Bowness on Lake Windermere, 1981

Wednesday 3 June 1981. A trip out to Bowness-on-Windermere in the Lake District.

Lake Windermere is England's largest lake, by length and surface area and volume. It is 11 miles long (18 kilometres) and 1 mile (1.6 kilometres) wide at its widest point. It reaches a depth of 210 feet (64 metres) and yet is dwarfed by some Scottish lochs and Northern Irish loughs.

Finding a car parking space even in 1981 was difficult enough, at time of writing in 2023 it is nigh on impossible unless you get there really early in the morning or are willing and able to walk a long way!

Bowness is just over halfway up the lake from south to north and the line of the lake takes a gentle curve to the west at Bowness. This has formed an area of shingle beach from which a pier and several jetties allow access to various steamer services and pleasure craft.

Looking roughly nor nor west up the lake. Despite the name it is more a lake than a mere, which is defined as being broad in relation to its depth, not the case at Windermere. There is a town also called Windermere one and a half miles (2 kilometres) north of Bowness so the term "Lake Windermere" doesn't so much describe it twice, but serves to distinguish the lake from the town.

Lake cruiser Teal setting out from Bowness. At the time there were four large cruisers on the lake: Tern (1881), Swift (1900), Teal (1936), and Swan (1938). Swift was broken up in 1998, 17 years after this visit.

The beach and moorings at Bowness. In addition to the large "steamers" (they were all converted to diesel engines in the 1950s), there are numerous smaller pleasure boats from small row boats and self-drive motor boats to mid-sized cruisers, some of which visit stops at the head (north) of the lake and/or the foot (south) of the lake and many which take you for a boat ride around a few islands, the largest being Belle Isle, which is 0.62 miles (one kilomettre) in length, oriented southwest to northeast opposite Bowness.

The slender beach, as with the one at Waterhead at the top of the lake, is a favourite haunt of many of the lake's waterfowl and ducks and swans often expect to share some of your picnic with you! Which does lead them to eating far too much bread than is good for them and can even be dangerous as when wet it expands and can cause blockages to their windpipes.

A line of rowboats pulled up onto the shingle with a couple of mid-sized launches waiting to go out on sight-seeing cruises. Nearest us is Muriel II, built by Borwicks in the nearby town of Windermere in 1935-6. With open air bench seating in the bows she has a single enclosed deck behind.

Another shot of Muriel II later in the afternoon, returning from a sightseeing cruise. This photograph was for many years my only successful magazine front cover shot.

It was published in the July issue of the following year of the magazine Lakescene, a brilliant surprise and achievement of a long cherished milestone made even better when I flipped the page to see another of my shots taking the entirety of the magazine's page 3. Ah yes - a Page 3 photographer...! I would achieve another couple of cover shots in later years in other magazines, but as they say: you always remember your first!

Not that I was the only photographer active that day! These three ladies were taking joint interest in getting the very best from their Kodak 110 Instamatic camera. These took a negative about the size of your ring finger's fingernail.

A brief foray into Bowness itself away from the lakeside. The parish church of St Martin dates from an earlier church which was on this site as early as the year 1203. This burned down in 1480 and the current church was built and consecrated in 1483.

The main shopping street of Bowness is found on the steep rise from the lakeside leading towards the town of Windermere. Thus it can be very busy with traffic whilst often being crowded by tourists.

There are a few side streets but Bowness could hardly be called a large town. Towards the outskirts there are more tranquil scenes to be found.

Back at the lake. The three ladies from before have finished their film in the Instamtic camera. "Have you taken all 12?" comes an indignant voice, "Eeh, I'm going to have to buy another film now ready for Christmas!"

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A Day on Lake Windermere

Yesterday we took advantage of both being off work on the same day and drove up to the Lake District.

There wasn't a surplus of parking spaces to be found in Bowness, but I managed to squeeze the car into a space and we paid to go up to Waterhead at the top of the lake on the regular sailings.

These go every twenty minutes from Bowness Pier and you can get off at Waterhead and return on a later boat which is exactly what we did.

