Echo Stone, Blea Tarn

The wide col between Great and Little Langdale contains one house, and a glorious tarn for swimming in summer months.  Wordsworth wrote about it, the Heaton Coopers have painted it and it sees hundreds, if not thousands, of visitors each year.  Driving there is always fraught with the worry of having to reverse along a potholed and occasionally vertiginous single track lane. Last night, I ran over Lingmoor from Chapel Stile, avoiding both the crowds and the car angst. The honeyed smell of the heather on the way over, as well as the cry of the peregrines, was worth the effort.  Descending by the side of the beck that runs along the Rossett Gill fault brought me to the road, and a moment later, the Echo Stone. First shown to me by a local friend, it has the word ECHO chiselled onto it. It faces Blea Rigg, a crag looking east and dark with vegetation.  It was too good an opportunity to miss, although the yell and subsequent echo may have alarmed the picnicking family returning to their car. Best of all though, is a clear, still, frosty winter’s night: I once counted seven echoes in the starlit darkness after whooping from on top the stone.