Walking Lakeland Magic

 by 

 K D Grace

   

Surely there is no other place in this whole wonderful world quite like Lakeland...no other so exquisitely lovely, no other so charming, no other that calls so insistently across a gulf of distance. All who truly love Lakeland are exiles when away from it.
     --Alfred Wainwright

It was difficult to write this post and keep it under ten thousand words. The insistent call of Lakeland that Wainwright talks about is, for me, a rather wordy call – a trilogy’s worth so far, not counting all the blog posts and emails and stories still in my head to be written.

As a walker, I’ve come to believe that one can never truly know the soul of a place until one walks it. A car can never take you to the heart of the land. I know of streams and springs in Lakeland where the water tastes better than the best wine. At Rannerdale Knots, I’ve walked in a valley that was once secret. Every spring it’s awash in bluebells. According to the legend, each flower represents a fallen Norse invader defeated by the local Cumbrians in the late 11^th or early 12^th century. There are lots of ghosts in Lakeland, and some take such lovely forms. I’ve been on the roof of England at the summit of Scafell Pike, and I’ve been into the bowels of Cumbria in the slate mines beneath Fleetwith Pike. And always on foot, because there’s something about putting one foot in front of the other that brings the landscape and it’s magic into me and transforms it to story.

One of the things I love best about the Lakeland fells is what can be seen from high places. From the fell tops, I can view a landscape I could never see from the valley below. A big part of magic, and a big part of writing, is to find that place where I can see differently, where I can understand differently than I have before. Sometimes that means not seeing with my eyes.

I got caught in the mist once while walking the Newland Horseshoe, which is a ridge walk near Keswick. Suddenly everything that was familiar was gone. Walking in the mist is like being in another world, an ether-world, a place where any kind of magic could happen. It wasn’t that difficult to imagine ghosts and witches and demons. It was a familiar walk, an area I knew well, a safe place, and yet suddenly, in the mist, it was an alien landscape.

 

The magic of the land is in the people as well, and in what they’ve left behind. Much of Lakeland is a manmade landscape. Forests have been stripped away in ancient times to make way for sheep. Great gouges and mountains of tailings scar the fell sides from a long history of mining and quarrying. Against all odds nature has still taken back her own, reclaimed it and transformed it into bones laid bare, yet still alive and flourishing and achingly beautiful.

I’ve walked the perimeter of Castlerigg stone circle at both sunrise and sunset. Castlerigg is a circle embraced by a greater circle, a circle of fells, a reminder that people were practicing magic in the thrall of Lakeland long before I magicked a story set there. 

I understand why. I understand it with my feet, and somehow understanding it with my feet makes it fit closer to my heart.

***  

K D Grace is a celebrated author of erotic fiction. Her most recent titles have  been set firmly in a magical version of the Lakes and include: Body Temperature & Rising and Riding the Ether - available from all good book shops. 

For more information about K D Grace, and her alter ego Grace Marshall, visit: 

http://kdgrace.co.uk/

http://gracemarshallromance.co.uk/

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The Lake District will become a sea if it doesn't stop raining soon.

 

The first time I went to the lakes on holiday I was 14. It was a camp with a local youth group (Louise Barklam my best mate and fellow BDGP member was there too). I’d never been hill walking or done any activities like that before so it was all new to me. Canoeing I gibbered and sobbed because I was terrified of tipping under the water. The sods made people WALK ON MY CANOE in some 'fun' activity where we all had to run across them. Evil, evil people. I was oozing snot and everything. We looked at a stone circle at Castlerigg which made me write loads of crappy fiction about magic stone circles for the next year which I thought would get me published. I haven’t got any copies of that thankfully or I’d probably cringe so much I’d turn inside out.

  We went on a lovely midnight walk. Well it was beautiful when I reached the top of the hill, but I fell over constantly on the way up because I was 14 and didn’t want to wear my glasses. Myopic and in the dark I ended up chinning the dirt quite regularly. We even climbed a mountain. The highest one in the Lakes. I was a little townie from Central Drive, very small for my age that ate mainly chips and never even walked to school. My feet hurt, I ached all over. But when we reached the top of Helvellyn something happened. I can't describe it. Halfway up I'd had to cling to slate bits to pass an area of craggy steepness and was in a state of terror because I'd stupidly looked down. Snot again. But when I reached the top I can't describe the effect the sight of the landscape had on me.  A photo just isn’t the same, every step was worth it.  The colours, the presence of the mountains and lakes around evokes a peaceful state of mind. It’s easy to see how poets and artists are inspired by the Lake District. Can they capture the magic? I doubt completely, but they can stir our memories of the place and so we can relive it.

When the rain stops (I'm optimistic) I might just go back.

 

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Pictures will paint a thousand words... soon enough.

