by As England’s largest national park, and muse to the likes of Wordsworth and Swift (Taylor, not Jonathan), the Lake District needs no introduction. On the other hand, my friend Anthony, who still appears on a postcard or recognized by Unesco, certainly is.
Anthony and I are university mates. Between our second and third years, Anthony had the daunting responsibility of marketing the drama society’s production at the Edinburgh suburbs that year. When I saw Anthony’s call for help posted on a notice board in the campus laundry, I volunteered to be his assistant for two weeks. Although the task of a feminist reworking of The Wind in the Willows was rarely simple, the piety paid significant dividends in creating strong friendships that continue to this day.
The Lindeth Howe hotel was very accessible – I didn’t need to provide a back pack for Anthony
Partly because of his cerebral palsy, and partly because of his role at a charity called Able Child Africa, Ant hasn’t seen as much of the UK as he would like. So when I suggested a winter trip to the Lake District to hike a famous fell, after learning about a series of newly maintained accessible trails in the area, it only took him a few hours to come up with the idea. He initially objected on the grounds that he would miss out on Bake Off.
After a testing afternoon on the M6, we arrived in Cumbria just as Storm Debi did. As a result, we spent the first part of our holiday exploring the grand interior – that is, the cozy interior of our hotel, a country house – once owned by Beatrix Potter – on the east bank of Windermere. . As well as being the hotel with a charismatic old aunt, Lindeth Howe was incredibly accessible, meaning that at no time during our stay did I have to provide Anthony with a carry-on. The highlight of the evening was a brief blackout during dinner. Ghost stories swirled around the room, the best of which involved a ghost with amnesia.
When I woke up the next morning, it took me a few seconds to remember why I was lying less than a meter from a geography graduate. Anthony was already awake, and in a devilish mood. “Coffee,” he said. “One love,” I said. “That’s not a question,” he said. These types of charity, huh?
It didn’t take long for me to pull the curtains to make sure he was still blowing eyebrows. Despite the bad weather, we managed to have an interesting morning, mainly visiting an Arts & Crafts house up the road called Blackwell, where we admired the handiwork and wondered if William Morris’s golden rule – that people shouldn’t have anything in theirs. houses that do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful – they are sick for both of us.
It was at this point that Storm Debi tired of drenching the Lakes and started dumping her burden on Merseyside instead. Sensing that our moment had come, we piled into the car, drove it to Windermere, quickly set it up, and headed for the summit of a nearby hill.
The track up to Orrest Head is one of 50 odd routes that are part of the Miles Without Stiles initiative. All were selected (and in some cases customized) including wheelchairs and wheelchairs. The collection is very varied – lap Buttermere, a stretch of Derwentwater, or climb Latrigg Fell. In addition, if you find yourself in possession of the will but without the wheels, there are several sites in the region that rent a rather robust mobility scooter called Trampers for as little as a fiver.
The scene was full of rock and ray and hill and corrie, full of valley and sheep and weather and quarry
The first stages of the climb up to Orrest’s Head ended through a patch of lovely woodland, thick with oak and ash and beech and sycamore. The path became an accidental carpet of fallen leaves, and the adjacent stone walls were covered with vivid green moss. Despite some early wheel spins which he put down to jetlag (we were traveling up from London), the ascent was more than possible for Ant in his new ride – an SD Motion Trike, kindly lent by Steering Developments. He continued to say words like drag and muffler, and showed no repetition when he grabbed a mobility scooter right behind him.
Not that we were in a hurry. If anything, we were dragging our heels, the better to take it into account: attractive church bells in the distance, a possible flash of a cuckoo or a buzzard. Our minds had a new right to roam, cut off from their usual ways. Antoine took advantage of this new scope as he wondered aloud which trees grow the tallest and what the lichen point is. On the contrary, I took the opportunity to wonder how difficult it was to get a ticket for the Girls Aloud reunion tour. Despite their differences, our minds had something significant in common – they were better and lighter for touring, climbing, walking. The simplicity of the mind, the surrounding nature and the breath of fresh air came together to make progress.
But it was not as good as the view at the top, which was better to come immediately, because there was no glimpse on the way. It was a real revelation, and more than expected, growing west towards Dublin, pushing north towards Carlisle, reaching east towards the Pennines and Durham and the Netherlands, and falling south towards the one-satanic mills of Lancashire. It was full of rock and field and hill and quarry, full of valley and sheep and weather and quarry. This was the attitude that got Alfred Wainwright going; the view that almost knocked the Blackburn boy out of his socks, and inspired a lifelong enthusiasm for the region and its hills. Wainwright came up here and saw something to live for. We saw the same thing.
Quietly until now, Ant showed the shifting palette of Windermere, a football pitch on which some whippers had just flushed their lines, the classic Cumbrian houses with their slate roofs and whitewashed walls – and then a rainbow, suddenly proud and beaming and above all else. another. I asked him how he felt, to be up here, in front of all this. “I could offer you something woolly and buttermilk,” he said. “Something about God and Mother Nature and the Burden and what not. But it actually feels nice. Nice. The kind of nice you don’t often feel.”
And on that note — on that very nice note — it began to flow down again, and all our minds rose to the weather, and we cursed again our rain, and the swings to the nearest pub (with accessible loo), where we took a lot of solace in glasses of local ale. There were, no doubt, other ways we could respond to adverse conditions, but at the time, and for the rest of our lives, we couldn’t think what they were.
Tour provided by Cumbria Tourism and Visit England. For more information on the Lake District and Miles Without Stiles, see visitlakedistrict.com. Excellent accessible double/twin room with en suite wet room with shower chair at Lindeth Howe from £165 per night, including dinner and breakfast, lindeth-howe.co.uk. SD Motion Trike on loan from Steering Developments, based in Hemel Hempstead, sdmotion.co.uk or steeringdevelopments.co.uk
