Haweswater curls like a tapeworm beneath the bald, brown peaks of Westmorland. This is the most isolated tarn in the Lake District, edged by a blind road, a gloomy and incongruous art deco hotel and Arctic silence. Horses once carried the east Cumbrian dead along the pass of Corpse Road, which bends east to Shap, the nearest village. A dwindling number of people there still grunt the Penrithian dialect.

Winds have beaten the land to tough grass and dust. England’s last golden eagle, in stately middle age, slices through currents kicked up by the glacial mountains. Few tourists come here and few of those who do realise that Haweswater is bogus, a confection. They don’t see how implacably it captures the tussle between progress and