Today is my father's birthday. I mention this only because I am again late in posting this blog post- I've been playing best son whilst my brother is in Denmark. With this in mind, I had considered making today's post a bit of a thing to my old man- with the ultimate plan being a poem for his birthday. Here we are then, over twenty hours in and as you can see, nothing has surfaced so far.
I've been playing the cat and mouse game with it all day. I have a theme to hit for the blog (The Lakes this week, for everyone wondering what treats we have in store) but, as sometimes is the case when trying to force writing, it isn't happening.
I can't even say that I don't have an idea. I have a head full. The lakes is probably THE place to hunt my inspirations. I've taken more holidays there than any other place on the planet. It is the landscape I dream of seeing in the mornings and the setting for that idyllic writer's cottage I may one day live in. It can boast of inspiring some of the greatest writers ever to hold a pen and yet here I am, without this poem. I'm lodged somewhere between a childhood fishing trip and a walking holiday. I'm eleven years old and camping. I'm catching my first pike, smuggling trout, frying up luncheon meat in the boot of a car and gambling at night. I am growing up on this trip. I am bucketing water from a leaking boat. I am making it to the summit of the world's biggest hill on my own (I'm eleven remember, it was huge) and I can still remember the little rock at the trig point and the scope of everything as the world seemed to open around me. Somehow, in all of this I have not found my poem yet. Rain has stopped play I'm afraid and the closest I have been to really getting into poetry today was a conversation about dyslexia in the shop in which a customer began to recite a good two verses of some poetry she learnt at school. She hasn't read it for sixty years and I've promised to find her a copy online and print it off for her. It seemed to make her day having someone listen as she babbled on. You lot are making mine now in much the same way.
Tomorrow morning, I may just raise a smile from the most cantankerous of customers. I never thought poetry would be the key to stopping her snarls and I suspect it may be fond recollections of a great teacher more than anything else but she definitely perked up today and I couldn't quite believe it. Obviously, we all have our reasons for enjoying poetry and her reason for reading is much the same as my reason for writing it- to seal a moment in and have something there to remind us what life feels and felt like. Even as I'm typing now, thinking back, I'm finding more and more I could actually say in that poem- the landscape is coming to me in dribs and drabs, the memories eek out of my head like the drip of a flooding ceiling and at some point, hopefully not too far from now, the roof is coming in and it is all going down on paper.
It would be a decade between the camping trip and the trip I took to one of Wordsworth's houses. I remember my Dad standing in the study, gazing out from the hushed group of tourists towards the window. In his best impression of a moron, "I'd write bloody poetry with a view like this every day," he said. I wanted the room to swallow me up. My best English scholar facade lay in tatters by the desk of a literary hero. My Dad was right though, he would probably write with a view so inspiring, with the elements to bounce ideas off, with nothing but a distant wind for company. In my mind, I am somewhere near water. I am spiritually home. My memories are melting into the landscape and if I was any good at drawing, I could probably sketch you the view. I'm back in the hills and for tonight, that is all you are getting from me... I'm off to start writing that poem.

Thanks for reading, S.

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Heroes.

Heroes was a reasonably short running TV show I didn’t ever finish watching. It became, like Lost and 24, another terrestrial casualty- and once it had moved from the beeb, there was no way my old man would consider it a viable evening option. That said, the bits of the show that I did catch were pretty impressive. It probably all ended as a dream or something equally disappointing but, just for a minute, I am going to have a think about superpowers and poetry- my own little take on this week's theme. 

If I could be like the little Japanese man on the show and have a superpower, I would definitely try and work it to my advantage. There would be very little saving the world going on and a whole load of sitting invisibly in interesting people’s living rooms.

I have had the pleasure of being in the Lake District this weekend. We went up on Thursday night and since texting home to let them know we were safe, we’ve been cut off. At the time of writing I know no football scores, I know nothing of the news or this week’s talent show TV stars. I do know that I should be writing a shed load of ideas into poems though.

An interesting thing about a campsite is how up and down the noise levels can be. At night, you could assume that the noise would die off, maybe come back about 11 when the walkers drift in from the pub and then slowly, it will fade off again. What you never remember though is just how much voices can carry and, as I am not the quietest myself, it was a blessing to have a few hours after Lar had fallen asleep to just listen.

I am very much a night owl. I do my best writing in the evenings (out of habit, really) so to be in with the chance of listening in to the songs of the drunkards, watching three different figures move in and out of a 2 person pod (ooh-err) whilst all the time straining to hear just what the ‘girl [he] knew from Blackpool’ was like over the valley was great.

I’d love to be invisible if I could have any power. In my teens it had obvious appeal, in my early twenties it would have helped cheat exams and saved a hell of a lot of effort and now, just for a night or two, it has helped stoke up the campfire that is my imagination.

I’ve been in a place of literary heroes. I’ve sunbathed in Beatrix Potter’s back garden (not literally but what is forty yards), listened to Wordsworth’s hills and panted my way to all the inspired valleys and viewpoints within walking distance- all full of thoughtful sculptures and wow-bringing scenes.  I have been invisible, my superpower in a land of heroes and all that remains for me to do now is write everything up for my undercover report. Now, where did I pack that notebook…

Thanks for reading guys,
S

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Worthy.

