The History of MGS in 50 Objects – #25 Borrowdale Camp

Borrowdale was not the first MGS camp, that honour going to the Alderley Camp at Whitsuntide in 1904, nor was it even the first MGS camp in the Lake District, as in the summer of 1904 MGS boys were already camping near Grasmere in the Easedale valley. By the 1920s the search for ever more mountainous terrain led to camps being held first in Snowdonia then the Lake District. However, it was not until 1931 that J.L.Latimer and H.A.Field first brought MGS to the Stonethwaite site in the field at the foot of Bull Crag, and the name ‘Borrowdale Camp’ was thereafter used in Ulula to speak of these mountaineering camps even after they relocated to Snowdonia or Langdale. In 1940, wartime and the threat of invasion put a sudden end to camping when Borrowdalers were summoned back to Manchester after only three days. Fortunately, the camp was re-established in 1946 and has existed in Borrowdale ever since, though with a couple of moves, firstly in 2003 down the lane to the Chapel Farm campsite, and then in 2007, when all camps were relocated to Activities Week in late June, to Stuart Bland’s field beside the Dinah Hoggus Camping Barn in Rosthwaite.

The image of Borrowdale as a tough, fell-walking camp for those of a hardier disposition dates right back to those early years and the saying, attributed to Field, that ‘only boys willing to eat little and live rough need apply’. Certainly, my own memories of Borrowdale in the 1960s, when we sweated up Dale Head from Honister Pass or scrambled up Scafell from the Mickledore Buttress, suggest that this was a camp of constant physical challenges. However, we never once complained except in jest, and willingly came back for more, addicted as we were to height climbed and miles completed. How we revelled in that tremendous sense of achievement as we staggered back into camp for a well-deserved hot meal, sing-songs, tent shows and welcome slumber. Borrowdale remains very much a training ground for would-be trekkers, but the spirit of camp is far more relaxed than one might ever imagine, with an anarchic humour never far from the surface. Borrowdale is a timeless place where much that preoccupies Manchester is an irrelevance, and life runs along slower, gentler, less trodden tracks.

Though first-hand memories of those early camps have sadly faded within school, it is clear that the early Borrowdalers would still be very familiar with our white canvas tents and marquee against a backdrop of wooded crags. The once ubiquitous bell tents have now been replaced by ridge tents, arguably easier to manage and less likely to let in the rain, and yet the smell of crushed grass, the bleating of lambs and the sound of the cuckoo in the early morning must be very much as they always were.

Some things have, however, changed. Whether change has been for the better is debatable; let us simply say that they did things differently in the past. At the Borrowdale Camps up until the 1960s all cooking was done communally over wood-fires. Boys were regularly sent out up the valley sides with axes on ‘wood fag’, to fell, chop and drag dead wood down from the remnant forest. Certainly we played our part in the deforestation of the valley. Of course Stonethwaite Woods had not yet been designated as a ‘temperate rainforest’, with its dead wood providing a vital habitat for insects and liverworts. The cooking-fires disappeared long ago, first to be replaced by primus stoves and the constant battle to get these lit outdoors on rainy mornings. By comparison, cooking nowadays seems virtually effortless with bottled gas piped directly to water boilers and cooking rings in the marquee.

Stonethwaite Beck was used until the 1980s both as a water-source and drain, with water being collected upstream and washing being done downstream. Now the river itself is an SSSI with lampreys sighted near Rosthwaite Bridge. I would hate to say that washing has become a thing of the past, just that it is now done more discreetly and certainly more sparingly. The thunderboxes, squatting over trenches behind their canvas screens have disappeared. There is no more digging of holes, no more burning of rubbish in sodden compost pits. Nowadays Portaloos are regularly emptied and cleaned, whilst refuse is bagged up and increasingly recycled.

Were those boys of the 1950s and 1960s really a hardier breed as they tirelessly took in peak after peak before descending for a supper of stew, steamed puddings and mountains of custard? Stodge is now ‘off’, as is porridge, and the cuisine has developed an international flavour with a menu including muesli, spaghetti bolognaise, Moroccan tagine with tabbouleh, and colourful curries with naan breads. Compulsory jam butties at lunchtime have given way to salad, tuna, Nutella and Marmite, while any missing calories are made up for by deceptively heavy slabs of Old Mrs Dobson Cake.

