‘Savage Grandeur’ exhibition

June 3rd, 2011

The road south from Keswick. Blencathra is in the distance. Painting by John Laporte.


There’s a fascinating exhibition at the Wordsworth Museum in Grasmere, which is well worth visiting before it closes on June 21st. “Savage Grandeur and Noblest Thoughts: Discovering the Lake District 1750-1820″ has a collection of over 100 paintings, engravings, books, maps and other material from the period when the Lake District was first being discovered as an area of grand romantic scenery.

This was a time of revolution in Europe. Travelling at home was more attractive than journeying through unknown lands on the continent. It’s a feeling we can understand now, as people hesitate to visit countries like Egypt and Syria while the ‘Arab Spring’ is bringing change and turmoil to much of North Africa and the Middle East.

All of the exhibits are from the Wordsworth Trust’s own material. They may for that reason have a bias towards the interests of the donors of material, rather than providing a balanced picture of how the Lake District was represented at the time, but this is a small objection.

The material is particularly strong for the northern lakes and has some marvellous paintings of Borrowdale, Derwentwater and Bassenthwaite.

Skiddaw, Blencathra and Keswick are well represented as well as Grasmere and the Langdales. The influence of Thomas West’s Guide to the Lakes, published in 1778 is also evident in the choice of several of the subjects depicted.

An excellent catalogue for the exhibition (189 pages) with illustrations of all the material and an index is available at a reduced price of £15. It’s worth getting even if you can’t make the exhibition itself.

Posted in Culture, Environment, Local news | No Comments »

Recycle now please – URGENT

May 30th, 2011

Thanks to the writing on a recyclable cardboard soup carton, I learnt last week that there’s a great DEFRA website (www.recyclenow.com), with lots of information about recycling. 

This includes a searchable database. You can type in your postcode and find out more about local practice and the policies of your local authority for the recycling of different kinds of materials. This is useful because these are changing as new techniques of sorting enable more to be collected and saved.

Allerdale local authority had managed in 2009 to achieve a recycling rate of 45%, but last year the figure dropped to 44%. When I asked Stephanie Fleming, Allerdale’s recycling officer about this, she replied “the weather’s got to take the blame here”. 

With so much flooding in November, the Council was overwhelmed with the sheer task of getting areas cleared and houses habitable. Water was covering huge areas and recycling for a while had had to take second place. Hard to argue about that!

But there is a bigger question here we need to ask. The EU has set a 50% target by 2020 for household recycling for the UK as a whole, but both Scotland and Wales have set their own higher targets of 70% for 2025. With no targets set for English authorities does this mean, say Friends of the Earth that we’ll shelter under the skirts of the Scots and the Welsh and lag behind? 

We know this Government is averse to the ‘nanny state’, but let’s see a bit more forceful direction on this front! Surely we need this if we’re going to create a green economy, which Ministers tell us they want.

Two other good Government websites on green issues are worth looking at. A more technical waste data flow site, (http://www.wastedataflow.org/) provides additional information about waste management across the country.  You need to register to get access to the data.

The second is for the Department of Energy and Climate Control  (http://www. decc.gov.uk/). This includes information about the Government’s Green Deal programme, with more details due out soon.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Environment, Local news, Recycling, Technology | No Comments »

Rainbows fell on Seldom Seen

May 12th, 2011

Remember those lines from King Lear: ”You have seen sunshine and rain at once: her smiles and tears were like a better way …” ?

Without referring to it specifically, Shakespeare knew well the power of the rainbow to stir the imagination, but it was only studied in detail as a problem in optics by Rene Descartes in 1637 – just 21 years after Shakespeare died.

Despite its power to excite and delight, I wasn’t ready last Sunday for the evening rainbow that came bursting through like a tiger over the Derwent Valley. It had been a dull day mostly and I was in the house reading. Suddenly I sensed a brightness outside and looked up to see a slice of the rainbow through the window (See photo opposite).

I rushed for the camera and raced the westering sun up the garden steps to the Belvedere, hoping it would stay. It waxed and dulled over 20 minutes or so with a secondary arc above, producing this marvellous cameo below. The rooftops and gardens of Seldom Seen were enclosed in a luminous glow, while outside this charmed hemisphere all seemed grey and dull. Yes, what a delight!

Posted in Belvederes, Local news, Seasons, The Larches | 2 Comments »

Keswick makes the top ten

May 8th, 2011

Rough Guides are most famous for helping us navigate the history and streets of towns and cities when we holiday abroad. Now with more of us counting the costs of foreign trips they have been turning their attention to what’s here in Britain. And there’s plenty to see and do with our rich history and magnificent scenery.

Most people think of big cities like London and Manchester, but what about the small cities and towns? Which are the popular ones? Rough Guide have just published the results of a survey of their readers and come up with a list of the top ten chosen and we are delighted to see that Keswick has come ninth. It’s interesting to see that six of the the top nine are in the north with York heading the list. The other four in the north are Durham, Blackpool, Chester and Whitby.

Posted in Local news | No Comments »

Memorial day for two cyclists

May 7th, 2011

Last weekend brought out a large crowd of cyclists to pay tribute to two brothers, Christian Townend and Nicholas Townend from the Cockermouth area. These young men were tragically killed in a road accident last December while cycling on the busy A595. They were keen cyclists, returning from an outing in the Silloth area.

The day was unusually sunny and warm for early May, with a light wind and the smell of blossom on the air. More than 170 cyclists made their way through the narrow country lanes to the village hall above the Kirkstile Inn, near Loweswater to pay their respects.

It was a fitting tribute to the two young men and a reminder of the need for drivers in the narrow lanes and winding roads of the Lake District to pay particular attention to the needs of cyclists and walkers. The photo shows just a few of the bikes of those attending the event at the village hall. Behind is Mellbreak a lovely peak to the west of Crummock Water, which can be part of an interesting day’s walk in these western fells.

Posted in Local news, Walking | No Comments »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »