Coniston Fells
England
11 January 2008 09:57
If you stand at the top of Wrynose Pass you’ll see a limestone monolith carved with the word ‘LANCASHIRE’. This is the Three Shire Stone, and it marks the boundary between old Lancashire, Cumberland and Westmorland as it was before the 1974 boundary changes.
It also marks the highest link between the Coniston Fells and the rest of the Lake District, a symbolic point of separation both human and physical, and one that in many ways defines the feel and character of the Coniston Fells.
Ringed by the deep wooded depths of the Duddon Valley to the west, and by the complex low fells of Tilberthwaite to the east, you could quite happily tow off the Coniston Fells (with the help of plate tectonics of course) and park them just about anywhere in the world, and they would stand alone without looking out of place.
The whole range is a slightly bizarre arrangement of landscapes: on the one hand you have wild craggy tops and heavily wooded valleys, then on the other you have messed-up bits of walled intake land and mine and quarry remains, all of which is thrown against a backdrop of both sea and mountains.
It’s a real ‘Jackson Pollock’ affair, but thanks to the softening of time brought about by gentle decay the whole thing works, and to borrow a slightly tired old – but nevertheless pertinent – phrase: ‘it’s a visual feast’.
