as well as rowing and swimming trips on Derwentwater and Ullswater. Each day Grandpa decided the itinerary and the rest of the family fell into place behind him. This is a charming book, full of gentle good humour and not a little nostalgia. It is illustrated throughout by J. Ingham Riley, a member of the Lake Artists Society whose drawings capture the family holiday perfectly.

For Elizabeth and Rob this holiday ignited a love for walking and the Lakeland hills which became a lifelong passion for both of them. And I'm sure that was what Grandpa had planned all along!

3 October 2009 from Mary Rossall

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