The Lake Is Dead.

Well guys, I have spent the last few hours in quiet contemplation and I have come to the stunning conclusion that you are right. My wish to pursue sports that I have been participating in for almost 40 years is simply selfish.

Your points about wake damage have especially worried me, the entirely rock shoreline would never be the same again if a boat creates a large wake rather than the billions of wind caused waves that have been colliding with it over the last 2 million years or so.

With this in mind we have decided not to use Windermere for Wake Surfing and instead have been looking round for an acceptable alternative.

Fortunately Low Wood Centre have been trialling a new product this weekend which we feel ticks all the boxes.

It uses a much smaller boat (Less than 10 ft), causes minimal wake,is completely legal, has a very slow lateral speed, doesn't use propellers and can be enjoyed by anyone for just £72 per hour on hire or around £6k to buy, that's cheaper than a nice set of Aramid/Carbon sails. :D

As a plus point it will help recycle 1000's of craft languishing in garages around the country since the introduction of the speed limit and how can environmentalists possibly complain about that ?

Thanks to Necessity being the mother of invention, I give you the Flyboard :rolleyes:

http://youtu.be/m4Bm3cs9TFo

Seajet and PP, I hope you take this post in spirit it is intended.
 
tcm said:
I wonder if it would be the "nearly holidays" effect? I have found that just before a holiday period things are unusually quiet?
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Good Point. The week before Bank Holidays is usually pretty quiet.
However my observations go back a couple or so years really. Definitely much quieter.

If you take the racing (dinghies, keelboats and cruisers) out of the mix, there is very little meandering about going on. On the other hand there are more canoes and very small dinghies pottering around.
 
well, maybe they're all in Bl oody Spain? Cheaper to keep a boat there i spose.

More generally tho, Lakeland seems a lot less busy than whenI visited regularly 40years ago when there were hoardes of people tramping up and down the fells . Nowadays all fairly quiet, even on a Bank Holiday. Perhaps a combination of cheap overseas airflights, fewer school trips for kids to fall for the place at an early age, and over-zealous officialdom being seen as somewhat unwelcoming, exemplified by the Unofficial Saint of the Lake District being the late lamented (but nonetheless extremely grumpy) Wainwright.

I tried to park a car in the Lakes for a few days - the idea was to walk over the hills from Langdale towards Keswick, then around (with bus help) to Black Sail, Gable and back into Langdale. No chance. The only solution was to be a National Park member ( i was) and then you could park for free in the otherwise daily-parking-rated sites in Old D Ghyll. Yeah i know, more car parking would spoil the view... except er, there's not many people there now. Hum.

In some of the French ski resorts they dug up the lower slopes to build an undergriound car park - hence loads of parking but no unsightly cars. Could you/someone perhaps buy a field and get a digger? Surely no insurmountable planning permission problems?
 
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tcm said:
well, maybe they're all in Bl oody Spain? Cheaper to keep a boat there i spose.

More generally tho, Lakeland seems a lot less busy than whenI visited regularly 40years ago when there were hoardes of people tramping up and down the fells . Nowadays all fairly quiet, even on a Bank Holiday. Perhaps a combination of cheap overseas airflights, fewer school trips for kids to fall for the place at an early age, and over-zealous officialdom being seen as somewhat unwelcoming, exemplified by the Unofficial Saint of the Lake District being the late lamented (but nonetheless extremely grumpy) Wainwright.

I tried to park a car in the Lakes for a few days - the idea was to walk over the hills from Langdale towards Keswick, then around (with bus help) to Black Sail, Gable and back into Langdale. No chance. The only solution was to be a National Park member ( i was) and then you could park for free in the otherwise daily-parking-rated sites in Old D Ghyll. Yeah i know, more car parking would spoil the view... except er, there's not many people there now. Hum.

In some of the French ski resorts they dug up the lower slopes to build an undergriound car park - hence loads of parking but no unsightly cars. Could you/someone perhaps buy a field and get a digger? Surely no insurmountable planning permission problems?
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I too walked in the Lakes 40 odd years ago, and one thing I recall is the degree of wear on the popular paths (the "prole trails"!). Even then, concerns were being raised about visitor numbers causing excessive erosion on popular routes. If numbers had continued to rise, I suspect that many paths would have turned into nasty gulleys.

The great thing about the Lakes in those days was that in general the Lakeland hill farmers were happy about people being on the hills. Not so around Snowdon - if you went too far off the beaten track, you were likely to have dogs set on you by a shot-gun bearing farmer, who conveniently didn't speak English when you tried to explain you were following a marked right of way!

There's always a difficult balance between popularity and preservation. Preserving what makes a place popular can mean restricting numbers, or trying to encourage people to use either less popular routes OR using a few heavily engineered routes that will withstand the numbers. And there are other difficult balances between different groups of users; farmers, walkers, climbers, bird-watchers - even (in a place like the Lakes) amateur rock and mineral collectors and people interested in archaeology (did you know that one of the most ancient industrial sites in the UK is a Neolithic axe factory in the Lakes?).

