Lake District rock bars

The succession of small basins with intervening breaks coinciding with rock bars or morainic ridges is a feature of many valleys which once witnessed the passage of ice. Another similar ungraded valley is that of nearby Kent mereLake District Honeymoon Hotel
. Here a much bigger lake once existed in the vicinity of Kent mere Hall in which diatomaceous* deposits gradually accumulated and led in time to its infilling. A major break in the long profile of the valley occurs north of Kent mere Church  where a pronounced rock bar, its edge plucked and accentuated by moving ice, is developed at the junction of the soft and well cleaved Brow gill Slates with the harder volcanic rocks.

Against this bar, the glacier rested during its retreat stage and laid down a great boulder moraine just north of the church. Upstream a further rock step occurs near Kentmere Reservoir , although the building of the dam has masked much of this glacially derived feature.

Compared with the outlying valleys like Kentmere and Long Sleddale, Great Langdale experienced a much fuller and more intense glaciation over a long period. Lying in the lee of the highest peaks like Scafell and Great Gable, the valley head never lacked the heavy snowfall to nurture active glaciers. The area also felt the full force of outwardly moving ice streams when the whole central region was blanketed by a more or less continuous ice dome. Even after the Ice Age had 'officially' ended, its upland corries once more saw the growth of small glaciers for a short time about 8800 B.C. As at the head of Borrowdale and elsewhere, these grew and ultimately spilled over and moved slowly down into the trough end of Great Langdale at Mickleden to a height of only 400 ft.

There the glacier laid down the same agglomeration of hummocky drift, with hillocks and intervening marshy hollows occurring over a wide area . This was but the final dying phase of glacial activity in the valley. Earlier a more intense glacier action had already transformed what was originally a small V¬shaped valley eroded by normal river action into the Ushaped trough we know today. With its steep rocky sides, scree slopes, abrupt combe end and marshy floor broken only by rock bars, it fulfils all the requirements of a typical glaciated valley. Microfeatures like roche moutonees, great boulder trains left behind after the ice melted and striations* on the exposed rock surfaces, all occur as further evidence of intense local ice activity.

Many of the major features seen by those visiting Great Langdale date from a tinle when a great glacier occupied the whole valley during the Last glaciation. There is evidence to suggest that at its maximum stage of develop¬ment the upper surface of the glacier lay at a height of about 1,400 ft. At this time the snout lay well beyond the mouth of Great Langdale. While advancing in the direction of Ambleside and the head of Windermere it was constantly fed by ice accumulating in its source region around Bowfell. In this active state the sole of the glacier gouged out hollows in the valley floor; these later became the sites of lakes like Elterwater. The present lake is very much the shrunken remnant of a larger original feature. Infilling has taken place and its irregular reedy margins show that the process is still going on and in time no doubt the whole lake will disappear.

This has already been the fate of a similar lake which once occupied the valley floor upstream from Chapel Stile. The glacier, for all its great erosive powers when at the height of its activity, never quite succeeded in removing the harder rock bars which lay across its path as at Chapel Stile and Skelwith Bridge. Both rock bars coincide with beds of a toughened volcanic ash. The ice, by plucking at the well cleaved slates and jointed lava beds on either side of the rock bars, tended to accentuate the features rather than remove them. With such prominent obstacles in its path the river has been forced to cut deep gorges through the rock bars. That at Skelwith Bridge is well known and much visited. Certainly after heavy rain the waterfalls make impressive viewing when seen from the footpath which wends its way up through the wooded glade of the gorge.

Experience one of Britain's most picturesque locations on family holidays to the Lake District at the fantastic Haven Lakeland Holiday Park. Visit the scenic deep lakes such as the striking Lake Windermere or the nearby impressive stately home of Holker Hall. www.haven.com
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Rock formations in the Lake District

The geological setting of the central part of the Lake District is completed by igneous rocks which have been intruded into the various sedimentary formations. Many of the outcrops are quite small and even the well known Shap granite occu-pies only a few square miles at the surface. luxury themed boutique hotels in the lake district It is an easily recognizable rock with its pink colour and elongated crystals offelspar. Huge quarries have been opened up on Shap Fells by the side ofthe A6 road as the rock is in great demand for railway ballast, heavy constructional work and, more recently, as a road metal. A much larger outcrop of granite occurs on the southwest fringe of the Lake District around Eskdale and the approaches to Wastwater.

