In the News

Book 2

8 Videos

Lake District guidebook to launch this month

As published on Cumbria Crack

A Lake District guidebook will be launched this month by a man who sold his popular business to concentrate on his writing. Colin Hindle, who used to run Granny Dowbekin’s in Pooley Bridge, sold the popular tearoom last year to focus on his writing career.

He published his first Lakeland’s Best Views guide in 2021, a labour of love which took five years to complete. Now he is back with the second in the series of self-penned and illustrated guide books.

Inspired by, and designed as a companion to, Wainwright’s epic collection, this time the guide features the Best Lakeland Views from around Windermere, Grasmere, the Langdales and Coniston.

Book two took 5,000 hours – or two-and-a-half years – of rambling, writing, researching and responding to the landscape. The result is a collection of drawings, poems, musings, stories and histories.

Blea Tarn

Colin treads in the well-worn footsteps of the Augustinian friars who were the previous occupiers of his Penrith Friarage home.

Colin said: “This book is about sharing the moments of beauty that I have been lucky to experience, both physically from the landscape and mentally as a by-product of walking over and in this special land. “Beauty itself is everywhere, we just have to give ourselves the permission and the time to see it.”

Global superstar Taylor Swift even gets a mention as Colin urges ‘Tay, Tay, come and stay, stay’ in response to her 2020 track The Lakes inspired by a previous visit to the Lake District. Picking up on her lyrics, Colin makes the point that the Lakes poets came here to live – not to die – and even promises her a low-key guided tour of the region.

The book will be officially launched on November 20 at Verey Books in Pooley Bridge.