The Lakes Mountain

This is Great Britain. Over a third of our country is made up of mountains.

And here in the Northwest of England is some of the most important mountain scenery in history.

I'm taking on some hair-raising challenges...

...facing crags that will stretch my abilities...

...and experimenting with energy-boosting sweets.

But above all I hope to discover how we fell in love with mountain scenery.

How did this small patch of British upland come to be one of the most inspiring landscapes in the world?

These are the mountains of the Lake District.

Of all of Britain's mountain regions, the Lake District has the greatest reputation for staggering beauty.

It's just a pocket of paradise.

The national park is no more than 885 square miles of lake, mountain and farmland.

But it's become the epitome of Britain.

It's a landscape that stirs the imagination of 12 million visitors a year.

Who could fail to be inspired by it?

It's simply divine.

But astonishingly, only a few hundred years ago, visitors had an entirely different reaction.

Nowadays we love this scenery, but this was not how one of the earliest tourists saw it at all.

Celia Fiennes came here in the 1600s.

She was sort of the original Sunday tripper.

She undertook a vast tour of England just really for no other reason than to have a look at it.

And she wrote a book called, "Through England on a Side Saddle in the Time of William and Mary".

She was obviously a good deal more intrepid than me.

I don't want to be on a side saddle.

But Celia was safe enough, and as she travelled she made observations.

Here in the Lakes she wrote that, "I was walled on both sides by those inaccessible, barren, rocky hills."

To be honest, I don't think she really thought much of the Lake District.

Like the good housewife that she was, she noted down various recipes for

bread and for potted char, which is a fish in Lake Windermere.

She was very concerned that her horses needed re-shoeing at least twice a week on the hard roads.

And she did look at the scenery, but more in a state of astonishment than wonder or awe.

To her it was so wasteful and unproductive.

That first travel book didn't exactly encourage hordes of tourists.

But, somehow, over time, our feelings about the Lake District have been transformed.

I want to find out just how we came to love our mountains.

For the next hundred years after Celia, more and more people did come to look and tremble.

They could see that it was extraordinary.

They thought natural landscape looked almost as good as a picture.

And they called it "picturesque".

New words like "terrible"

and "awesome" were used to describe the fearsome scenery.

But a new vision was needed to change these puzzled reactions into something like love.

And this was achieved not by a travel writer, but by a poet.

This is Grasmere, and...

in 1799, the man who did more to change the way we thought about nature and mountain scenery came

to live here with his sister at Dove Cottage.

His name was William Wordsworth.

Wordsworth was part of the English Romantic movement,

a group of nineteenth-century writers and artists who transformed our attitude to nature.

He was born in Cockermouth, just 28 miles northwest of Grasmere.

And his greatest achievement was to articulate the glory of Nature in his own back garden.

For him the landscape was neither terrifying, nor simply rather lovely.

It was the essence of life.

He believed that our enjoyment of it brought us closer to the nature of existence.

In 1810, he wrote lovingly of the mountains: "In the combinations which they make,

"and in the beauty and variety of their surfaces and colours, they are surpassed by none."

This eulogy was actually written in his own guidebook to the lakes.

It was so popular that a visiting clergyman is said have enquired

whether Mr Wordsworth had ever written anything else.

But he ended up dismayed by the huge numbers who came,

and still they come, making pilgrimage to his own home, Dove Cottage.

Did you know about Wordsworth before you came?

Yes, I know. I think everyone knows.

He was inspired by

beautiful nature here and he respected...

nature as a god.

-As a god?

-Yes, as a god.

Sort of sort of like a new idea of man and nature all together and all these

feelings coming through. Yes.

Wordsworth lived here for with up to 14 others for eight and a half years.

It was a crowded little cottage.

And now it's crowded with tourists, who can, amongst other things,

still read the newspapers he used to insulate a bedroom.

Wordsworth himself escaped as often as he could to the hills.

A friend estimated that over his lifetime Wordsworth walked 200,000 miles.

He'd set out each day to explore the Cumbrian Fells, returning in the evening to his sister, Dorothy.

The locals commented on the fact that they saw him wandering around muttering to himself, but in fact

what he was doing was composing his poetry, and he'd

carry lines back to Dorothy so that she could write them down.

"The birds around me hopped and played/Their thoughts I could not measure/

"But the least movement which they made/It seemed a thrill of pleasure."

Write that down, darling.

Wordsworth realised that the mountains provided a sort of holy joy.

He believed that the hills and valleys, the trees and the birds,

and all of us, were part of nature and therefore part of God.

His poetry put man at the centre of the landscape and encouraged him to enjoy it in a new way.

Thanks to Wordsworth, going for a walk in the country

was universally acknowledged as being good for the soul.

And, undoubtedly, there is a special beauty to the Lake District.

There may be higher ranges, and broader waters, even in our own country.

So what is it that makes this area particularly unique?

These mountains started life around 500 million years ago, when rock was pushed up by volcanic activity.

