Review originally written for 'Paddles' magazine
Whitewater Lake District by Stuart Miller
December 31st, 1999
The Millennium seems like a lifetime ago now - at last that bloody awful Robbie
Williams song has just about gone out of my head. I was paddling up in the Lake
District for the final week of 1999, but I only remember two things about the
final night of the Twentieth Century - firstly, lighting up Central Keswick
with a sea kayaking parachute flare (how was I to know they keep burning after
landing?) and secondly, running into a fellow called Stuart Miller. We'd never
met Stuart, but he thrust some random notes at us and ranted enthusiastically
about writing a thorough guidebook for the region. Good for him, we thought;
that week we'd been using a rather thin guidebook that dated way back from the
'80s. However, time chugged on and the years went by…and Stuart's book never
materialised.
September 2003
Just when all hope had faded, a shiny new copy of 'Whitewater Lake District'
has dropped through my letterbox. Was it worth the wait? You bet it was.
First, a few disclaimers. I am a huge fan of boating in the Northwest of England, having 'studied' at the University of Lancaster. I am also a guidebook nut in general (I run a river guide website, and generally need to get out more) and I get hot under the collar about the idea of paddling obscure tree-choked English ditches. All of this makes me somewhat favourably disposed towards Stuart's new housebrick of a guidebook. My lack of impartiality aside, I think WWLD is simply fantastic - the best quality UK paddling guide yet produced.
Stuart appears to have spent the intervening three years on a mission to explore every river, ditch and culvert from Manchester to Dumfries. The title is wrong for a start; too modest! The book covers all of Cumbria in addition to the Lake District. Stuart also found time to scour Lancashire (amazingly, there appears to be some good boating hidden amongst those grim Mill towns), parts of Yorkshire and the Scottish borders. This amounts to 350 pages describing about 150 trips on about 110 different rivers. There are also notes on paddling on the lakes themselves, park and play opportunities in the region and for some reason, the godawful radioactive mess that passes for Cumbrian surf.
The region's easy touring rivers are not omitted; a flaw of many guidebooks. Stuart describes trips of all difficulty from flat water to grade 6, the latter usually being some heinous pile of damp rocks appealing only to folk with personality disorders. This begs a philosophical question; which was less pleasant to research…the utterly flat and featureless Lune estuary or the ultra-steep Yewdale Beck, flowing over fence-choked sharp slate quarry waste? Thankfully, Stuart has suffered this kind of nonsense to spare us the pain. The vast majority of the runs described are comfortably between these two extremes…and I cannot believe how many good intermediate trips the region has. From my time spent in Lancaster, I am familiar with maybe a quarter of these rivers; that seemed like a good tally at the time, but reading WWLD makes feel that I utterly wasted my student years - what was I doing, going to those lectures? The real humiliation is Artle Beck, described as a classic grade 4 run in a spectacular gorge. It's practically in the outskirts of Lancaster and en route to our clubhouse; we crossed it several times a week for three years without ever knowing it was there. Arrggghhhh!
The river descriptions are top notch. The rivers are starred for quality, allowing the lazy to cherry pick. Each river starts with a summary box and paragraph, alongside a few symbols describing the character. For experienced paddlers, this is all they'll want…no point in spoiling the plot. Those wanting more detail can read on; Stuart clearly summarises the key features of the river in bullet points linked to the accompanying map. The maps are great, and must have been real agony to create. They are clearly drawn, with major river features, footpaths and roads marked. They seem accurate enough and let's pray that they are…if Stuart wanted to have a few laughs at our expense, this'd be the place. The only quibble might be that a few extra numbers would appease the nerds among us…knowing the gradient in feet per mile tells you a lot about a section of river, and all my North American guidebooks tell the ideal volume in CFS; although this data is admittedly meaningless until we have access to online river flows like our US cousins.
So, what have I missed? There are some helpfully pragmatic notes on Access to the region's rivers (not what should happen, but what does happen). The book finishes with a few notes on obscure/ extreme ditches that Stuart has yet to paddle (after you Sir, I insist) and a few pointers to where further info can be found. Are you illiterate, or one of those shallow folk who will only ever flick through this on the shop shelf for the photos? Well, you'll be glad to hear that there are plenty of nice piccies showing rivers of all grade and character, from the sublime to the silly (Mosedale Beck, what is that all about?). There are also some splendid drawings and cartoons.
Well, at the end of the day it's just a book. But guidebooks tell us a lot about where our sport is going and what paddlers are actually doing. Arguably they can even influence paddling trends and behaviour. I for one, have the funny feeling that I'll be making a return trip to Cumbria and Lancaster. SOON. The publisher of this book, Pete Knowles, doesn't settle for that kind of shilly-shallying. He has just emigrated from the wastelands south of the Watford Gap and now resides in Keswick, right in the centre of Stuart's kingdom. What finer accolade can a guidebook get?
Mark Rainsley.