Author takes to the hills to release a new title by Eileen Jones
Planning a book launch with a difference, in the Lake District, was always going to be something of a challenge. “What IS the plan?” asked the friend with the camera. “Well, if the weather’s good we can have a picnic at the top. If the weather’s normal, we’ll just take a quick photo and leg it back down as quickly as possible.”
But a challenge is good. Having dabbled in event management during my career, I see a book launch as a novel way of attracting extra publicity. The first parkrun book published by Gritstone was carried in a seven-day relay, Olympic torch style, from Windermere to Bushy Park in London. The second was launched at a busy event in North Manchester in front of 700 parkrunners. Yes, we sold a few copies that day. For one of Andrew Bibby’s crime novels set in the Lakes, we arranged a geo-cache style treasure hunt in which a clue for a prize was hidden on a remote fellside above Wastwater. It was discovered even though heavy snow had fallen over the hiding place, but the local media enjoyed a news story with a twist.
When Gritstone colleague Chris Goddard completed the first in his series of guidebooks to the entire England coast path I help organise a launch at a pub in Woolwich from where a path beside the Thamas marks the beginning of the route. Only when we arrived, we found the pub had closed down, with a repossesion note pinned to the door. A generous cafe owner next door offered some space instead, and that’s where Chris addressed a bespoke band of ramblers. Lessons in crisis management.
My new book is about the lovely little mountain, Loughrigg, which I’d run or walked up every week during 13 years living in Ambleside in the Lake District. It just about makes “mountain” status at 1099 feet (335 metres) and in the list of 214 Wainwright fells, Loughrigg scrapes in at number 211. But it’s a sprawling land mass, stretching for almost three miles from the head of Windermere to the foot of Grasmere, riddled with glorious paths and rocky outcrops, an overground rabbit warren as one devotee described. And there are many Loughrigg devotees as I discovered, gathering their stories for Loughrigg: Tales of a Small Mountain. People who climb her, run over her, paint her, live on her lower slopes, swim in her tarns (for this fell seems female). So when the book was ready to be launched, there was one obvious place for a celebration, and that was beside the summit cairn.
Loughrigg’s top point is an actual trig column, a structure with a history of its own deserving an entire chapter in the book, and that’s where the invitations pointed. Join us at the summit at 2pm; no other instruction was needed. A copy of the book was packed in a waterproof map case, and I met some friends at Miller Bridge at 1pm to start walking up. We were a lively group. My son David was with his girlfriend Eleanor and their Pomeranian, Ted. Ruth, who had tried to teach me orienteering on Loughrigg, brought her collie Isla. There was a race organiser who’s also a poet, the editor of the Fellrunner magazine, and several members of Ambleside AC.
The climb was a Tolkien-esque gathering as our fellowship grew along the way. We were joined by my beloved former neighbours; a couple who were camping at Loughrigg Tarn and wondered what was going on; a runner who, I happened to know, finished 10th in the marathon at the 1988 Seoul Olympics.
Dozens more were gathered at the summit when we got there, including my photographer friend and his daughter who had packed some bottles of Prosecco along with the camera (had to keep that quiet from my friends in the mountain rescue team!) and a professor from the University of Cumbria. Dr Penny Bradshaw runs the MA in literature and romanticism, and when I’d asked for a few words for a chapter on what Loughrigg means to others, she wrote me an entire chapter. She also bakes jolly good scones, and had brought a box of them to the summit, along with jam and clotted cream, and was serving the assembled company from her table on the trig column.
Several strangers arrived, learning about the event from social media and wanting to pay tribute to their own favourite fell. Like so many others they were entranced by the magic of Loughrigg. As poet Kerry Darbishire says, recalling being “dragged up through the bracken” by her mother: “It was always worth it, and always took my breath away in more ways than one, as the views over to Grasmere, down Windermere, across to Grizedale and toward the Langdale valley and the Pikes felt as though we were at the top of the highest mountain in the world. If we were lucky, we’d watch wild geese flying north or south between scudding clouds. These moments will never leave me, and often appear in my poetry. Loughrigg felt like our fell, our friend, always there to escape to and enjoy.”
The weather was typically Loughriggian. It rained and then stopped. The mist closed in and then the sun came out. The wind howled and then whimpered away. We had everything that the fell has to offer in just one hour.
Loughrigg: Tales of a Small Mountain (Gritstone, £12.99)
Podcast by Countrystride about Loughrigg: Tales of a Small Mountain
Images from the summit by Chris Routledge