Covering about thirty five square miles, the outcrop is sufficiently large to make a direct impact on the scenery and character of the area.

In appearance it is not unlike the Shap granite, but the felspar crystals are not so large. At one time it, too, was extensively quarried and used as a building stone. By many it was looked upon as the most attractive of the granites in the British Isles. Nowadays quarrying for this purpose has ceased and it is only in the older buildings and dry stone walls that its former widespread use can be appreciated. The lower twothirds of Eskdale below Wha House and the whole of the adjacent Miterdale occur within the granite outcrop. It also forms the foothill zone between Muncaster Fell and Bootle. This whole area is attractive, unspoilt country preserved largely through its relative isolation compared with other parts of the Lake District. The granite is not usually associated with spectacular scenery, and although rock crags do occur as, for example, about Spout House in lower Eskdale, they cannot compare with those of the Borrowdale Volcanic country. Running through the granite are vertical dykes of a harder and coarsergrained rock. That on the slopes below Whin Rigg is about fifty yards wide and can easily be picked out because of its rugged sur¬face, which contrasts so markedly with the smooth grasscovered slopes of the granite.

Close to the Eskdale granite outcrop is another igneous mass which extends from the lower end of Wastwater across Ennerdale and then to Buttermere. It measures about ten miles from north to south and has a maximum width of almost five miles. The main rock type present, termed a granophyre, floors both the valleys and occurs on the ridge tops. Between the Ennerdale and Buttermere valleys it is responsible for smooth rounded slopes like those of Red Pike , which stand out in great contrast to the rugged crags of High Stile, formed of Borrowdale Volcanic rocks. Glaciation, too, has seized upon the differences in rock type and by selective erosion has accentuated the landscape contrasts.

The third main group of igneous rocks occurs in the Skiddaw massif well to the north of the other main centres. The rock is again a granite with white felspar crystals to distinguish it from the Eskdale and Shap granites. A recent attempt to determine its age, by what is known as the potassium argon dating method, has shown that it is about 400 million years old. In spite of its great age only a small part of its original roof capping prior to emplacement has been removed, so that exposures at the surface are limited. The largest outcrop is in the valleys of the upper Caldew and Blackhazel Beck, but even here only about a square mile is exposed.

Its small extent makes it of no consequence in fashioning dis¬tinctive scenery. It is rather the slates and grits altered by contact with the intruded granite which make the most impressive features of the area. Around Bowscale Tarn, for example, the Bannerdale Crags tower above the corrie lake. From their precipitous slopes one can look northward to Car rock Fell crowned by the still distinct stone ramparts of the Iron Age Fort . The Fell is composed of a complex sequence of igneous rocks which are all hard and resistant to erosion. As a result they give rise to the rocky crags which look out over the marshy valley of Mosedale.

Rock types in the Lake District

In one part of the Lake District, north of Ullswater, the Carboniferous rocks form a conglomerate, with pebbles set in sandy matrix.luxury themed boutique hotels in the lake district The individual pebbles are derived from the Skiddaw Slate, Borrowdale Volcanic Rocks, Coniston Lime¬stone, Silurian grit and even Shap granite. As some of the rock types occur some distance away, it is assumed that they were brought to their present site by powerful floods in the distant geological past. The conglomerate beds are 800¬900 ft thick, and as they are resistant to erosion they form the isolated hills of Great Mell and Little Mell. Both rise out of a plateau surface at about 900 ft and dominate the country to the south of the main PenrithKeswick road.

