button to main menu   West's Guide to the Lakes, 1778/1821

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Page 200:-
opened a fine valley, with green meadows and hedge-rows, a gentleman's house peeping forth from a grove of old trees. On a nearer approach appeared myriads of cattle and horses in the road itself, and all the fields round me, a brisk stream hurrying across the way, thousands of clean, healthy people in their best party-coloured apparel: farmers and their families esquires and their daughters, hastening up from the dales and down the fells from every quarter, glittering in the sun, and pressing forward to join the throng. While the dark hills, on whose tops the mists were yet hanging, served as a contrast to this gay and moving scene, which continued for near two miles more along the road, and the crowd (coming towards it) reached on as far as Appleby. On the ascent of the hill above Appleby, the thick hanging woods, and the long reaches of the Eden, clear, rapid and full as ever, winding below, with views of the castle and town, gave much employment to the mirror [1]; but now the sun was wanting, and the sky overcast. Oats and barley cut everywhere, but not carried in. Passed Kirkby-thore, Sir William Dalston's house at Acorn-bank, Whinfield-park, Harthorn-oaks, Countess-pillar, Brougham-castle, Mr. Brougham's large new house; crossed the Eden and the Eamont with its green vale, and dined at three o'clock with Mrs. Buchanan, at Penrith, on trout and partridge. In the afternoon walked up beacon-hill, a mile to the top, and could see Ulls-water through an opening in the bosom of that cluster of broken mountains, which the Dr. well remembers, Whinfield and Lowther parks, &c. and the craggy tops of an hundred nameless hills: these lie to the west and south. To the north, a great extent of black and dreary plains. To the east, Cross-fell, just visible through mists and vapours hovering round it.
[1] Mr. Gray carried usually with him on these tours a plano-convex mirror, of about four inches diameter, on a black foil, and bound up like a pocket-book. A glass of this sort is perhaps the best and most convenient substitute for a camera obscura, of anything that has hitherto been invented, and may be had of any optician.
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gazetteer links
button -- Acorn Bank
button -- Appleby-in-Westmorland
button -- Beacon Hill
button -- (Brough: Brough Fair 1769)
button -- Brougham Castle
button -- Brougham Hall
button -- Countess Pillar
button -- Cross Fell
button -- Eamont, River
button -- Eden, River
button -- "Harthorn Oaks" -- Hart Horn Tree
button -- Kirkby Thore
button -- Lowther Park
button -- Penrith
button -- (road, Appleby to Penrith)
button -- Ullswater
button -- "Whinfield Park" -- Whinfell Park

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