The Lake District, (The Lakes, Lakeland) is a small, isolated mountainous part of Cumbria, North West England. It is one of the most popular holiday destinations in Britain. It includes Scafell Pike, the highest mountain in England. The deepest lake in England is Wastwater and the longest lake in England is Windermere. The Lake District is within the Lake District National Park. It was made a National Park in 1951. Today about 16 million people visit it for a holiday each year. The National Trust owns about a quarter of the park. About half of the park (the uncultivated mountain part) is legally open to all visitors, and not just the public footpaths.
The Lake District is different to the lands around it because it is the core of an old mountain range. It has more in common with Snowdonia than areas in between. The rocks are granites, from old magma chambers, lavas, ash and heat-baked rocks. Together they stick up into the landscape to make a dome, with the highest summit at Scafell Pike. Rivers cut valleys from the centre of the dome, spreading out like the spokes of a wheel. During the Ice Age, the whole area was beneath an ice sheet, and at the start and end of this time, valley glaciers filled the river valleys and scraped them away, turning V-shaped river valleys into U-shaped glacial valleys. As the glaciers scoured down the valleys, they deepened areas with softer rock more than those with harder rocks, and when the ice melted away, it was these deeply-scoured areas that filled with water and now make the lakes, mostly called waters (e.g. Derwentwater). Long, thin lakes like these are called finger lakes.
In the heads of the valleys, small glaciers lasted for much longer, and scoured out deep bowls which have also filled with water. These are very high level circular lakes, and are mostly called tarns (e.g. Blea Tarn).
The Lake District was an important place for Stone Age people, who built rings of standing stones such as Castlerigg near Penrith. The Romans, who built a fort on Hardknott Pass, were interested in the metals that could be mined from the rocks. Mining was also important in Tudor times. But in general people found the Lake District harsh and frightening. That is how Daniel Defoe described it when he travelled around England. However, more recently it has been thought of as a place of beauty. That is why William Wordsworth lived there, and why he wrote famous poems about it.
In fact, the beauty of the Lake District put the area under threat from the early days of the railway. Railway companies wanted to drive railway lines right through it in order to bring holiday-makers and make more money. This so upset many people that it caused the founding of the National Trust.