Beyond the limestone and conglomerate outcrops lies the richer landscape developed on the New Red Sandstone rocks. The latter formation is of variable.

composition with harder sandstone beds standing out as broadtopped hills while the softer shales form the lowlands and river valleys. This type of scenery is typical of the Vale of Eden, part of which lies within the Lake District One inch Tourist Map around Penrith. Close to the town lies a belt of fell country at a height of about 800 ft running from Lazonby Fell in the north to Whinfell in the south. It is formed of the Penrith Sandstone, an easily recognizable rock with its coarse but rounded sand grains. When the individual grains are sufficiently cemented, the resulting rock is tough and compact and forms prominent topographic features like Penrith Beacon, which rises to 937 ft.

It also makes a good building stone and was much in demand when Penrith expanded rapidly during the nineteenth century. Lazonby Fell, in particular, has good freestone near the surface and the whole of the fell top is now pitted with former shallow workings. Another much sought stone for building was the St Bees Sandstone with its distinctive chocolate brown colour. It, too, found favor in Penrith and was extensively quarried in the area to the east of the River Eden.

The varied sequence of rock types found in the Lake District has had a marked influence on the scenery, a constantly recurring theme in any discussion of the geological basis. In few parts of Britain is there such an awareness of the true foundations of the natural landscape. Even the casual visitor using the crowded roads in high summer must be acutely conscious of the great rock buttresses which seem to lie across his path in many of the enclosed Lakeland valleys. Much of the landscape of today, however, is not natural in the strictest sense but results from man wrestling with his environment over the past cen¬turies. But even here the influence of the geological basis is apparent, whether it is portrayed in the humble fellside cottage, the stately home set in its own extensive parkland or in the simple stone walls which climb the steep hillsides.

An accessible rock supply close at hand was a necessity both for the builders of the Iron Age camp crowning many a hill top and for their Anglican and Norse suc-cessors carving out their farms in more lowland situations. This did not usually present any problems, for often there was more than enough from simply clear-ing the boulders from the fields. At Was dale Head the superabundance can be seen in the piles of stones left in the corners of the fields after large numbers had been used for building the dry stone walls. Similarly at Boot in Eskdale the walls of granite boulders are often five feet thick to absorb all the stone from field clearance. Many of the cairns in areas like Sub¬berthwaite represent prehistoric man's solution to the same problem of what to do with the unwanted stones.

Rock formations in the Lake District

The geological setting of the central part of the Lake District is completed by igneous rocks which have been intruded into the various sedimentary formations. Many of the outcrops are quite small and even the well known Shap granite occu-pies only a few square miles at the surface. luxury themed boutique hotels in the lake district It is an easily recognizable rock with its pink colour and elongated crystals offelspar. Huge quarries have been opened up on Shap Fells by the side ofthe A6 road as the rock is in great demand for railway ballast, heavy constructional work and, more recently, as a road metal. A much larger outcrop of granite occurs on the southwest fringe of the Lake District around Eskdale and the approaches to Wastwater.

Covering about thirty five square miles, the outcrop is sufficiently large to make a direct impact on the scenery and character of the area.

In appearance it is not unlike the Shap granite, but the felspar crystals are not so large. At one time it, too, was extensively quarried and used as a building stone. By many it was looked upon as the most attractive of the granites in the British Isles. Nowadays quarrying for this purpose has ceased and it is only in the older buildings and dry stone walls that its former widespread use can be appreciated. The lower twothirds of Eskdale below Wha House and the whole of the adjacent Miterdale occur within the granite outcrop. It also forms the foothill zone between Muncaster Fell and Bootle. This whole area is attractive, unspoilt country preserved largely through its relative isolation compared with other parts of the Lake District. The granite is not usually associated with spectacular scenery, and although rock crags do occur as, for example, about Spout House in lower Eskdale, they cannot compare with those of the Borrowdale Volcanic country. Running through the granite are vertical dykes of a harder and coarsergrained rock. That on the slopes below Whin Rigg is about fifty yards wide and can easily be picked out because of its rugged sur¬face, which contrasts so markedly with the smooth grasscovered slopes of the granite.