But, that's true of many British mountains, so it doesn't explain what makes the Lakes unique.

To find out, I have come to look at the landscape from the perhaps the best vantage point,

Ullswater near Penrith, in Lakeland's northeast.

I've arranged to take to the waters with a geologist, Peter Nienow, who's been coming here for 30 years.

Apparently, the secret of the Lake District happened around 40 million years ago.

There was a doming-up of the whole of the area,

so it looked like an upturned bowl or an upturned umbrella.

And then you've got the drainage system, lots of rainfall,

led the drainage system to generate valleys going out in a radial pattern.

Wordsworth described this pattern of valleys as being like the spokes of a wheel.

And in each one, a lake was formed by Ice Age glaciers.

So the rivers create the initial valley, but the glaciers are very good at eroding down vertically.

Right. And in a way it's a sort of scraping effect that the heavy ice

had at scooping rather than just going straight down like that.

Ullswater, Wastwater, Coniston Water, all of these lakes have been deepened by the glaciers.

And then when the glaciers retreat, then you're left with dramatic steep-sided valley walls.

The result is 16 lakes and countless smaller stretches of water, packed into just 850 square miles.

Everywhere I look, I can see high bare uplands and soft green valleys.

Water and mountain in harmony.

Each corner begs for exploration, and thanks to the lakes, we often see it twice, in exquisite reflection.

The Lake District's complex geology can also throw up some surprisingly intrepid journeys.

Hardknott Pass, 17 miles southwest of Ullswater, is the steepest road in England.

I've been offered a lift.

Well, I'm going to take a little motorised tour of the fells now.

Waaahhh! 'Biker Bill Roughton has offered to take me over the pass.

'He runs pillion tours for intrepid passengers.

'Hardknott Pass is a succession of frightening hairpin bends and has a mind-boggling one in three gradient.

'It rises to 1,200 feet in little over a mile.

'At its top is a Roman fort, barracks for 500 soldiers who came up here almost 2,000 years ago.'

Nowadays a queue of cyclists, motorcyclists and drivers

seems compelled to take up the same challenge.

Well, they certainly heard us coming.

Thanks, Bill. What is that absolute stink that's coming from those cars?

-It's the brake pads.

-Is it?

When people are braking all the way down, they're frightened.

Right. It was like San Francisco in the rush hour.

-But where are all the people going then?

-They're coming for the sake of it, I think.

It doesn't really link two towns. You don't have to go over this pass.

-They're coming to see if they can get stuck.

-They've come and see if they can do it, yeah.

And you've just done one of the hardest passes in Britain.

-And it's bloody good fun, isn't it?

-I know. Did I scare you?

Yes.

'The volcanoes that helped create these gradients, high passes,'

and a motorbiker's fantasy ride, also left behind them a lot of ash.

Compressed over millions of years, this ash became slate.

It's the famous green slate seen in every Lake District town and village.

Cumbria once boasted 70 slate mines and quarries,

but cheaper slate from abroad, and modern, artificial materials meant that the industry died.

Except here.

Honister Slate Mine near Keswick is very much alive.

It's England's last working slate mine, and owes its continued existence to one man's vision.

Mark Weir has single-handedly resurrected this relic of Cumbrian industry.

In the 1980s, the mine was closed down.

But Mark's grandfather, who had worked at the mine all his life,

always dreamed that it would open again.

After his death, Mark risked everything and bought it.

The only problem was that Mark, a former helicopter pilot, didn't know the first thing about slate mining.

I'd never been underground in a mine till I actually walked through here for the first time.

And I hadn't been underground till I bought it.

Now isn't that weird?

But Mark has been transformed into a slate expert like his grandfather, having taught himself the skills.

-I know this is a good bit of slate because it rings like a bell.

-Right.

All right, so all I would want to do now

is hit it in the middle of the middle.

I just tap it,

and because it's gone thin on me...

It's amazing how, with just that knock, you've ended up with something

as finished as that, as beautiful a surface as that.

It looked easy enough, so I thought I'd have a crack.

Are you a practical sort of guy?

-Not really no, but I'll have a go.

-Right.

-Almost anything, I'll have a go at it.

-OK.

Go into the middle there and just a slight tap.

-Into the middle?

-in the middle there like that.

How hard am I going to hit this?

-A nice swift strike.

-OK.

Now I'll probably...

-And again. You're committed now, Griff.

-Am I? Yeah, OK.

You just nicely tap it through.

-Gently?

-Yeah.

-Gently, gently.

That's gone through. There's definitely something come off.

Look at that!

-I mean, it's not perfect.

-No, it isn't.

No, but it's not a tile so much as a sort of erm...

Well, it is a cheeseboard,

or possibly it could do in me garden, couldn't it really?

It didn't take me that long.

After I'd ruined a perfectly good bit of slate for him, Mark took me up the mountain

to find the green gold, as slate is called.

When Mark bought the mine, it was derelict.