It's a half hour journey from Bowness to Waterhead and here we are, approaching Waterhead Pier. We took the small somewhat ramshackle bus into Ambleside. The bus is an electric vehicle and I suspect may have started life as a milk float... Still, it's cheap and cheerfull and takes you from the pier to the Lion Hotel in the centre of Ambleside.

We had some lunch - well a breakfast actually - in Daisy's Cafe with a mug of "milky Nescafe". Ooh! Much better and far less pretentious than Star(after your)bucks or Costa(fortune). And we got a decent normal sized mug of excellent coffee instead of having to buy a bucket full of froth over too-strong espresso!

We walked the mile back to the pier at Waterhead to catch the returning boat to Bowness. On the way Miss Franny graciously ordered - er... I mean allowed - me to buy an addition to the Lilliput Lane cottage collection which over the years has grown from a hamlet to a sprawling conurbation. She came out with three new cottages. Three!!! Well, to be fair one was a freebie, but even so, where she's going to put them I don't know... It's a good job they don't come with streets and cars because there's no space between the houses to drive anything wider than a scale pram...

We had an ice cream at Waterhead whilst waiting for the boat to come. They do a chocolate dip ice cream. Which means an ice cream cone dipped upside down into molten chocolate which solidifies all round it. Somewhat scrummy, though quite messy to eat. I had my other hand full of camera and bags of cottages so had to put up with Miss Franny laughing whilst cracked chocolate stuck out from my mouth and melting ice cream ran down my chin... At least I had the camera and could avoid photographic evidence...

Half an hour later we arrived at Bowness again. Miss Cumbria was just setting off with a full load of passengers on her tour. The "Lakes" attract people from far and wide. You are as likely to hear Japanese and American accents as northern English accents. The Lake District was famous for its poets and artists and authors.

We walked back to the car, past the rapidly growing funfair being set up next to the car park and thanked our lucky stars we had not gone up there today. There's a huge air show today at Windermere with the Red Arrows appearing. Unless you arrived about 7:00am this morning there won't be a single car parking space available or a single road without a massive nose-to-tail queue...

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Windermere Sunset

The last entry of the 4 October 1981 Lake District set.

We had ended the day at Ambleside and before we set off back we watched the sun disappear over the horizon from Waterhead, the northern tip of Lake Windermere.

We walked along the lake edge for a while drinking in the tranquillity and loving the colours in the sky.

This sort of photograph was notoriously difficult to print and I've never seen these black and white photos look so good!

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Rainy Days and Memories

Remember when petrol was so cheap that you could take the family out at weekend just for the joy of a drive in the country? Recent governments seem intent on taxing things so much that we stop using them for pleasure. The only people left smoking are addicts and the only people driving do so for essentials only. In the search for alternative ways of raising revenue it's already been proposed that parking fines will punish you more than if you cause grievous bodily harm...

Anyway, in the last days of September 1981 I could still afford to use a bit of petrol for a family run out and so we found ourselves one rainy Sunday waiting for the ferry to take us over Lake Windermere to Hawkshead.

It was really pelting down, but that's a regular occurrence in the Lake District anyway so we were prepared. If you can see past the discomfort of heavy waterproof clothing and the odd trickle down the neck you can savour the muted colours and soft, soft lighting that comes from the grey sky and rolling clouds. So it was this day. We took the Ford Cortina up the narrow ways to Tarn Hows and found we had the car park almost to ourselves. That didn't happen all that often...

We got out for a short walk. Short because it really was uncomfortable in the pouring rain and whilst our coats were waterproof a soggy squelching soon made me realise that my shoes were just ordinary day wear and not the rugged hiking boots that may have kept my feet a bit dryer. A good pair of wellies may have made more sense, though then they always drip down from the top don't they?

So we stayed long enough to take a few photos and then got back in the car where our waterlogged clothing really started to make us feel uncomfortable...

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Nice End to a Not Nice Week

It's been one of those weeks. Started with the car screeching one of those metallic squeals at us. Stopped at the next services on the motorway to find the rear wheel radiating heat alarmingly.

Hang on... I paid £200 to have that problem on that wheel fixed not so long ago! Luckily the problem this time (only this time?) was the handbrake sticking on which required a new handbrake cable fitted. Huge relief until I went to pick it up and found another bill for £200 waiting for me. "It's a right job with them...!" For £200 for a handbrake cable I should bloody hope it's a right job...