Close to the Eskdale granite outcrop is another igneous mass which extends from the lower end of Wastwater across Ennerdale and then to Buttermere. It measures about ten miles from north to south and has a maximum width of almost five miles. The main rock type present, termed a granophyre, floors both the valleys and occurs on the ridge tops. Between the Ennerdale and Buttermere valleys it is responsible for smooth rounded slopes like those of Red Pike , which stand out in great contrast to the rugged crags of High Stile, formed of Borrowdale Volcanic rocks. Glaciation, too, has seized upon the differences in rock type and by selective erosion has accentuated the landscape contrasts.

The third main group of igneous rocks occurs in the Skiddaw massif well to the north of the other main centres. The rock is again a granite with white felspar crystals to distinguish it from the Eskdale and Shap granites. A recent attempt to determine its age, by what is known as the potassium argon dating method, has shown that it is about 400 million years old. In spite of its great age only a small part of its original roof capping prior to emplacement has been removed, so that exposures at the surface are limited. The largest outcrop is in the valleys of the upper Caldew and Blackhazel Beck, but even here only about a square mile is exposed.

Its small extent makes it of no consequence in fashioning dis¬tinctive scenery. It is rather the slates and grits altered by contact with the intruded granite which make the most impressive features of the area. Around Bowscale Tarn, for example, the Bannerdale Crags tower above the corrie lake. From their precipitous slopes one can look northward to Car rock Fell crowned by the still distinct stone ramparts of the Iron Age Fort . The Fell is composed of a complex sequence of igneous rocks which are all hard and resistant to erosion. As a result they give rise to the rocky crags which look out over the marshy valley of Mosedale.

Wasdale ? The Crucible Of Rock Climbing In The Lake District

The Lake District is one of the most important climbing areas in the UK.  Climbers were attracted by the scale and majesty of the Lakeland crags and it was natural that the Valley of Wasdale beneath the greatest of the Lake District Mountains - Scafell Pike, Scafell and Great Gable - was the original hub for Lakeland climbing.

The ascent of Napes Needle on the flanks of Great Gable by William Haskett Smith in 1886 was a landmark in British climbing and is considered to be one of the first proper rock climbs in the country. 

Although the summit of Scafell Pike is famed as the highest of the Lakeland Fells and therefore the highest point in England, it is Scafell along side, which has the more craggy features and which has always been the forcing ground for Lakeland Climbing.

It was on these crags that Bottrill made his ground-breaking ascent of the great unclimbed slab on Scafell Crag in 1903.  Incredibly, in total extremis and seemingly climbing for his life, he was still able to raise his hat to a passing lady – history records that he was a true gentleman rather than a serial womanizer.

In those days these hardened climbers used to ‘bivvy’ on the fells so they could get an early rise at the foot of the crags, how they must have longed for Lake District holiday cottages to come back to in the evenings for a bit warmth and a home cooked meal. If only they had been thought of back then!

There was another enormous step forward in 1914 when Siegfried Herford made the first ascent of the Central Buttress of Scafell Crag – This was by far the hardest climb in the UK at the time and it wasn’t superceded for many years.

Since then, three generations of Birkett’s have left their mark on climbing in the Lake District.  Jim Birkett brought the extreme grade to the Lakes with his ascents on Castle Rock and the East Buttress of Scafell. 

Don Whillans was at the forefront of Lakes Climbing in the fifties and early sixties and with ascents such as Extol in the Ullswater Valley, there was a short period where Scafell was usurped by the Eastern Crags.

Climbing standards in the Lake District were pushed through the extremes in the seventies and eighties by such brilliant climbers as Pete Bottrell, Pete Whillance and Pete Livesy.  Then in the nineties Dave Birkett took up where his grandfather left off, pushing standards through the roof and putting the Lake District back in it’s rightful place at the top of the British Climbing. He set new standards throughout the Lake District - from Borrowdale to Langdale but his greatest contribution was naturally in Wasdale!

Rock Climbing can be great fun for all the family and if you are planning your own trip rock climbing, there are plenty of perfect Lake District cottages which make an ideal base camp!