He had 11 miles of tunnels, many of which were blocked or unsafe.

He had no money to employ anyone to help him.

In getting it back to a workable state, he was completely on his own.

Look at this.

Wow!

Isn't that fantastic?

When I first started, for the first three years I used to do seven days

a week and two 24-hour shifts mixed between that week, every week.

-You would work here at night on your own?

-Yeah.

-And what was the feeling like then?

Awful.

-Awful?

-Awful.

It was the worst feeling.

You may as well just dig a hole and put yourself in a coffin.

-It was awful.

-In the dark?

In the dark with no lights, just the one that I had on.

And it was such a hole...

it was hell.

But did you hate the mountain then?

I did, I hated every bit of it.

So what drove you on?

Well, basically I'd bought a mine and it wasn't doing anything, and I was going to lose everything.

So my great idea of being truly grit and all the rest of it,

and I lose everything, genuinely was on the horizon.

I was going to lose the lot. And the only thing that kept us going,

the only get-out was to

basically work, and work and work and work until I saw the green gold of Honister.

But the days and nights of toil paid off, and now Honister Slate Mine employs 40 people

and produces 10,000 tonnes of slate a year for building companies in Cumbria and beyond.

Mark hasn't just been busy extracting slate.

He also has a project that he hopes will leave a legacy to this Cumbrian industry.

Deep in the mountain, we came to an astonishing slate cave.

What's your plan here?

I'm creating an amphitheatre, a monument to the old people that lived and died.

So what,

you're putting seats and a stage?

-Yeah, in rock form.

-Yeah?

Yeah.

Mark, that's a huge amount of work to do.

It is. This is my home,

this is my inspiration, this is my piece to carry on after my time.

If Mark's inspiration becomes a reality, the slate amphitheatre will be a place of congregation.

Visitors will sit right inside the mountain, and feel its might and beauty.

These mountains have long had the power to bring people together.

This is Swinside Stone Circle.

Ten miles northeast of Honister, it has stood here for 5,000 years.

The stones themselves are just about the only record these ancient peoples left behind them.

There are 55 gigantic monoliths. Some of them weigh over five tonnes.

They were brought here with great difficulty.

But for what?

Nobody really knows.

The one thing that is absolutely certain is that people who put this here

knew that its effect was going to be hugely enhanced by its setting here in the middle of the Cumbrian hills.

There has been speculation that these are an astral computer,

a place of sacrifice or a form of temple.

In fact, archaeologists cannot even say for certain that this was a holy site.

But on a cold day under a high sky, this place in these mountains

would bring anyone closer to the mysteries of the universe.

I'm making my way east to a peak called Firbank Fell.

In 1652, a man named George Fox came here to spread a radical religious message.

He was a seeker -

someone who saw no necessity for priests and hierarchies, and felt

that man could and should have a personal relationship with God.

Fox gathered a thousand people here on Firbank Fell to preach his version of Christianity.

The rock where he stood is known as Fox's Pulpit.

'I've come to look at it with Roy Stephenson, a follower of the religious movement Fox founded here,

'the Quakers.'

How did they get the name Quakers, then?

A couple of years before George Fox came up here, he was preaching

wherever he could, and found himself jailed in Derby for interrupting a church service and causing a riot.

He was then taken before a judge.

Fox, rather than saying, "Yes, M'Lud, no, M'Lud, three bags full,"

said, "You ought to tremble and quake at the name of the Lord."

And this so incensed the judge that he said, "Get this quaker out of here and take him back to jail."

And the name Quaker stuck.

But Roy, you certainly get a sense of this being a natural pulpit up here.

From this place you could address people.

Well, yes, you certainly could.

-Probably more effectively than you could within the church.

-Yes.

But it's a commanding height, isn't it? It's very lovely.

It certainly is yes. You probably could get 1,000 people in this area.

For nearly 40 years, the Quakers suffered persecution and discrimination,

until an act of parliament allowed freedom of conscience.

Today, there are 350,000 followers worldwide, members of the Religious Society of Friends,

as Quakerism is officially known.

The heart of the movement is still here in the Cumbrian mountains.

Roy invited me down the road to Brigflatts Hall, a traditional Quaker meeting house for over 300 years.

But, if after visiting Fox's hillside pulpit I was expecting some hell-fire preaching, I was to be disappointed.

Quaker meetings take place in total silence,

until someone feels moved to speak.

We are very lucky to be in such a beautiful

part of the world, where we can go to the hills and experience

a peace and a quietness

that speaks to us of

a dimension beyond the hills.

After about an hour of contemplation, the meeting came to a close with a firm handshake and a cup of tea.

This beautiful Quaker meeting house we're in now

has an obvious emphasis on simplicity and modesty. Is that something that

you feel is important now?

I think it attracts a special sort of person who can tolerate being still and quiet and

doesn't want ritual and pomp.

