Drawing 17: Elterwater
Direction of view: WNW
Notes: From the path from Skelwith Bridge to Elterwater village, just as it reaches Elterwater lake. The trees AW drew are still recognisable, and the picture needs to be taken when there are no leaves on them.
This scene also appears on page 14 of Wainwright in Lakeland, page 204 of Westmorland Heritage, and is drawing 6 in A Second Furness Sketchbook. The Furness drawing is of exactly the same scene as the sketch, even to two birds sitting on a tree branch, but it is a different drawing. A photograph of this scene is in the County Archives at Kendal, reference WDAW/4/1/1/2/3, but it differs from the sketch.
Comments: I first took this photo on slide film on 12th April 1978, on a day in Langdale with Peter Messenger (see Drawing 10).
I made various attempts to take this picture for the digital project, frustrated by leaves on the trees, and even by photographing the wrong trees! However, I finally got it on 2nd February 2019. The day was quite cloudy initially, but clearing. Sheelagh Hughes Hallett and I had coffee and cake in Chesters café at Skelwith Bridge, before strolling up by the river to take the picture in conditions quite similar to those experienced in 1978. The Langdale Pikes are hardly visible through the branches even when the trees are bare, and there are certainly better foregrounds available these days; but that’s not the object of this project!
