Keswick, Sunday,

The reconstruction of the old Honister road from Borrowdale to Buttermere, whose propriety has been discussed with some passion, is a good way towards completion. Some months’ work remain, but the pitch which steeply accompanies Hause Gill is all finished except the entrance to it from Seatoller.

There has been some reconstruction of the surface here and there to take off awkward sills, and the bank has been cut away in places to make a width of twenty feet or so, which varies but does not become so small that two cars could not pass. The surface looks like macadam. It is actually stone, bound with tar and covered with fine green chippings. The margin on the gill side is made of irregular boulders in which ferns and mosses and heather have been planted. So it is a very pretty motor-road indeed as it follows the gill.

There must he close on a hundred men working on the road. They are now mainly busy with the section between the point at which the gradient eases off and the crossing of the hause. It is a section of about three-quarters of a mile in which the old road follows the lower slope of a marshy bottom, while the newer toll road to the quarries at the hause follows a course higher up the fell, but never far away. The two meet and cross.

Rain and snow

In the bottom many drains have been newly dug to protect the road against the heavy winter rain and melting snow which often has been known to wash gullies through the roads. It is a wet place in winter. Indeed there are still rushes growing in the middle of the old road have so far escaped the lorries and the two traction engines.

The same widening and reconstruction is in hand here, and much rock is being shifted to make space and is broken up on the span to make ballast.

Work has also begun on the Buttermere side. From the hause the road drops steeply and the gradient is much more difficult than on the Borrowdale side. Most drivers prefer to descend it than to ascend. But there is a notice at the top describing the descent as impracticable. A little below the hause the road flattens momentarily and then drops still more severely. This place is well described as Hill Step. The step is made by a bulge of rock thrusting up through the ground, and the rock continues steeply at the side of the road where it makes a natural wall. The road surface has to be dropped nine feet at this point and the wall set back about the same amount. It will need to be blasted away.

An impressive view

There is a famous and impressive view down the valley from this point. Honister’s black precipices overhang on the left. On the right the rock recedes monumentally to a distant sky-line.

Below, the little grey-green road of rough stones and ragged edges seeks its route thread-like over the dark broken ground.

A view of the road from Honister slate mine, Lake District. Photograph: Jon Parkes Photography/Getty Images

There is no prettiness about it. When its reconstruction is done it will no doubt look as smooth and neat as the pitch by Hause Gill. Then the motorists will have about four and a quarter miles of new mountain road, and may enjoy without labour the pleasure of climbing 800ft. in a mile and a half from Seatoller, dropping a little more in the two and a half miles to Gatesgarth. The reverse journey will also be possible.

Keswick’s protest

There is still high feeling in Keswick about this road, as in the councils of the CPRE and associated bodies, which feel that the action of the County council is oppressive and destructive. Keswick has particular interest. Keswick thinks of itself as the “capital city” of the Lake district. But it is a “capital city” without other domain than the aesthetic and the spiritual, and with no means to enforce a view outside the boundary of the Urban District Council.

Its wealth is in the sensuous experience of walking and the enjoyment of landscape distant from itself. When it thinks imperially it is conscious of a naughty world outside (containing the Cumberland County Council and the Electricity Commissioners, for instance) who would break down the fences of paradise and let evil in.

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