Quakers, and anybody else who wants to come here, come here because of

the silence and the peace, and that maybe something else that

helps you be calm and helps you think more straight and just makes you relax more.

It's as if the simple quiet reflection you

experience on the mountain top is rediscovered in a Quaker meeting.

Because nobody speaks doesn't mean to say nothing's happening.

And the really strange thing that happens, is that...

often happens, is that people when they do stand up and speak,

will often speak the words that you have inside you as well, so connect

with something that's going on in your own thoughts.

I'm not being flippant here, but you don't sit and think about the shopping?

Oh, sometimes.

The Quakers find a kind of solace in the stillness and beauty of this landscape.

And yet these mountains can be a spur to more than quiet contemplation.

They may look eternal and calm from a distance.

But "God's pyramids", as one Quaker described them, can be dark and exhilarating, close to.

This is Sca Fell, part of the solid mass that dominates the centre of the Lake District.

It includes Scafell Pike, England's highest mountain, which rises to over 3,200 feet.

Nowadays, Sca Fell is popular amongst climbers seeking the thrill of a challenge.

But this is not a new thing.

In the mid-1700s, poets and philosophers began to climb into the hills for a similar buzz.

They were looking to compare their own human frailty with the power and majesty of the natural world.

And they were joined by one man who believed that to feel a connection to the mountain,

you had to experience it.

He was a poet and friend of Wordsworth, but his way of getting a

spiritual connection to the landscape was a lot more adventurous.

It's quite spooky, isn't it, with the mist here?

He wanted to experience the danger the mountain had to offer by taking unacceptable risks.

In 1802 he set off on alone on a nine-day 100-mile hike over the Cumbrian mountains.

He was Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

This was where he came to see what the mountain would do not just to his body, but to his mind.

What he was looking for was some of the terrific, horrid,

overpowering qualities of nature.

He did this trip wearing

just an ordinary suit and carrying a knapsack with a couple of books in it and a spare collar.

I'm not sure what he'd make of me, really.

He'd have though I was dressed like a sort of

knight in armour with all this gear.

Coleridge's lack of equipment didn't hold him back.

He delighted in the mountain experience and he loved what he saw.

He wrote, "From this sweet place I see the whole of Derwent Water.

"But for the haziness of the air I could see my own house."

Lucky old Coleridge!

But, like me, he hadn't really set out just for the view.

He wanted to play a game which nowadays would be considered completely suicidal.

He literally threw himself off a series of cliffs called Broad Stand,

a combination of vertical drops and narrow ledges.

It was ludicrous, but he wanted to test his mental strength with a mountaineering Russian roulette,

as he boasted to his lover - "There is one sort of gambling to which I am much addicted.

"I am too confident to look till I find a track,

"but I wander on, and where it is first possible to descend, there I go, relying on fortune."

What the great Romantic poet did was lower himself down

the first ledge that he came to.

It was apparently about seven foot so he got himself to his fingertip ends and dropped.

Then he came...

to the next one and he did exactly the same thing.

And the last ledge that he dropped himself down was much further than that, about twelve feet.

And he lay in a great heap at the bottom and flattened himself out on the ledge that

he'd laid on, and lay there trembling and looking up at the sky, as he described it, in a sort of trance.

He knew that he could use his intelligence to get himself off the mountain.

He had no fear that anything would go wrong.

I get the sense, though, that the rocks on that day were a good deal less slippery than they are today.

'Partly because it's slippery and partly because I'm not as mad as Coleridge,

'I'm going to tackle Broad Stand with the assistance

'of local mountain rescue team members Richard Warren and Julian Carradice.

'After all, the great poet might have survived, but it is a notorious accident black spot.

'People fall off all the time.'

I think what happens is that they come all the way down through there, they do all the steps,

they get worried and they say, "Well, should we go back up or should we go down there?"

-Yes?

-And they think, "Well it's easier to go down there."

How many people have you had to step in and rescue, then?

I haven't counted but I think I've been in about

30 incidents just on here in the years that I've been involved, yes.

But you're gonna help me down, I hope, using a bit of sort

of specialist equipment for the last bit.

Oh, yes, we'll put you in a harness and have ropes and do it much more safely, yes.

'I think Coleridge would have scoffed at this.

'He relied on his luck and his brains, not a safety rope and harness.

'But then, he was the very first adrenaline junkie.'

It is tied on there, is it?

Oh, it's tied on.

As I start going down, following Coleridge's route,

I can't understand how he managed to get down alive.

Go nice and slow and start moving your feet quite wide so that you can go into the V groove there. Yeah?

-OK.

-Yeah, lovely.

Keep that head back cos that'll keep your angle.

Yeah, perfect. That's it.

The more you lean on it the better.

The first bit for Coleridge wasn't too difficult, and the second drop was hairy, but not that big.

But the last one looked like suicide to me. It's very slippery.

Very, very slippery.

I can't get any purchase with my feet, you see.

I'm stuck now on the...

safety rope. There we are.

