Читать книгу The Lune Valley and Howgills. 40 scenic fell, river and woodland walks онлайн

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The only significant settlement along the river’s course, Lancaster developed as a port and centre of manufacture, but the power of the river and its side-streams was never exploited on an industrial scale in the way of other Lancashire and Yorkshire rivers. As the river was not navigable above Lancaster, the hinterland was left relatively remote from other areas, and any small centres served largely local needs. Thus, when the canal age arrived, there was no industry to justify investment in extending the Lancaster Canal into the Lune Valley. The railway engineers, like the Romans, saw it purely as a convenient route to the north, although Tebay and Barbon saw a brief expansion with the line’s arrival, and the brick industry at Claughton benefited from its passing.

Completed in 1860, the Lune Viaduct carried the railway between Ingleton and Lowgill (Walk 14)

Today’s travellers often pass through the area on the way to the better-known attractions of the Lake District and the Yorkshire Dales, and earlier travellers were no different. William Gilpin had his sights set upon the lands beyond the ’bay of Cartmel’, and passed through Lancaster on his way to Kendal. The castle failed to impress, ’an indifferent object from any point’, but the Lune he regarded as a ’notable piece of water, [which] when the tide is full, sufficiently adorns the landscape’.