THE ENGLISH LAKE COUNTRY 



a small handful of local fishermen, mostly working men, 

 but excellent sportsmen all, and such others from Kendal 

 or Penrith as can make opportunity to get to the hills 

 now and again for a day. 



Hayeswater can be as grisly in a storm as any 

 mountain lake I know. One morning a few years ago 

 I walked up there by myself, with a strong rain-laden 

 wind from the SE. When I arrived, it had increased 

 to a gale, which striking, I presume, the back of Kidsty 

 Pike and the High Street, reared up like an angry horse ; 

 and with renewed strength tore over the screes and 

 down the narrow funnel between the heights, and 

 was lashing the waters of the lake into a seething 

 mass of white breakers. It was with great difficulty I 

 mounted my tackle at all, and when I had achieved so 

 much I could scarcely stand to use it. But the south 

 shore of Hayeswater is a long succession of rounded 

 humps clad with short grass, which fall almost sheer 

 into the lake, and between them are little hollows with 

 a scrap of flat shore each a few paces long. Within 

 these, though struggHng over the low bluffs from one 

 to the other was arduous, I managed to maintain my- 

 self and get a line out somehow into the waves, slightly 

 tempered as they were by each small promontory, and 

 at nearly every cast I rose or hooked a fish. I think 

 I really should have had a big basket that day if I 

 could have stuck it out. But almost immediately 

 more serious rain began, I won't say to fall, but to drive 

 in solid sheets, and after about an hour I was so 

 battered that I gave in. Rain one may endure, wind 

 one can put up with, but when you get a rain-laden gale 

 driving every fresh cold drop, as it were, right through 



275 



