The Rivers of Great Britain, Descriptive, Historical, Pictorial: Rivers of the South and West CoastsVarious
History
The Rivers of Great Britain, Descriptive, Historical, Pictorial: Rivers of the South and West Coasts
Various
Great Britain -- Description and travel; Rivers -- Great Britain
Ennerdale Water, a few miles to the north, receives its first influx
from the river /Liza/, locally known as Lissa Beck. It is a
lovely valley, and there is no overcrowding of population. The last
house is the farmhouse of Gillerthwaite, and further progress upwards
to the mountains is by footpath only. This is in truth the only excuse
for mentioning the Liza, though it might serve as an opportunity
for singing the praises of the Great Gable, formerly known as the
Green Gable. It is one of the most conspicuous of mountain heads,
and its frowning peak meets the view from great distances. Pillar
Mountain, which is nearer Ennerdale Plain, is almost exactly the
same height--2,927 feet, which is about seven yards less than the
Gable--and it has a pinnacled and abrupt descent almost to the confines
of the lake. Ennerdale Water at one time had the character of being the
best fishing resort in the Lakes. "The Anglers' Inn" is not, as may be
supposed, an establishment of modern growth, for it is bepraised in the
literature of forty years ago. The bold headland projecting into the
water at the western end was more than half a century back well known
as Angler Fell, for a reason which the term itself explains, and at
that time one of the curiosities of the lake was a collection of loose
stones which, according to tradition, had been placed at the head of
the shoal by unknown mortal or supernatural hands. Anyhow, the heap was
always pointed out as a mystery until a scientific visitor explained it
away by pronouncing it to be the remnant of an old moraine.
Though not so deep as Wastwater, Ennerdale Water can boast its
twenty-four fathoms, and the familiar statement is made as to its
immunity from ice, the fact being that it is only in the severest
frosts that these uncommonly deep lakes are affected. At the lower end
the river Ehen takes up the duty of carrying the overflow to the sea,
describing a long and semicircular course that from opposite St. Bees
becomes by quick swerve a journey due south. The valley thence is of a
pastoral character, and is perhaps best known from the establishment on
its banks (long before the Cleator Iron Works sent up their smoke) of
the little town of Egremont, with its ruins of a strong fortress. It
was this that suggested the Cumberland tradition told by Wordsworth in
the poem "The Horn of Egremont Castle."
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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