'Well, I think I can see why tackling Broad Stand was mental and physical stimulation for Coleridge.

'His final obstacle was a simple test of his body.

'This narrow gap is known as Fat Man's Agony.'

Fat Man's Agony, medium sized man's extreme slippery discomfort.

Look at me!

I'm covered in green slime

from top to bottom.

But the bottom is where I'm at.

The passion that Coleridge showed for climbing is, of course, shared by millions today.

Major industries have emerged to cater for this obsession.

In the towns of the Lake District, the shops overflow with outdoor accessories.

Everybody seems to be sporting a hi-tech anorak, even if they're

just nipping down to the High Street to look out for another one.

I sometimes get the impression that the great outdoors is really

one huge marketing opportunity.

But there is one essential bit of kit that every climber has to have.

Here we are!

Yes, Kendal mint cake.

After all, climbers use every bit of their body except, as far as I know, their teeth -

so obviously they're prepared to sacrifice them to any amount of sugar.

Mint cake fingers variety packs, assorted mint cake pieces, mint cake discs, chocolate covered.

They've probably done for more molars than any other sweet in the mountains.

I'm getting quite a hit just off the fumes!

Kendal Mint Cake is the soft and sugary underbelly of Cumbria.

Quiggins has been supplying the north-western sweet tooth since 1880.

Well, there's a very strong smell of peppermint, so unless this is the Kendal toothpaste manufacturer,

I think this is probably the place.

Kendal mint cake has been associated with climbing

ever since Edmund Hillary took some up Everest for its energy-releasing powers.

David Goodyear has been making the stuff for nearly 40 years, and today I'm the sorcerer's apprentice.

-How much water and glucose have you got in there?

-Five litres of water, roughly five litres of glucose.

-Roughly five litres?

-Yeah. Well, it's not an exact science.

-Is it not?

-No, no.

-I would rather hope it was.

-It's a little bit of a secret recipe, is it?

-I wouldn't go that far.

-All right...

-We'll turn the gas off.

Oooh!

Apparently, Kendal mint cake was banned in New York

in the 1950s for being called a cake while not containing any flour.

It's no longer banned, but they haven't changed the recipe.

My fillings are aching just watching this!

-And how much... How much sugar have you put in there now?

-30 pounds.

30 pounds of sugar.

-Or 15 kilos.

-It's largely sugar, is it?

Yes, yes. 90%.

-90% sugar?

-Yeah, yeah.

You don't make a diabetic Kendal mint cake, then?

We don't, no.

'Other ingredients are glucose - which is, well, sugar - and fondant, which is sugar.

'Fondant gives Kendal mint cake its opaque appearance, in case you

'thought it had something to do with making it sweeter.'

I'll put some mint in now.

-That's the mint?

-That's the mint.

That's the secret taste ingredient?

-That's the thing that makes all the difference?

-That's all.

Now you'll get a... This is where you want smellavision.

Unbelievably powerful.

Poof!

This is potent, this stuff.

-Oh, it's strong stuff.

-Foof! Blimey!

It's very highly concentrated.

Phew! Oh!

I'm going to just attend a little bit to the...

-To the physical effects.

-It's a good cold relief.

It is, it's just extraordinary.

I haven't felt this way since I saw The Champ, with Mickey Rooney in it.

It's time to make some cakes.

Kendal mint cake has been around since 1869.

A confectioner trying to make some glacier mints

took his eye off the stove and found that his mixture had gone cloudy.

Being a Cumbrian entrepreneur, he decided it was a new invention - mint cake.

If you're going to buy a Kendal mint cake I'd go and buy one

from this particular batch because I'm slightly overfilling the mould.

No, I'm slopping it everywhere.

Oh! Disaster!

And how many batches do you do in a day?

Usually about ten panfuls.

We've made 192 bars this morning,

so you've ten times 192.

That's what you would make in a day.

'500 tonnes of Kendal mint cake come out of this factory alone every year -

'enough to keep even Coleridge going.'

So, anorak, sweeties - what else what do I need to prepare for a bracing walk?

Guidebooks.

Every single section of the Lake District, somebody...

has categorised, mapped, laid out and given you instructions

on what you ought to look out for, but there is...

There's one name that today stands out, and that's Wainwright.

Alfred Wainwright's guides are probably amongst the most beautiful guidebooks ever produced.

Every page is lovingly handwritten and illustrated in miraculous detail.

Wainwright was born in Lancashire but fell in love with the Cumbrian mountains

when he came here on holiday at the age of 23.

He worked as a bookkeeper in an accountant's office, and it

was his gift for detail and neatness that distinguishes his guidebooks.

As you go through them you think, "Well I'd love to have this because it looks like a handmade book,"

as opposed to a sort of manufactured book.

Every single aspect of it is sort of hand-drawn but very beautifully done like a sort of...

Like a school geography project, only...

-Yes. It's really careful, everything is so carefully done.

-Yeah.

