Tag: Eavestone Lake

By Request … a Visit to Eavestone Lake

After I showed the photo that won me a popular vote a couple of years ago, some of you were kind enough to ask to see the one that came second. I’m pretty sure I may have shown it before, but here we are. It’s of a lake not too far from here: a wooded location that’s quite well known and appreciated hereabouts, despite not being tremendously accessible. Here’s Eavestone Lake in summer …

…. and in autumn, when the successful shot was taken…

It’s set among rocks, to which trees sometimes cling tenaciously, and it’s hard to navigate your way through. Eavestone Lake may once have been a mediaeval fishpond for nearby Fountains Abbey. There’s even evidence that later, it may have formed part of a designed landscape: the lake has been dammed, and there are signs of careful planting if you know where to look (I don’t).

We once met an Oldest Inhabitant there, and he told us that the whole area had been almost entirely hacked back to the bone in the 1930s, for logging purposes. Abandoned, the trees took matters into their own hands to regenerate. They’ve done a pretty good job, I’d say. And they are part of a special area. Nidderdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

The Way through the Woods

Not far from here is a wood. And in this wood, there is a lake, Eavestone Lake. It’s always quiet here, because there is no road nearby. Simply quiet, leaf-mould paths. The trees look ancient, but in the main, they’re not. We met an old forester recently, who told us he remembered when these woods were cut down for timber when he was a boy. The trees have simply regenerated.

Some of the older trees were left. And they tend to twist characterfully and lean over into the lake. Like this one, of which I show two images, one for Becky’s Walking Squares, while the header photo is for Jez’s Water, Water Everywhere.

This place always puts me in mind of Rudyard Kipling’s The Way through the Woods, which, if you’re so minded, you can read here.