Product Description

This is the story of a solitary walk through the Pennines made by A Wainwright – fell-walker, artist and author of the Pictorial Guides to the Lakeland Fells – in September 1938. With the world on the brink of war, Wainwright found solace in the desolate moors and the song of larks high above the tranquil landscape.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #49682 in Books
• Published on: 2004-03-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

About the Author
Born in Blackburn in 1907, Alfred Wainwright left school at the age of 13. A holiday at the age of 23 kindled a life-long love affair with the Lake District. Following a move to Kendal in 1941 he began to devote every spare moment he had to researching and compiling the original seven Pictorial Guides. He described these as his 'love letters' to the Lakeland Fells and at the end of the first, The Eastern Fells, he wrote about what the mountains had come to mean to him:

"I suppose it might be said, to add impressiveness to the whole thing, that this book has been twenty years in the making, for it is so long, and more, since I first came from a smoky mill-town (forgive me, Blackburn!) and beheld, from Orrest Head, a scene of great beauty, a fascinating paradise, Lakeland's mountains and trees and water. That was the first time I had looked upon beauty, or imagined it, even.

Afterwards I went often, whenever I could, and always my eyes were lifted to the hills. I was to find then, and it has been so ever since, a spiritual and physical satisfaction in climbing mountains – and a tranquil mind upon reaching their summits, as though I had escaped from the disappointments and unkindnesses of life and emerged above them into a new world, a better world.

In due course I came to live within sight of the hills, and I was well content. If I could not be climbing, I was happy to sit idly and dream of them, serenely. Then came a restlessness and the feeling that it was not enough to take their gifts and do nothing in return. I must dedicate something of myself, the best part of me, to them. I started to write about them, and to draw pictures of them. Doing these things, I found they were still giving and I still receiving, for a great pleasure filled me when I was so engaged – I had found a new way of escape to them and from all else less worth while.

Thus it comes about that I have written this book. Not for material gain, welcome though that would be (you see I have not escaped entirely!); not for the benefit of my contemporaries, though if it brings them also to the hills I shall be well pleased; certainly not for posterity, about which I can work up no enthusiasm at all. No, this book has been written, carefully and with infinite patience, for my own pleasure and because it has seemed to bring the hills to my own fireside. If it has merit, it is because the hills have merit."

A. Wainwright died in 1991 at the age of 84.

Customer Reviews

That Patron Saint of Fellwalkers
If anyone feels overworked or stressed out by the demands of modern life then this is the book is for you. It manages to encapsulate an altogether more gentle and innocent age in the readers mind. The author s preoccupied with the impending threat of war and uses his lonely tramp through the wildnerness of Northern England to escape the anxieties of the age. As the logbook of the journey was never originally intended to be published, it can make for uncomfortable reading at times, as if you were sneaking a look at someones diary. The deeply personal thoughts and observations of a man obviously far better aqquainted with nature than the human race are painfully honest, and you do feel slight embarrasment at the more whimsical moments. That said, only he can articulate his love of the hills in that unique style all of his own, and it is a peice of work that will inspire lovers of nature to follow in the great mans footsteps.