In other words, the pressures on land between different user groups are as intense, if not more so, than those on the Lakes. To me it does make sense that one Lake should be set aside for the power boaters; they have a right to their sport as much as rowers and sailors have to theirs, and arguments about wash damaging the banks don't really hold - most of the lake banks are pretty solid rock, except where rivers and streams have built deltas. Sensible traffic management would handle vulnerable areas.

Finally, I'm not at all surprised there are fewer people in the Lakes now than there was 40 years ago. 40 years ago, travel overseas - if only to France - was a rare and expensive luxury for most people. And even then the joke about "If you can see Helvellyn it's going to rain - and if you can't, it is" held true - frankly, the Lakes are a pretty wet place! But in those days you put up with it because alternatives were unattainable. These days, travel overseas costs about the same as travel within this country; there are plenty of alternative destinations that offer good walking, climbing, sailing and power-boating WITH guaranteed good weather a cheap flight away.
 
Lakesailor said:
Yesterday we drove up the side of Windermere from Newby Bridge to home. We saw 2 yachts. 1 in the South basin and 1 in the North basin. It was a warm and fairly sunny day with a gentle breeze.

Today it's very sunny and a decent breeze (6mph, gusting to 12mph).
I've just counted about 8 yachts in the North basin.

I know it's weekday but when we moved here, and put a boat on the lake, whenever we went out there were yachts (and powerboats, and jetskis) all over.
Now if there are 40 boats out in the North basin on a weekend it's busy.

This on a 10 mile x 1 mile lake with almost 2000 moorings and marina berths.

The lake is dead.
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Well the Shannon and Erne Loughs and river have about 10,000 boats (mainly motor but also a good stock of keel boats). Lough Derg is 40km long and 16km wide, with Loughs Ree and Erne not much smaller, and they too have all seen a massive drop off in traffic over the past four years as the recession combined with poor summer weather has had effect. Lough Ree YC is the second oldest YC in the world.
 
Apropos of nothing, I had a wonderful evening after chucking out time at the Queens in Troutbeck, at Millerground with the lovely Heather Atkinson July 1st 1972. The water was very warm.
Beats joining the National Truss for a wander over Black Sail in an underground car park.
 
claymore said:
Apropos of nothing, I had a wonderful evening after chucking out time at the Queens in Troutbeck, .
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That brings back memories of the late 60's in there, always seemed to be full of Manchester students, little light, large Chesterfield in front of log fire and four poster bar.

Used to be quiet back then, remember sitting looking at Wast Water listening to Wimbledon and not a sole in sight.

Brian
 
Just read this thread (too busy sailing in areas with no wi-fi) and referencing back to 1st page, I bought my yacht from Winermere where it had been used as a floating caravan for the previous 3 years. Apparently the cheapest way to have a holiday home in the Lakes, so the ratio of berths/moorings to actual proper sailors is probably more than the saltwater venues.

Do not fold your mainsail under a boom cover for three years at a time... it will turn mouldy green and be inhabited by spiders.
 
G
halcyon said:
That brings back memories of the late 60's in there, always seemed to be full of Manchester students, little light, large Chesterfield in front of log fire and four poster bar.

Used to be quiet back then, remember sitting looking at Wast Water listening to Wimbledon and not a sole in sight.

Brian
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Good Eyesight to see Wastwater from Troutbeck
 
Im heading up there for long weekend break does anyone know if its possible to hire dinghy's etc by the day. and if so do I need to take my RYA logbook to hire them.I fancy some sailing if its nice weather.
have rented a cottage in Cark a few miles south of Windermere
 
Although I left N.lancs south cumbria 15 years ago I can guarantee there are still places where you will hardly see anyone even on a Bank Holiday.
True I will never forget my last time on Striding Edge back at the turn of the 90s when I had to wait in a que whilst Wainwrighters crawled along it.
Suffice to say I made what they might have thought to be a radical detour.
Also if you were inventive as to where you parked even on the banks of Coniston you could usually find somewhere.
Places like the Old DG have always been impossible during the season and I go back 60 years.
 
I left the Lake in 2004 when the Speed limit was coming in. I had been there for most of my life every weekend. At the end I had 3 boats registered and had 2 berths in Marina Village....I enjoyed Sailing, Waterskiing, Wakeboarding, Jetskiing etc and did not want it limited......probably lost £25k a year off me alone.
 
mcalan said:
Im heading up there for long weekend break does anyone know if its possible to hire dinghy's etc by the day. and if so do I need to take my RYA logbook to hire them.I fancy some sailing if its nice weather.
have rented a cottage in Cark a few miles south of Windermere
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Just to prove Windermere is dead, the dinghies available on the lake all seem to be tied into instruction courses.
However, head over to Coniston (about 15 miles or so from where you are) and you can hire a decent dinghy, no problem.
Lovely lake to sail on as well. http://www.conistonboatingcentre.co.uk/boathire/sailing

If you book in advance you can possibly arrange parking in their compound as the car park gets a bit full down there.

They had a Hawk last time we went round that way, and some Topper 16 Sports


Conistonboatingcentre.jpg
 
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