Lake District Case Study

4 Key excerpts on "Lake District Case Study"

• 

  eBook - ePub

  The Meanings of Landscape

  Essays on Place, Space, Environment and Justice

  • Kenneth R. Olwig(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  Cumbria (the Latinate spelling of Cumberland) was created in 1974 through the amalgamation of the ancient counties of Westmorland, Cumberland, and parts of Lancashire and Yorkshire (West Riding) through the Local Government Act of 1972. The counties of Westmorland and Cumberland are ancient territories that historically bear comparison in terms of size and governance with the “landscape polities” of Scandinavia (Olwig 2002b:43–61; Jones and Olwig 2008). It was, in fact, an area of sea-born Nordic settlement largely from the north and west in which the local language and place names have a Nordic heritage. Though the Nordic heritage is sometimes romanticized, it is an important source of local language and identity (Winchester 2006:197–210). The state’s amalgamation of these counties has met with local opposition, as when, in a show of defiance, the town council of the former county seat of Appleby changed the name of the town from simply Appleby to Appleby-in-Westmorland, and the name Westmorland likewise persists in the local regional newspaper (Walton 2011:18, 22). According to the historian John K. Walton (2011:16), Cumbria, though a county, “lacks the historical legitimacy conferred on its predecessors by the accumulation of a millennium of past life, of ceremony, organization and associated institutions.” Westmorland’s amalgamation with Cumberland nevertheless makes some historical and geographical sense in that both are characterized by their links to what the archaeologist Cyril Fox (1932) termed the “Atlantic Fringe” of Britain. This is an archipelagic area of island-like valleys isolated by mountains that are linked with the world via the Irish Sea and North Atlantic sea routes stretching from Iberia to Scandinavia (Walton 2011:22). Its dispersed, decentralized settlement patterns differentiated it from the more hierarchical and nucleated urban-centered and land-focused spatial organization of Britain’s core centered on London that dates back to Roman rule (Fox 1932; Olwig 2018b). Cumberland and Westmorland, together with parts of Lancaster, include the area called “the Lakes,” “Lakeland,” or the “Lake District,” that the poet William Wordsworth famously identified as a “Commonwealth” and a “Republic of Shepherds and Agriculturalists,” because it was known for its relatively egalitarian society of commoners and concomitant sense of neighborliness and place identity as compared with adjacent lowland areas (Wordsworth 2004 [1810]:74–75). The iconic status of the area, its poetry (Bradshaw 2011), and its attraction to ramblers who walked its commons in the footsteps of Wordsworth and the “Lake poets” (Winchester 2006:197–210; Olwig 2008a; Bradshaw 2011) made it an obvious choice for designation in 1951 as the Lake District National Park (LDNP), and now as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

  To the east of the LDNP the Yorkshire Dales National Park (YDNP) was established at the same time. As the name suggests, the Yorkshire Dales are known for their wide dales, or valleys, as opposed to the Lake District’s rugged upland “fells” (a word of Scandinavian origin), which are mountainous areas surrounding narrow Lakeland valleys. The Dales, furthermore, are part of the ancient eastern county of Yorkshire, belonging to the core area of England, as opposed to the upland Western fringe counties making up the area of the lakes. The distinctions between the character of the two areas have become a matter of dispute due to the fact that a bit of Cumbria (formerly Westmorland), notably the area around Orton Fells that had been deemed worthy of park designation, nevertheless was not included in either national park. There is now a central government supported move to include this area in one of the national parks, but the problem was which park?

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  National Parks of Europe

  • (Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Lonely Planet

    (Publisher)

  30 ENGLAND

  Lake District National Park

  Beautiful, dramatic and inescapably English, the Lake District has been Britain’s favourite natural playground since Victorian times. Come for hikes, boat trips and poetry in the landscape.

  OK, we admit it: the Lake District is every bit as picturesque and dramatic as you’ve been led to believe. This glorious collection of craggy hills, shimmering lakes and limpid pools has always held a special place in the English heart. Authors and poets waxed lyrical about it. Naturalists combed its hills for rare insects and butterflies. Climbers scrambled up its rocky peaks. Adrenaline junkies set speed records on its otherwise tranquil waters. And industrialists turned their backs on it and built dark satanic mills, kilns and quarries surrounded by its natural splendour.

