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Countryside magazine featuring the people and wildlife that shape the landscape of Britain

Countryside magazine featuring the people and wildlife that shape the landscape of the British Isles

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Open Country: Blencathra: The People's Mountain

Blencathra: The People's Mountain

04/05/2017

BBC Radio 4 - Open Country, Blencathra: The People's Mountain

Blencathra in the Lakes has become the People's Mountain. Helen Mark discovers why.

Blencathra in the Lake District has been known as the Mountaineers' Mountain and now the People's Mountain. Helen Mark climbs up it with film-maker Terry Abraham to find out why.

Terry Abraham could be likened to Alfred Wainwright in his love of the Lakeland fells. Blencathra was known by Wainwright as the 'mountaineers mountain' and he devoted more pages to this fell than any other in his pictorial guides. However, since the proposed sale of the mountain in 2014 it has become known as the 'Peoples Mountain'. The owner, the 8th Earl of Lonsdale, put the mountain up for sale at a price of £1.75 million and a community group called Friends of Blencathra was set up in a bid to raise enough money to buy the mountain. In 2015, the mountain was taken off the market but the sense of ownership felt by the local community remains. Helen Mark meets Terry and the local people who live within the shadow of this iconic peak.

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