Rambling for the Views
Story and Photography by Lee Lawrence

England’s Coast-to-Coast route crosses the country at its narrowest point, passing through the Lake District along the way.

We call it hiking. The Brits call it rambling. It amounts to the same thing: taking off into the countryside to breathe fresh air, build endurance and enjoy the beauties of nature. And if you get it right by doing it wrong, you can add art to these pleasures.

Rambler par excellence Alfred Wainwright charted a 192-mile route that crosses England at its narrowest point. It starts in the Lake District, crosses the Pennines, cuts through the Yorkshire moors and ends at Robin Hood’s Bay.

Wainwright’s route skips the little town of Grasmere—he liked to gamely press on. We, however, felt that nine miles was sufficient after two 15-mile days, a treacherously steep descent on slippery slate, and a thorough soaking in a mountain stream. Besides, Grasmere is where Wordsworth walked with his sister, Dorothy, admiring nature and jotting verses. A simple tombstone behind the church marks his grave.

Limping into Grasmere, we discover another of the town’s draws: Heaton Cooper Studio, whose gallery brims with a mix of reproductions and originals by four generations of Coopers.

Prints of landscapes by Victorian watercolorist Alfred Heaton Cooper and his son, William Heaton Cooper, mingle with bold contemporary oils by William’s son, Julian, a rock climber concerned over the effects man is having on the planet. Stoneware by Julian’s sister, Otalia Johnson, fills a set of shelves while, spotted throughout the gallery, bronze figurative statues attest to the talents of her and Julian’s mother, Ophelia Gordon Bell.

In recent years, yet another generation has joined the ranks: Rebecca Heaton Cooper, whose fabric collages fill a corner. Her father, John, another son of William and Ophelia, has managed the business for 30 years.

Thus replenished, we tackle another day of natural beauty that brings us into the charming lake village of Patterdale, smack on Wainwright’s route but, because of that, booked solid. Seated high in a double-decker bus that tilts into the greenery at every curve of the narrow road, we travel about an hour to the market town of Penrith.

A stop in Easington, on the east coast, brings visitors to Grinkle Lodge, co-owned by painter Janette Boskett.

The surprise pleasure here is Sarah Hiscoke, a fresh-faced, green-eyed mother of three who, with husband Dean, runs the Bank House bed and breakfast. Born and raised in the area, Sarah studied art in London and thought she would never look back. But then she decided to have a family. “In London you look out and see a brick wall,” she says, explaining their decision to relocate north. “Here, you look out and see a beautiful scene. It’s wonderful.”

One of the scenes is her own garden, which inspired Sarah to start painting the dynamic floral pastels that enliven the house. But her real love is stitching and embroidering fabric into panels that recall stained glass windows. During a lull between clearing breakfast dishes and preparing for new guests, she unfurls “Eve” and speaks passionately about the strength of women and their denigration in much of Western iconography. “Eve is holding all the sins of the world,” she says. “Other cultures have the same imagery, but Eve creates life and gets things moving.”

Back on the trail heading toward the moors, it is easy to see why the Hiscokes left the big city. For days, we walk through woods and along rushing streams, and through miles and miles of purple heather before spying the misty outline of the North Sea. Wainwright’s Coast-to-Coast officially ends at Robin Hood’s Bay, but the charming lodge we booked in the town’s “outskirts” turned out to be more than 20 miles away—a most auspicious mistake.

Set in a national park, Grinkle Lodge is the home, workplace, studio and gallery of Janette Boskett. She and her husband, Timothy, bought the Gothic-style Victorian home in 2001—a year after Janette, “a mature student and so very keen,” completed a three-year arts degree.

In one of the bedrooms, a mural fools us into thinking we are looking out through a columned balcony onto the North Sea. A mural by the kitchen tricks the eye into seeing a stable door with a friendly horse looking out. And throughout the stone house, Janette displays oil landscapes and still-lifes, often placing them in such a way that the paintings themselves become part of a lively vignette. A gentle, surreal humor pervades some of the works—“Primavera” features three daffodils whose stems coil like springs—and old-fashioned leather cases populate many of the still lifes.

Of all these, she most loves working with still lifes, while she finds the trompe l’oeil murals the hardest. “It’s wonderful to get the idea and it’s wonderful to start,” she says, sitting in the dairy-turned-studio at the back of the house. “And then it goes on and on, and you have to fiddle about to get the last bits right.”

But right she gets it—and by veering off the path, so did we.