England - The Lake District & Cumbria

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Best enlarged Honister Pass is a mountain pass in the English Lake District. It is located on the B5289 road, linking Seatoller, in the valley of Borrowdale, to Gatesgarth at the southern end of Buttermere. The pass reaches an altitude of 1,167 feet (356 m), making it one of the highest in the region, and also one of the steepest, with gradients of up to 1-in-4 (25%). The saddle at the watershed is known as Honister Hause, using the Cumbrian word hause for such a feature. Flowing through the pass from the summit to Buttermere is Gatesgarthdale Beck. Honister Pass is one of three passes that link the tourist area around Keswick, including Derwent Water and Borrowdale, with the valley of the River Cocker, including the lakes of Buttermere, Crummock Water and Loweswater. From north to south these passes are Whinlatter Pass, Newlands Pass and Honister Pass. Honister Slate Mine and Honister Hause Youth Hostel are located at the summit of the pass. Honister Pass holds the UK 24-hour rainfall record; in the 24 hours to 6 pm on 5 December 2015, 341.4 mm of rain fell there.

Best enlarged The Honister Slate Mine (which is also known as the Slate Mine in Honister) in Cumbria is the last working slate mine in England. Quarrying for Westmorland green slate. The first slate may have been extracted from the Honister Slate Mine during the Roman times. Fragments (broken bits) of Honister slate have been found at the site of the Roman Bath House at Ravenglass and Hardknott Fort. Much later, the monks of Furness Abbey (Barrow-in Furness) who owned land in Borrowdale are thought to have mined at Honister. The early quarry men walked from Keswick to Honister. They started early on a Monday morning and lived rough on the mountains until the end of the week or even longer, working the slate by hand in all kinds of weather. Miners even walked from as far away as Egremont and Whitehaven in West Cumberland to spend the week working at the Honister Slate Mine. Stone huts called ‘bothies’ were built by the miners to live in. They were built from the slate from Fleetwith Pike and were only about 3 metres wide by 4 metres long. They had very thick walls to keep the wind and the rain out. They contained a fireplace so the miners at least had some warmth. The men would live in these bothies for up to two weeks, or for as long as their supply of food lasted. The first real surviving evidence of ‘slate getting’ at Honister is from around 1643. The main areas where this took place is at the top of the Crag at Bull Gill and also Ash Gill, at a height of about 2000 feet (610 metres). This is how the slate industry began at Honister. It was to be a way of life at Honister for many generations. Little was to change here for nearly three hundred years.

It must have been a dry period as the beck is very low. Best enlarged

English Lake District

This view down the lengh of Rannerdale takes in the lakes of Crummock Water and Loweswater beyond. The hills between the two lakes are the Loweswater Fells with Solway Firth, between England and Scotland, in the far distance.

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Best enlarged Buttermere is a lake in the English Lake District in North West England. The adjacent village of Buttermere takes its name from the lake. The lake is 1.25 miles (2,010 m) by .25 miles (400 m) wide, and is 75 feet (23 m) deep.[1] It has an elevation above sea level of 329 feet (100 m). A place of considerable scenic value, it is situated towards the head of the valley of the River Cocker and is surrounded by fells, notably the High Stile range to the south west, Robinson to the north east, Fleetwith Pike and Haystacks to the south east and Grasmoor to the north west. There are two possible origins for the name "Buttermere": One, that Buttermere means "the lake by the dairy pastures" (from the Old English "butere mere"). Whaley suggests this as the correct interpretation: " 'butter lake, the lake with good pasture-land', from OE 'butere' 'butter', conveying the fertile nature of the flat alluvial land at both ends of the lake, plus 'mere' 'lake',..." Two, that it is the corrupt form of a personal name. Robert Ferguson asserts in his 1866 work, "The Northmen in Cumberland and Westmoreland" that Buttermere derives from the Old Norse personal name "Buthar", as in "Buthar's mere" (lake). This accords with local tradition, which says that the valley of Buttermere was part of the holdings of an 11th-century Norse chieftain called "Buthar" (sometimes spelt "Boethar").

Best enlarged Ennerdale Water is the most westerly lake in the Lake District National Park in Cumbria, England. It is a glacial lake, with a maximum depth of 150 feet (45 metres), and at ½ mile to a mile (700 to 1,500 metres) wide and 2½ miles (3.9 kilometres) long is one of the smallest lakes in the area. To the west of the lake lies the small village of Ennerdale Bridge, consisting of two pubs and a few houses. The lake has been referred to in guidebooks and maps variously as "Brodewater" (1576), "Brodwater" (1695), "Broad Water" (1760), "Ennerdale Water" (1784) and "Ennerdale Lake" in Otley's Guide (1823). It is now the Ordnance Survey convention to name it "Ennerdale Water". The lake lies in the eponymous valley of Ennerdale, surrounded by some of the highest and best-known fells in Cumbria including: Great Gable (899 m), Green Gable, Brandreth, High Crag, Steeple and Pillar. Ennerdale Water is fed by the River Liza and other streams, and in turn feeds the River Ehen, which runs to the Irish Sea. Although the lake is natural, in 1902 a shallow weir was added to what is probably a glacial moraine to maintain the level. The lake is owned by United Utilities, which abstracts water to serve customers in the Whitehaven area. United Utilities plans to stop using Ennerdale as a source of water by 2025, as the Environment Agency has confirmed that it will withdraw the abstraction licence to protect the environment of Ennerdale, its lake and the River Ehen.

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Best enlarged Found by a track on Ling Fell

Previously posted in 2016 but recently deleted in error;-(