I’ve spent most of the last week in Devon. I’ve spent time there pondering many things, exploring much of England’s glorious countryside and, in a moment of money saving madness, joined the National Trust.

Strangely, I feel it was quite cheap- the initial outlay- at a most reasonable £23.50 for the year (being a young person and all). If I park my car in the Lake District, I have pretty much made my money back- I consider this a win.

Some of Britain’s best loved countryside is protected ‘by my membership fees’, along with the residencies of many great writers. Hill Top (Beatrix Potter), Coleridge’s Cottage, Wordsworth’s house and Lewis Carroll’s birthplace are all places I plan to visit this year, for free, but I’d say that all of these places are only really of interest to me for the ‘celebrity value’. I love wandering around and just looking for clues as to what might have inspired them, what the thought process could have been.

As many of you know, since graduating I have continued working at the newsagents (a family business). I like it, if only for the reason that it constantly challenges my perceptions of people. After my time off, I’m looking forward to going in today. The kids are back at school so no doubt, by lunchtime, someone will have challenged me on something English related- being ‘shit and pointless’ or whatnot. This annoys the hell out of me- I always bite.

The thing is, I don’t know how many youngsters are reading today. I gather they are reading magic fiction but poetry, I really don’t know. I gave a paper lad the full rundown on approaching a poem the other day. I knew the poem he was doing and without doing his coursework for him, he should do all right from that. The trouble I find with them all is the constant resistance, even the sixth formers. Constantly the point comes up that it doesn’t matter anymore, it is time bound, irrelevant and this too, is a major bug bear.

I’ll conclude then, by questioning the actual nature of this issue, the seeing the point- the connection. We have all seen films based on Shakespeare, we have all read modern day fairytales, new takes on themes and so, if the words of the past are ‘irrelevant’, why are we still using them today? The worth of a word is not something you can rate, I would argue it is the meaning that carries the value anyway, and so is it not how we move on from the past- learn?

I’m sitting beside a pile of now redundant TV magazines- free supplements liberated from returned Sunday papers. These magazines are redundant just days after I got them so have quickly become worthless words. The pile of poetry, the bookshelf straight facing me or those words passed on in childhood- they’ll be with me again tomorrow- I’d call those kinds of things ‘Priceless’.

Thanks for reading,

S.

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My Five Favourite Places to Write

When people find out that I’m doing an M.A. in Creative Writing, I tend to get asked the same sorts of questions. With naivety they’ll say, “So you want to be the next J. K. Rowling?” My unvoiced response is a long drawn out sigh followed by: Is that the only writer you are capable of naming? However, fearful of offending, I just shrug my shoulders and say, not really. Once they discover that I write poetry, they have a wealth of other questions to ask. “Do people still read poetry?” Yes. “Aren’t poets a bit crazy?” Not all of them. “Do you lock yourself away from the world and just write all the time?” No.

This week’s theme is ‘Location/Environment and Writing’ and, therefore, I thought I’d attempt to dispel the myth that poets are reclusive (slightly agoraphobic) creatures who sever all connections with the outside world. Yes, I like to shut the world out at times. Yes, I like my own company. And yes, I quite like solitude. But, I also like the outside world. I like the freshness of it – the way it changes. I like the ideas it contains.

With that in mind, I thought I would share my five favourite places to write:

1. On the floor
   Despite having two desk, I always end up sat cross-legged on the floor. I like the space. I like being able to spread my drafts out. I like feeling grounded. I like being able to reach my poetry bookcase without having to move.
   
   
2. At Barista
   A small coffee shop down Birley Street (Blackpool) that is only a short walk from my house.
   I go here when I need a change of surroundings. When my flat starts to feel like it's suffocating my mind. When my ideas have decided to hide from me. When I'm looking for something, this is the first place I look.
   
   
3. At the Allotment
   Occasionally, I need a break from the modern world. I need to disconnect from technology. I need to walk away from the distractions of Facebook and Twitter.
   I don't always write when I'm here. Sometimes I just think - weeding and thinking. And recently, it has been this environment that has inspired many of the poems that I'm currently writing.
   
   
4. On the tube/train
   I don't get to write on the tube/train very much at present. But when I lived in London, riding the tube offered an unlimited source of ideas. The rhythm was soothing. The people kept changing. There was always a new fragment of overheard conversation to jot down.
   
   
5. Somewhere pretty
   It might be a quiet spot on the beach, a walk up Nicky Nook (Scorton), or somewhere in the Lakes. It doesn't really matter as long as nature is the dominate force. Yes, it does sound clichéd. But in reality, these types of places allow my mind to feel free and calm. I can leave the stresses of life behind, and as a result my writing feels more able to write itself into existence.

Where are your favourite places to write?

Thank you for reading,
Lar

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