Blue remembered Levers Water

Levers Water is in the English Lake District, at the head of the Coppermines Valley above Coniston village. Originally a natural tarn, it was enlarged by a dam in 1717 to provide water and power to the nearby mines. Today, it supplies water to Coniston and surrounding villages. The area is known for its scenic views and is a popular spot for walkers and nature enthusiasts.

Seeing Levers Water for the first time was unforgettable. On a sunlit evening in the spring of ’68, brother Teddy and I, fourteen and fifteen, followed the path behind the youth hostel at the head of Coppermines Valley for a steep scramble past Tongue Brow and Kennel Crag. Unused to mountains, we were several times sure it lay just over the next ridge, only to find more fell beyond. I doubt it took us more than half an hour but, inexperience exacerbated by the energy squandering inefficiency of callow youth, those were not the easiest thirty minutes I’ve spent.

Reaching it was magical; up there with my first LSD, and peak moments in meditation or sex. In my mind’s eye ¹ it glinted in forbidding blue, the shoreline leading, scree and boulder strewn, to where a rock buttressed fell plunged into the dark and deep. The stone dam at the nearside lip spoke to the industrial revolution but otherwise Levers Water is a natural corrie tarn recognised as such from my geography O Level study, the ridge behind and lower hills to the sides forming the vast armchair it sits in.

Levers Water as Lakeland’s best known water colourist, William Heaton-Cooper, saw it in 1960

We only had time for a glimpse. The clear air was biting cold, night would soon fall. We made our way back to the nearest of the short row of miners’ cottages hugging the fellside a stone’s throw below the youth hostel. Our stepmother had seen it advertised in Country Lady, or some such, and secured it – letters written and replied to, postal orders demanded and despatched – for what was even then a song at £14 a fortnight.  The place was basic, mind, its one concession to modernity a hob and tiny oven, with propane cylinder out back. On our arrival that afternoon – coach from Sheffield to Preston, coach from Preston to Ambleside, local bus to Coniston then forty minute hike up Church Beck – the owner was frying chips in lard on a coal fire.

Proper miners’ privies

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Last Saturday, fifty-seven and a half years on, I revisited. I’ve seen in the meantime tarns more beautiful, more remote and atmospheric, but who forgets their first mountain tarn? Nestling in copper-blue remembered hills?

Breakfast is muesli with granola soaked overnight in orange juice with banana. Then coffee, at van side, to thrum of traffic on the A591 Kendal to Keswick. A ten minute stroll from Waterhead to Ambleside Interchange – a grand name for two bus stands – sees me on the 505 to Coniston via Hawkshead.

Alighting at the terminus, I pass Coniston Church on my left, butchers and blue remembered sweet shop on the right, before taking the path northwest up Church Beck.

My not entirely planned route. At the looped section just below the youth hostel (red triangle) I go anti-clockwise

Church Beck, behind the Black Bull Inn and about to pass through the village

The going is for the most part moderately steep.

After a mile and a half I reach the cottages of – relax, here endeth my homage to Housman and Potter – blue remembered youth …

… TV arials aside, little has changed outwardly though inside there’ll now be electricity, CH and, if not a bathroom in such small dwellings, then at least a shower. The cottage I’d known would have been much as it was when nineteenth century miners worked copper seams now spent.

Looking up Church Beck, at this point dubbed Levers Water Beck. Miners’ cottages off camera to the right, youth hostel ahead in white

In the 60s the industrial legacy was played down. Now it’s milked as a tourist cash cow

Here, behind the youth hostel where the industrial heritage kitsch begins, I make a mistake that could have serious consequences. I’d intended to beat a directly upwards path to Levers Water, take a few snaps then retrace my steps down into Coniston. Instead, drawn by the stone tower of a former mine working …

… I take a well delineated path to the right, past more waterfalls.

It leads to more old workings, after which it’s less marked, and diverges from that shown on the OS 1:25000. (This surprises me not. Privatised in the 90s, Ordnance Survey took a depressingly familiar neoliberal trajectory. Capitalising on the publicly funded gains of its forebears, it does little to update its maps.) Gently ascending at first, and growing ever fainter, it traverses reedy marsh into which it often disappears, to where more white waters signal ground sharply rising.

The going is tough, skies uncertain – though the forecast is sun all day – and valley devoid of human presence despite my seeing for miles in most directions. Seduced by that mineworking with its prettily adjacent falls, I see I took a wrong turn after the artlessly arranged bric a brac. What to do? Retrace my steps for a mile downwards, or carry on up to Wetherlam, and there turn left to stride the ridge leading southwest before picking up the path southward, not up to Levers Water but – casual stroll having morphed into bona fide fell walk – down to it.

I opt for the latter. An hour later I’m making lamentable progress, the path painfully steep and barely discernible in patches of exposed soil where grass and bracken have been trod by hardy mountaineer. In poor weather I’d miss it entirely. On terrain like this, where marsh gives way to streams cutting through treacherous rock on ground rising with punishing severity, wiser types half my age and twice as fit would not dream of going unaccompanied.

