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R Wastwater as seen from Yewbarrow.


R The man himself - in a BMC t-shirt.


“THESE GREAT WRECKAGES OF ANCIENT VOLCANOS, CAN BE AS EVERY BIT AS STIRRINGLY TELEGENIC AS THE POINTY PEAKS OF FRANCE OR SWITZERLAND”


Q Dawn on a


Monday morning in July 2013, as viewed from the roof of England. Terry had spent the night on Scafell Pike summit in a bivvy bag hoping to capture this scene. Good work Terry!


and perspectives. The wild expanse of Upper Eskdale, for example, explored in the fi lm by Chris Townsend, is revealed as a foreboding, wild and largely unspoiled mountain arena, the near mirror-image of tourist-thronged Wasdale “In my view the best side of Scafell Pike, where it really does look like a mountain, is from Upper Eskdale, there’s no doubt about it. That whole area – Upper Eskdale, Gait Crags, Hardknott, Great Moss – without a doubt affords you one of the best mountain views in Britain. People think about Snowdon and the arêtes, but you’ve got that bloody reservoir pipe going down the middle of it and a train station on top. I love Snowdon, don’t get me wrong, but the area below the Scafells in Upper Eskdale, that’s pretty much untouched.” A common thread in Terry’s work is the banging of the


drum for British hills and mountains, a desire to show they can be up there in the natural beauty stakes with bigger ranges around the world. Terry refutes any crude jingoistic


motivation for this – “I’m very objective and liberal about such things” – but his fi lm does, in its way, capture something of the essence of this part of England. The sped-up sequences of clouds tumbling around Great End and Mickledore are enough to convince any sceptic that the Scafells, these great wreckages of ancient volcanos, can be as every bit as stirringly telegenic as the pointy peaks of France or Switzerland. But down in Wasdale Head, we come back down to earth, to a place where the fi eld pattern hasn’t changed since medieval times, the dry stone walls are as thick as castle ramparts, and lifetime residents like Joss Naylor speak in a clipped, minimalistic dialect incomprehensible to outsiders. In the shelter of a place surrounded by mountains on all sides, the texture of an older way of life can still be felt. And this contrast between the rootedness of rural life and the sublimity of the fells above is what defi nes the Lake District; few places in the world have their feet on the ground and their head in the


R Wild camping in Great Langdale on The Band, en-route for Upper Eskdale in November 2013.


SUMMIT#74 | SUMMER 2014 | 35


PHOTO: TERRY ABRAHAM.


PHOTO: TERRY ABRAHAM.


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