-He must have had a very specific mind, mustn't he, to sort of do all this?

-Yeah. So you still sell them?

Oh, yes. In great numbers.

Do you?

Wainwright spent 13 years exploring Cumbria and wrote seven guidebooks to the Lakes,

which became best-selling back-packers' bibles.

In all, he wrote over 50 books, but he shied away from fame.

When stopped in the hills and asked if he was the famous Alfred Wainwright, he always denied it.

He only agreed to being filmed late in the 1980s, a few years before his death.

The last of the guides was published in 1966.

Over the years, new paths and roads have been built and the guides

were in danger of becoming unreliable and going out of print.

But 63-year-old former taxi driver Chris Jesty, a Wainwright enthusiast,

was determined that the guides should live on.

After ten years of trying, he persuaded the publishers to update them.

Is this path here, is this actually in the original, in his original?

-No. No, that's a new one.

-Yeah?

-And the one we're on is new.

Yeah, so this is the sort of thing you're looking out for.

-Exactly.

-You're looking out to say...

'Now he is faithfully retracing every Wainwright route, adding new details as he goes.

'Chris and I are tackling Catbells,

'a modest, rolling mountain which rises gently from the western shore

'of the Derwent Water, just south of Keswick.

'According to Wainwright, it's one to climb after a good dinner -

'not a great challenge, but with a rewarding view of the best of the Lakes.

'And on the way up, Chris has a keen eye for any detail that needs

'updating, using the very latest in global positioning systems.'

Chris why do you have two GPS?

Well, I don't know if you'll have noticed it, but mechanical things tend to play up.

And the way these things play up is they

like to tell you you're somewhere when you're actually somewhere else.

But if I have two of these and they both tell me I'm in the same place...

-Yeah?

-Then I know that they're telling the truth.

-Right.

-If one of them tells you you're somewhere and the other tells you you're somewhere else...

-Yeah?

-Then you know that one of them is lying.

So when that happens, I get a third one out of my rucksack.

-Oh, you've got three?

-I have.

And then that'll tell me which one's telling me the truth and which one's lying.

'Chris learned his map drawing skills during a stint with the Ordnance Survey.

'I get the feeling that his attention to detail is a source of pride to him.'

Chris when did you... When did you start on this?

I can tell you to the day.

It was 2nd June 2003, and the reason I remember that is that it was exactly 50 years

from the announcement of the first ascent of Everest.

How long is it going to take you, do you think?

Well, I finished three volumes in three years, so that's

seven volumes for the pictorial guides and then plus the outlying fells, which I'm committed to doing.

If I do all that, that should probably take about ten years.

Ah, now that's what I was looking for. That path.

-I'll just go and have a quick look at that.

-OK.

Chris has only taken one day off since he began the project.

He starts walking every day at 5am, taking advantage of every hour of daylight.

Making slow but methodical progress, we finally reach the summit of Catbells.

From there, we could see just how accurate Wainwright's detailed

illustrations and directions really were.

So there's Hindscarth and Robinson and Catbells, there they are.

Yes, I have so much confidence in these panoramas I never check those.

See, you can put everything in place because there's Robinson

and Hindscarth up that way.

It had been, just as Wainwright promised, a gentle walk with a beautiful panorama.

What I... What I really like about Wainwright is that his emphasis is not at all on the challenge.

He's always showing the easy route, in fact, and how friendly the fells are.

"Words cannot adequately describe the rare charm of Catbells, nor its ravishing view.

"But no publicity is necessary.

"It has a bold come-hither look that compels one's steps, and no suitor ever returns disappointed."

His emphasis is on the beauty,

and he seeks to inspire people to come.

And when people do come, they can revel

in the extraordinary scenery that Wainwright - and Wordsworth - enthused about.

This breathtaking landscape has become precious to us, so much so that the National Trust,

set up by disciples of Wordsworth in 1895,

has bought just over 200 square miles of the Lake District in order to conserve it.

Their land includes over 90 farms, like this one - Black Hall, twelve miles south of Catbells.

Owning farms is the National Trust's way of making sure that the scenery of the Lake District is protected.

'But it is a complicated relationship between tradition and the landscape.'

Hello.

Come on, back! Come on! Come on!

Come on! Come on, in!

Come on, in here. Come on in.

Tony Temple leases Black Hall from the National Trust.

He's taking me to see a particularly important breed of sheep.

-These are Herdwick sheep, are they?

-These are Herdwick sheep.

And what's the particular quality that relates to them?

The hardiness is the main quality.

They're the only breed of sheep that can survive and do well on these mountains.

And that's an old breed. Some people say it's a Viking breed.

That's what I've been led to believe.

Herdwicks are unique to these mountains, but they're almost worthless.

Their fleece will sell for just ten pence, but it costs seven times that to shear it.

So, to prevent the breed from disappearing altogether, and to maintain the centuries-old

appearance of these bare uplands, the National Trust gives money to Tony to keep Herdwicks.