My Keswickian brother in law, for years a mountain rescue volunteer, has many a bitter tale to tell of the irresponsibility of such solo fell walkers as yours truly …

I’ve decent boots and kit, for staying warm and dry, with adequate food and water. But I didn’t bring a paper map so am reliant on GPS signal, phone and digitised OS 1:25000. Worse, I’m out of condition. As the ascent grows ever steeper, I find myself needing to stop for a minute every twenty steps – and that ridge doesn’t seem to get any closer.

Lunch is two packs of Walkers teriyaki flavoured crisps, two shortbread biscuits, some half dried dates and a humbug. The view below is expansive, taking in Coniston Water and a silver strip of Irish Sea, north of Morecambe Bay, though the picture I take – looking into the sun – does it few favours.

What I saw was more vibrant. Current digital sensors capture a lower dynamic range from dark to light than can the human eye

The sky is in two minds: dazzling blue here, scary grey there, fast scudding cirrus denoting high wind speeds and outlook uncertain. I’m past the point where it will be harder to go down than up. Should the weather turn – spoiler alert: it doesn’t – it won’t just be tough but dangerous. Of course, carrying on will be gruelling, and call for a descent no less steep from the ridge, but I’m banking on the path down from Swirl Hawse to Levers Water being better defined and, on such a sunlit Saturday, more peopled.

And so it proves, but I don’t recall ever being more anxious on a mountain. I’m in my seventies, no one knows where I am, and even a minor slip – rendered more likely by my glacial pace and attendant loss of momentum – could end in sprained ankle and heap of trouble. I’m dismayed at how out of shape I’ve become. Note to self: make a point of peak district walks, with breathy ascents, twice or thrice a month. Use it or lose it!

But I do reach the ridge, in a state of near spiritual awakening. Just as I’m at lowest ebb, halting every ten paces, the angle of incline lessens miraculously to one so gentle it almost feels level. I’m stoned on relief but the best is yet to come. After a few hundred metres of walking on air, or at any rate a carpet of moss, a scene vividly ethereal leaps into view …

… as if by magic. From the ridge of Wetherlam, northern fells stretch far as the eye can see.

One more for good luck …

The left to right downward cleft in the foreground is Wrynose Pass, overseen by Cold Pike and Pike of Blisco

… OK, make it two.

Ridge walking, even without the sense of blissed out liberation I’m now experiencing, affords an unbeatable ratio of effort to visual reward. The path southwest still demands care, with its up-down scrambles and rib squeezing cuts through unyielding rock, but in this weather – sun having won out after all – I couldn’t lose my way if I tried.

And there are fellow walkers, not too many, at whom I beam on passing. After twenty minutes I pass Keld Gill Head to arrive at the T-junction of Swirl Hawse. Ahead of me the ridge continues to Prison Band (Elvis sang about it) but the path to the left drops steep yet well defined ² to the Levers Water of blue remembered youth …

In the mid distance is Coniston Water, behind it snatches of Windermere

The angle’s different and diminishing, tarn off camera, but this is the rock Mr Heaton-Cooper painted

Trompe l’oeil – it seems she’s dicing with death. In reality the unseen outflow takes the gentlest of downward gradients

… and from there on to youth hostel and cottages, with many a glimpse of Coniston Water …

… past Miners’ Row and down the beck …

… into the village for the 16:43 back to Ambleside. At the van I heat up the halloumi, pepper, sun dried tomato and potato dish I made at home – delicious – then tidy up to head, laptop in hand, for that other youth hostel, overlooking Windermere. There I sup plum porter – also delicious – and arrange my thoughts for a post next day.

Sunday brings grey sky and guarantee of rain by late morning. I set out around 08:30 for a stroll to Rydal and Grasmere but the first drops on the stone bridge over the Rothay below Loughrigg turn me back, faintheart that I am, for youth hostel and coffee as I pen Sunday post. That done, I bus it to Keswick to catch up with the in-laws. Taking in Rydal Water, loveliest of the lakes, from the upper deck I’m moved by the mist shrouding larch trees, as in a Japanese water colour, on a bonsai island. Why oh why had I thrown in the towel so easily that morning? Hadn’t I set out to snap Lakeland in fall? And aren’t such scenes of exquisite melancholia every bit as autumnal as the rich golds of sunlit leaves over Church Beck yesterday?

More than any other branch of art and documentary, photography is rife with opportunities for regret over missed chances. It’s all about the moment, stupid.

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1. “In my mind’s eye …” Prior to writing his best known collection, Housman hadn’t set foot in Shropshire – just glimpsed its hills from his native adjoining Worcestershire. My Levers Water, like his hills, blends actuality with nostalgia for a yearning kind of blue.
2. On the most popular routes, like Helvellyn’s Striding Edge – and, it seems, Swirl Hawse down to Levers Water – work gangs keep paths from being churned to mire by the fall of a million booted feet, using huge stones lowered by helicopter.