The Windermere Ferry and a Foggy Day

The car ferry across Windermere will be out of action all May, for its five year overhaul. We know that many of you enjoy the journey to Hill Top by taking the ferry option, but it is still very easy to get here by driving around to the north or south ends of the lake at Ambleside or Newby Bridge, and taking the lovely B-roads to Hawkshead. Hill Top is then only two miles away. Check with Cumbria County Council for the date when the service is back running again.

The ferry has been in use for over 500 years. (Not the current one, that was built in 1990!) It's purpose was to 'complete' the important direct road from Kendal to Hawkshead, and so avoid eight extra miles of walking around the top of the lake. In the early days people were rowed over the lake, but by the time Beatrix used the ferry to come up to Hill Top, having travelled to Windermere by train, it was a more substantial affair, as this picture from the Nineteenth Century shows:

from the Photocrom Collection: Library of Congress. Public Domain

Visitors, unfamiliar with the area, sometimes say that they feel like they have arrived off the ferry onto an island. Certainly the rolling countryside west of Windermere can feel very different to the busy east shore. The other morning I travelled to my work at the ticket office in thick mist, arriving for the 9.10 ferry with just two other cars. On the other side of the lake there was no-one at all to make the return trip. There was an eerie feel to the area around the Ferry House, the lake flat and smooth and silver, so that the little boats looked as though they had been etched onto a sheet of infinite paper.

 

 

 At Hill Top too, after such glorious spring weather, it felt as though we had fallen back in time; a glimpse of a different winter altogether.

By lunchtime the sky had cleared once more, and spring had re-established itself. My favourite time of year in the Lakes, daffodils opening out along the verges where only hours before they had waited as still as the air, visitors coming back to the ticket office to see where next they could go to explore and enjoy the day, blue-tits and chaffinches darting down to the windowsill by our front door to take the food that the house staff put out. After such an unpromising start, the day could not have had a better end. If you've never been to Hill Top this early in the season, perhaps this is a good year to come.

ticket office Ian

Poets and Piles

After the wettest, gloomiest, most miserable winter I can remember, it's finally starting to feel like spring in the Lake District. Although it's been an unusually mild winter with only a handful of frosts and no snow at all, spring is springing about when it always does and the daffodils in the garden are bang on time for their second week in March debut.
We've had a few warm, sunny days recently and I've taken the opportunity to air out my musty-smelling van and dry off my 'never really been dry since November' gloves.

Gloves drying in the sun

Okay, here's a question for you. What was William Wordsworth's favorite flower? Hands up who said 'daffodils'. Well you're wrong, it was the celandine, and to prove his love for this unassuming flower he wrote not one, not two but three poems about it. This is the least dreary of the three (sorry Wordsworth fans).

To The Small Celandine    

Pansies, lilies, kingcups, daisies,
Let them live upon their praises;
Long as there's a sun that sets,
Primroses will have their glory;
Long as there are violets,
They will have a place in story:
There's a flower that shall be mine,
'Tis the little Celandine.

Eyes of some men travel far
For the finding of a star;
Up and down the heavens they go,
Men that keep a mighty rout!
I'm as great as they, I trow,
Since the day I found thee out,
Little Flower!--I'll make a stir,
Like a sage astronomer.

Modest, yet withal an Elf
Bold, and lavish of thyself;
Since we needs must first have met
I have seen thee, high and low,
Thirty years or more, and yet
'Twas a face I did not know;
Thou hast now, go where I may,
Fifty greetings in a day.

Ere a leaf is on a bush,
In the time before the thrush
Has a thought about her nest,
Thou wilt come with half a call,
Spreading out thy glossy breast
Like a careless Prodigal;
Telling tales about the sun,
When we've little warmth, or none.

Poets, vain men in their mood!
Travel with the multitude:
Never heed them; I aver
That they all are wanton wooers;
But the thrifty cottager,
Who stirs little out of doors,
Joys to spy thee near her home;
Spring is coming, Thou art come!

Comfort have thou of thy merit,
Kindly, unassuming Spirit!
Careless of thy neighbourhood,
Thou dost show thy pleasant face
On the moor, and in the wood,
In the lane;--there's not a place,
Howsoever mean it be,
But 'tis good enough for thee.

Ill befall the yellow flowers,
Children of the flaring hours!
Buttercups, that will be seen,
Whether we will see or no;
Others, too, of lofty mien;
They have done as worldlings do,
Taken praise that should be thine,
Little, humble Celandine!

Prophet of delight and mirth,
Ill-requited upon earth;
Herald of a mighty band,
Of a joyous train ensuing,
Serving at my heart's command,
Tasks that are no tasks renewing,
I will sing, as doth behove,
Hymns in praise of what I love!

 William Wordsworth

Small celandine

One of the common-names for Lesser Celandine is Pilewort and its origin dates back to the Middle-Ages and something called 'The Doctrine of Signatures' which was based upon the belief that God had deliberately made plants resemble the parts of the body they could cure. For example, eyebright, a plant whose flower looks like bright blue eyes, was used to treat eye diseases, and Pulmonaria or Lungwort, whose leaves vaguely resemble lungs was used to treat all manner of chest infections.

Now I've never personally suffered from haemorrhoids, and I'm certainly not going to look them up in Google Images, but apparently the little tubers which form the roots of the plant look a little bit like piles. Here's a photo, I'll leave you to make up your own mind!

Tubers

To effect a cure, the mashed and chopped plant was mixed with lard and applied to the affected area. Or a tisane or herbal tea was made with chopped celandine infused in boiling water for twenty minutes and then drunk. Please don't try this at home! Such was the faith in pilewort that even just carrying the plant round with you would work. Culpepper, a noted herbalist of the time, wrote “The very herb borne about one’s body next to the skin helps in such diseases though it never touched the place grieved.” Which sounds a lot more civilized than the lard thing or the dodgy tea! 
I don't know if Mr Wordsworth suffered from this ailment but might it explain why he was so fond of this particular plant?

In the garden, lesser celandine is a bit of a mixed blessing. On the one hand it's a lovely bright yellow flower at a time of year when not much else is in bloom but on the other hand it spreads like wildfire and is a nightmare to get rid of. The little tubers tend to break off when you dig the plant out and spread themselves back into the soil to make more plants for next year.

As we've already had a poem, it's time for a song, and in the absence of songs about piles, here's one about daffodils.

Bye for now.

Words and pictures by Pete the Gardener