  Founded in 1951, this was one of England’s first national parks, and it has consistently been the nation’s most popular national park ever since. That means crowds, particularly at the height of summer, when the sombre stone villages are repainted in rainbow colours of Gore-Tex, and walkers form orderly queues in front of every lookout and beauty spot. But fear not – this is a landscape that rewards those who go the extra mile, ford the extra river and climb the extra crag to see the national park as it deserves to be seen: spectacular, silent and serene.

  The landscape here is defined by the lakes – finger-like slivers of silver left behind by retreating glaciers that gouged out the gullies and rucked up the surrounding landscape into soaring ridges. Wastwater and Windermere, the deepest and longest bodies of water in England, have been the focal points for holidaymakers ever since the Kendal and Windermere Railway line was extended here in 1847. Come in summer and the lakes are a Wordsworth poem made real; come in rain, and the landscape becomes brooding, tormented and elemental. So, poetic in personality as well as appearance.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  No longer available |Learn more

  The Rough Guide to the Lake District (Travel Guide eBook)

  • Rough Guides(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Rough Guides

    (Publisher)

  David Noton Photography / Alamy Introduction to The Lake District There’s nothing in England to match the splendour of the Lake District, a tight knot of romantic peaks, moors – and yes, lakes – up in England’s northwesternmost corner. For a nation reared on the tales of Beatrix Potter and Arthur Ransome, the pastoral images of a misty-eyed English past could hardly be more familiar: lush fields enclosed by dry-stone walls; warm, weatherbeaten and time-worn inns; shepherds gathering their flocks on green hillsides. Adventure-seekers, meanwhile, come to explore the country’s largest lakes and highest mountains, or to immerse themselves in full-on outdoor activities from mountain-biking to fell-walking and kayaking. Whatever attracts you to the country’s most famous, largest and most picturesque National Park, one visit won’t be enough. While rural tradition and the great outdoors loom large on any Lake District trip, it’s not all sheepdog trials, hiking boots, timewarp pubs and flowery B&Bs. For such a small region (36 miles from east to west), there’s an astonishing number of glam places to stay and eat ­– from boutique hotels to organic tearooms, gastropubs to yurt-filled campsites – and you’re often closer to an artisan bakery or microbrewery than a tractor and a field full of sheep. Farming, in fact, accounts for just ten percent of the National Park’s working population, with up to to fifty percent of all jobs attributable in some way to tourism, rather than the more traditional occupations you might expect. But wherever you stay, and whatever you do, the scenery certainly makes a play for your attention, whether it’s the glacial lakes and forested valleys or the steeply pitched mountains and their tumbling waterfalls

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Rural Tourism

  New Concepts, New Research, New Practice

  • Bernard Lane, Elisabeth Kastenholz, Bernard Lane, Elisabeth Kastenholz(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  According to Wynveen, Kyle, and Sutton (2012, p. 288), “meanings ascribed to particular places often reflect the physical characteristics of the setting and the social interaction that occurs there”. Throughout the interviews, there was unanimous agreement that the physical environment of the Lake District was a principal factor in respondents’ emotional engagement with and attachment to place. For many, it was the balance between nature and human influences that was a powerful influence, although some expressed a connectedness with the natural environment:

  I feel as if I am part of something that has happened thousands of years ago… I feel I want to be part of that life and by being on the fells and appreciating how they were formed I’m sharing an experience with them.

  More specifically, the naturalness of the Lake District was revealed as a strong incentive for visiting the area, one respondent summarising that being out in the hills and fells that is a far more appealing an attachment than walking through a town or the bricks and mortar that make up a landscape. At the same time, the Lake District was perceived as a place of exceptional scenery and views, no doubt as a result of socially constructed visions of the countryside landscape. For many respondents, the unique scenic qualities of the Lake District contributed substantially to feelings of attachment and a sense of place:

  It seems to be the right amount of green, the right amount of orange in the trees, the odd crag just peeking out and it just seems to fit. Everything just seems to fit into place. Just as it should!

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book