An Atlas of the English Lakes - A Pictoral Guide

An atlas of beautiful hand-drawn coloured charts of the Lake District’s seventeen lakes and surrounding shores. Together with the author’s notes, they illustrate over 124 miles of shoreline for exploration by canoe or boat, and over 150 miles for walkers to trace on paths, tracks and minor roads.

Wast Water, Chart I-W

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Little can prepare the first-time visitor for the impact of this dramatic landscape. The ambience and the fabled mountains most resemble the homelands of the Norsemen. A millennium ago the Vikings who settled here named their valley after what was, quite simply, the lake – ‘vat(n)sdalr’, from which Was(t)dale is derived. Conversely by 1294 ‘Wassewatre’ joined a growing list of tautological place-names (see Lowes Water).

THE NATIONAL TRUST looks after England’s deepes lake a well as the encircling ‘Fells’. Containing the kingdom’s highest and craggiest mountains, these comprise the unenclosed commons and sheep runs of Nether Wasdale and Eskdale parishes. Sadly fishing for the salmon, trout and char that inhabit the deeps is no longer authorised. Nor is powered boating or even sailing. However, subject to a limit of fifteen afloat at any one time, CANOES or ROWING BOATS are PERMITTED to ply the water.

The mountainous character belies the lake’s altitude. Two pastoral stretches – Esthwaite Water and Bassenthwaite Lake – lie above the level of Wast Water. The Screes plunge beneath the surface as relentlessly as they do above. The depths fall below sea level. Only Windermere emulates this feat.

Statistics
Length: 3mls 50yds (4.88km)
Width: 850yds (780m)
Area: 1.12sq mls (2.90 sq km)
Max depth: 258ft (79m)
Av depth: 134ft (41m)
Surface level: 204ft (61m)

The River Irt meanders 12 mls before joining the Mite and Esk in the triple estuary at Ravenglass – 6 mls by crow. These names (meaning ‘green?, strong or urine? & water’ respectively) were given by ancient British or Celtic tribes. Rivers usually furnish the earliest extant place-names of an area.

The purity of Wast Water was a factor in the siting of the world’s first nuclear power station at Calder Hall / Windscale / Sellafield. The precipitious and rocky nature of the terrain plus minimal agricultural and human impact ensures an unpolluted coolant for the reactors.

The (Wastwater) Screes
When sheep were the be-all and end-all of life hereabouts this terrific declivity was known as the Eskdale Screes on account of their position within the Fell land of that parish. Scree is a derivation of the Norse ‘skritha’, meaning talus or loose stone-fields. The word originated from the verbal imitation of the sound made by the loose rock sliding down the slope. Seen end-on across the lake the tourist is faced with the most impressive mountain slope visible from any road. Walking the shore path is even more daunting. The fans of loose stones and ravaged remains of impending crages look their most dramatic from a canoe close inshore.