We get paid to look after the sheep, to keep them on the mountain, to

maintain the walls and just keep it looking like it is, really.

So we're paid to keep the mountains how you want to see them.

All this is only possible because the Herdwick sheep have a unique relationship with the mountains.

They have a natural instinct that keeps them connected to these hills.

Come on!

Come on, up a bit. Come on!

Tony is skilfully shepherding his ewes to the mountain gate, but

once they're there - amazingly - they won't need any more looking after.

Herdwick sheep are what's known here as "heathed".

It means they have a built-in homing device.

Like salmon swimming up the river of their birth, they know exactly where they're going.

-Now this is the fell gate?

-This is the fell gate.

We're going to open this and then they'll just go off.

-Yeah, they'll just spread out over this mountain here.

-But they go off and they find their own place?

They'll head back to, yeah, where they were born

and raised as lambs and they should go back to that area.

They don't all, but most of them should go back to that area.

Marvellous thing, isn't it? It's a marvellous thing, how it all fits together.

Yeah, yeah.

It isn't just something that happens overnight.

While we'd been chatting, the flock had waited patiently by the gate, ready to go to their hillside home.

I think, I think what makes them feel so well-behaved is the fact that they do it all so quietly.

The silence of the lambs.

The sheep keep the hills looking the way that people want them to be.

In fact, it's the way that Wordsworth wanted them to be.

It's as if we've fallen in love with a particular image of the Lake District, an antique landscape.

We can't bear to think of it any other way.

Thanks to farms like Tony's, the mountains have barely changed in 300 years.

We seem to want to preserve a region in a moment in time.

This is the landscape that Turner, Constable and Gainsborough painted in the 1800s.

They wanted to capture the soul or the essence of the place.

In the same tradition, people continue to seek to record the elusive quality of mountain scenery.

Gordon Stainforth is a renowned landscape photographer.

For him, the spirit of the Lake District

is a particularly compelling one, and he believes dramatic weather can be the key to it.

He doesn't mind that it's blowing a gale on Hardknott Hill today - he spends his life waiting for the

perfect moment, after having climbed for hours and sometimes days in search of the ideal location.

-What are we looking for here?

-We're looking for a superb viewpoint

up Esk, up Eskdale here, and in fact Scafell is under that cloud there.

-OK.

-And I think if we go about 50 yards onto that grass,

we'll be able to see into Eskdale and into the valley bottom.

We battled on against the wind to find the vantage point Gordon was seeking.

Wow, that's pretty good.

That's the very spot.

So this is part of your job? To just find the ideal place and sit there until you get that

break, or the conditions you're looking for, where the light suddenly shines down?

Yeah, it's horribly like waiting for a kettle to boil.

You know, when you're in the right place but you've got all the camera gear,

it often doesn't behave and the cloud moves in.

Gordon has perfected his art form over 20 years of photography and a lifetime of climbing.

What camera do you use?

This is a Hasselblad, a good old trusty workhorse.

It's not a digital then?

No, it's the very opposite. Manual.

The whole body is made from one piece of metal...

-Right.

-Built like a tank.

So Gordon, why did you start photographing mountains?

You know, it might sound pretentious but I'm much more interested in the

place and nature on a grand scale than I am in photography, in a way.

It's the place I'm interested in and on a really grand scale - it's like Coleridge -

I'm more interested in how we relate really to the cosmos and the whole natural landscape.

Too many photographers think that photography is just about photography.

It sounds ridiculous, but what I mean is, it's about the place and

one's feelings for the place and how it touches the imagination.

And it's not just a thing of getting a nice visual image.

It's to try and give something of the huge landscape, really,

and something of one's feelings of the place, rather than just a pretty calendar-type image.

Gordon aims to make more than a picture.

He wants to reveal the character of the Lake District and its effect on us,

just like the Romantic poets and painters of 200 years ago.

It's a test of his eye and his patience.

This is so typical of the Lakes, what we're seeing now.

In fact, I think it's lifting slightly towards Scafell.

-Yeah.

-Um, and this is just the kind of day when it looks very,

very unlikely, but you sometimes get something extraordinary happening.

And you don't get anything extraordinary happening when it's all hot and sunny and hazy.

But after hours of sitting patiently in the wet, Gordon called it a day.

For us, the clouds refused to budge.

The next morning, the wind had died down, the clouds had finally lifted,

and Gordon had come up with a much more ambitious idea.

Ominously, we were joined by a rock-climbing instructor, Phil Poole.

We were heading up to Napes Needle, a dramatic pinnacle which clings to the flank of Great Gable.

It's a towering, pyramid-shaped mountain,

a mile and a half north of Scafell in the heart of the Lake District.

Gordon had decided he wanted to take a photograph of me on top of the Needle, and naively, I agreed.

Gordon's plan was to recreate one of the earliest examples of mountain photography,

a 1901 picture of some climbers on the Needle.