Long term readers (er... you do exist, right?) may remember me having to have an operation on the nose a few years ago and whilst it went spiffingly, (ignoring the following infection which had me off work for three months and resulted in some spectacular bouts of nose bleeding) the nasal passages have been steadily shrinking since then and it's getting to crisis point again. Date for the specialist has been set, but for now I'm going through all the familiar side effects of the steroid spray with 2 or 3 (smaller) nosebleeds a day.

Plus my ear bunged up with wax and I've gone fairly deaf in one ear - makes David's singing a bit more palatable of course, but not good really (my hearing I mean, not David's singing which at times approaches ok...) and my ear feels as though I'm in a descending aeroplane and wouldn't I just love it to go "pop" and clear! Putting ear oil in has only softened the outside of the wax "plug" and eventually after a full week of not being able to shift it, I got the doc to have a look to make sure I wasn't trying to soften the remains of a spider that had curled up and died in there... His reaction was that it was unlikely to shift before another week goes by and that it will need syringing out even then. Great... If you ask me a question and I don't respond it's nothing personal, ok?

And then poor Mum got confirmation that she has cancer, though relief all round when it turned out to be contained and should hopefully be easily operated on. But that was obviously the big scare and health story of the week and I'm not even thinking of joking about that.

Finally in the ever-growing health row of dominoes that I've had for the past few years, the doc gave me some water tablets to tackle the size of my feet, which now require clowns' shoes, following my introduction to the pills for hypertension. (I'm busy - I need high blood pressure!)

A week on the first lot made little difference, so yesterday morning the doc, after freaking out a little when I asked him to check there wasn't a spider in my ear, upped the doseage of my water pills with the result that today has been extremely interesting during a day out to the Lake District, where we took Mum for her birthday. That half hour was the longest boat trip I've ever taken. I was thinking I might have to make a personal apology to the residents of Manchester (whose drinking water is pumped from Lake Windermere) but, luckily, I made it onto the pier (unfortunate term...) at Ambleside and they had some Gents...

I don't follow football that much but sheesh I wish I was paid several annual wages every week just for cocking things up. Most people get into trouble for doing a rotten job. Footballers apparently get into a strop at a demonstration of fans' disappointment...

Talking of the World Cup, Marlene - one of the Ladies-over-the-Water, sent news of a woman who had torn her windpipe through blowing one of those vuvuzela horns. She said "I'm not blowing one again - it wasn't much fun..."

Meanwhile, Amanda, another of the threesome that make up the Ladies-over-the-Water, sent me a photo at Christmas of a new wine decanter she was very proud of. She and her hubby Paul and her neighbours were gathered round it drinking the wine from straws... Not sure they quite got the concept of a decanter, but anyway, she's broken it and asked if I'd print a memorial here... It was probably a fight over the last drop...

And (because I just can't leave her out can I?) Evy has had some new decking done in her garden outside her back door. There's been a long standing joke about her house because she once confused me by describing her stairs - it sounded as though they end abruptly halfway up her wall. Anyway... they obviously match the rest of the house because the back door has a drop of three feet to the garden...

Wedding Gig at Windermere

Last night we played in Windermere. It was ages before anyone fished us out... No, we weren't in the lake, we were at the Lowood Hotel, up near Ambleside, playing for the wedding of Kelly and Steve in support of a rock band who took over from us later on.

An early night for us then but a great night none-the-less, as there were a few inflatable guitars being passed round the audience and we got people to come out with them to help us play some rock and roll numbers!

Afterwards we headed over to Kendal to visit David's sister, Elaine and her husband David. They had made a fabulous meal for us and we were in a great frame of mind as we set off back home around midnight!

Yoghurt Goes Thirsty In Windermere

It seems that Dan One the yoghurt has made it to Bowness on Lake Windermere.

No doubt thirsty after all that travelling - even for an active yoghurt, Myerscough to Windermere is a long way - imagine his distress to find the drinking fountain was dry...

If he sups from the lake we can only hope he doesn't get washed away or, even worse, punctured by a curious duck!

Members of the public are asked to be vigilant but before approaching him with bravado please remember... he's pro-biotic and could go off on one!