It was taken by the Abraham brothers, who were pioneers of mountain photography in the 1890s.

George and Ashley Abraham were besotted with rock-climbing, and they filmed their own exploits.

Even though the camera equipment of that time was heavy and cumbersome,

they hauled it up into the hills and were amongst the first to do so.

Today, Gordon needs little more than a Hasselblad, a tripod and a willing accomplice.

And perhaps a bit more visibility than yesterday.

Here we are. What a view that is.

That's, that's Wastwater, is it?

-Wastwater, yes.

-And Wasdale.

As we get closer, Great Gable gets steeper, and we find ourselves right underneath the needle.

There it is, Griff.

Yes, now I've got my hat on I can't see it!

Ooh!

Yes. It's got a real Easter Island quality, hasn't it?

The point about this piece of rock is it was the first

real rock climb of any seriousness done in 1886,

and people like the Abraham brothers were the first photographers to take dramatic climbing pictures and, um,

so that's what we're going to try to do today is

get a picture of you

on Napes Needle.

Nape's Needle is a frankly terrifying column of rock, towering

60 feet into the air with a drop of 400 feet on the other side of it.

Gordon will have to position himself on a ledge opposite, just as George Abraham did in 1901.

-Look straight across.

-So we divide up now?

-I think so, yes.

-Phil and I go on and you go off...

-I trundle into position.

-OK, right.

As Phil got me roped up, the reality of what we were doing began to dawn on me.

I'm hanging on for dear life and I'm sitting on a great big chair up here. OK.

I'm a virgin rock climber.

I've got to try to get myself up a vertical rock face in the name of photography.

And if that wasn't bad enough, I had to watch Phil treat it as if it were a giant stepladder.

Ooh, that's a tricky one.

-It's not too bad.

-Isn't it?

OK, I'll take your word for it.

Are you still there?

Nearly there.

I feel so happy here,

just sat on this large ledge of rock looking around.

Do you mind if I stay here for another hour or two?

'I'm afraid not. With Gordon in position and Phil

'secured on the Needle, there was no putting it off any longer.'

Right, climb when you're ready now. I've got you.

-OK, I'm coming up now.

-Right, up you come then.

Just take your time.

I've got to try and even work this out now.

'Oh dear. It all comes flooding back.

'I'm in the school gym. "Come on boy, you can do it.

' "Use those shoulders."

'Well, I didn't have any shoulders when I was ten.

'And I don't think I've grown any in the intervening 43 years.'

Hang on, I'm a wee bit stuck as to where to go next.

Hang on.

Just keeping the rope tight on you.

I feel...

-Wait a minute.

-You're doing fine.

That's it, yeah.

'Yeah, Phil was doing his bit to calm me down.

'I had all my weight on my fingertips and my heart in my mouth, and although I was tied on,

'I didn't really want to go banging about like a soap on a rope.'

It's a bit touchy, this crack.

It looks like the side of a house!

That's because it is.

As you get higher, the footholds get better.

-Do they?

-Yeah, honest.

'Just when I thought it couldn't get worse, it got worse.

'It felt like someone had been polishing the side of the Needle.'

All right?

Well, done, excellent. Yes, that's it, yes.

Well done, yes.

Out to your left there's some good handholds now.

Look out to your left.

Way up to the left. There you go, excellent, yeah, good!

It's hard work, isn't it?

It's more than hard for me, mate. I feel it.

I just don't have the physical strength.

You're doing great. A couple more moves and you're on easier ground then.

Well done.

'Some six days later -

'or so it seemed - I reached Phil's vantage point.'

-Come up just to the right.

-All right.

Just step over that, sit down there.

Well done, Griff.

Congratulations, mate.

You did fantastic. Well done.

I couldn't do that at all.

I think you did well. I mean you must've done it, cos I can't pull you up.

I mean, you climbed it, it was really good.

'Yeah, well, thanks, Phil.

'I felt flabby and clumsy.

'I had to scrape my way up using every bit of energy I had.

'Gordon got his photograph - a near-replica of the Abraham picture

'with a terrified novice hanging on for dear life.

'Napes Needle had certainly been an experience for me.

'And climbing it had been a bit more of a challenge than I expected.'

When you get up there there's a sort of crack.

And there's nothing as far as I could tell to put your feet on.

Hmm, is rock-climbing for me?

I think I know the answer to that.

Perhaps there are some aspects of nature that are best appreciated from a distance.

But nothing detracts from the wonderful revelation that the Lakes have been.

They are as inspiring today as they were over 300 years ago, when people first began to visit these mountains

and wondered at their beauty, and experienced their power.

This is mountain country that can be appreciated by anyone,

as Wordsworth wrote, "who has an eye to perceive and a heart to enjoy".

Next time on Mountain I'll be visiting the Central Highlands of Scotland.

I'll explore the vast Cairngorm range, attempt to reach Britain's highest summit, Ben Nevis,

and find out how we tamed this wild landscape.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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