As for planting the flag on remote mountain summits, there are still staff young or fit enough to accompany such walks. In recent years after supper, Mr Cittanova has regularly encouraged groups up to Sprinkling Tarn for ‘high-level camp’ before a quick morning scramble up Scafell Pike, whilst more leisurely valley rambles have grown in popularity, taking in boat-rides and tea-shops, and providing, as they do, opportunity for pleasant conversation and quieter contemplative moments for appreciation of the scenery.

Anathema to Old Borrowdalers must be the introduction of mountain-bikes and canoes to camp, yet I can assure the disturbed reader that walking is still the principal and preferred form of locomotion, reaching spots otherwise inaccessible to human endeavour. There simply is no alternative to a scramble up Sour Milk Gill from Seathwaite or a traverse of Sharp Edge on Blencathra. However, there has been increasing acceptance that there are many other ways to enjoy and appreciate the big outdoors, all encouraging young people to engage more with the landscape and learn new skills. So as well as biking and water-sports, we have recently offered rock-climbing, orienteering and ghyll scrambling, an unforgettable adventure which involves climbing waterfalls, sliding down rock chutes and plunging into deep pools.

Global warming or no global warming, Borrowdale still has its fair share of weather. We will tell you how much the sun shone and how often we had to sit in the shade, yet conveniently we fail to mention the day the heavens opened and we stayed in our tents until mid-afternoon. Memory is notoriously selective in Borrowdale, yet my abiding recollection of the camp in the 1960s is queuing to have calamine lotion applied to my sunburned back – evidence, I think, that the past was a sunnier place. My memories of days spent swimming in Blackmoss Pot suggest that it was a warmer place too. Conversely, in 2002, the weather was largely responsible for us abandoning the original site where the ground had become so compacted that whenever there was a downpour large puddles formed inside as well outside the tents. And already on the new site, we have twice needed to move boys off the water-logged field into the Rosthwaite village hall to escape rising streams and the re-emergence of ancient lakes. What else could be expected of the wettest, wildest valley in England?

The continuing rude health of the camp has owed a huge debt to the Brownlee family at Stonethwaite Farm. Some 65 years have elapsed since a young Victor Brownlee first helped his father bring up our canvas to the field with a horse and cart. A mere 25 years ago we were still collecting our milk from Mrs Brownlee in a polished metal churn. Even now, after our move to Stuart Bland’s field in Rosthwaite, their daughter Christine Brownlee still delivers us milk every morning, though modern regulations dictate that this now arrives in sealed plastic containers. The warmth of the welcome we have received from the Brownlees over these years has contributed enormously to our sense of belonging in the valley, as guests yes, but as guests who have deserved their place in local history and myth.

Just as the arrival of the first cuckoo heralds the spring, so the arrival of MGS supposedly, according to local lore, brought the first warm sunny days, as well as the first coin-blockages in the local phone-box. But that was when camp was held at Whitsuntide. Since camp has been held in late June, MGS seems to arrive just as the warm, dry spring weather is beginning to break. Yet the weather never played by the rules. Those with longer memories may remember Borrowdale’s Great Flood of 1966, and a tiring day the following spring spent picking up the boulders deposited by the flood all over the Brownlee’s fields. We carried each rock to the trailer which then dumped its load as a flood-barrier against further incursions.

Disasters have been mercifully few in more recent years, though 2001 saw camp cancelled completely. The restrictions brought in to combat foot and mouth disease effectively excluded us from walking the fields, paths and fells which are the very essence of Borrowdale. We never imagined that things could be virtually as bad in 2002, the following year, but they were. This was, as Alan McDonald records ‘a record-breaking camp’ It was the ‘earliest camp, shortest camp, coldest camp, muddiest camp’,and the consensus was that it should be abandoned after only three days. Tents were flooded out, sleeping bags soaked, and the inside of the marquee had become a quagmire, with even the duckboards vanishing in the morass.

Those of us with longer memories recall those high winds of the 1980s when the marquee used to blow down regularly at night, and one mid-morning gust deposited most of our tents in the next field. I shall never forget returning later that day after a wild and blustery walk, looking forward to my supper, to find an eerie absence of tents, shell-shocked boys sheltering in the barn, and a removals’ van loading up broken poles and shredded canvas. Nobody who was there will forget it. Some were prematurely aged by this experience, and others decided never to return, yet others again were filled with a sense of wonder at the power of nature. Once the initial shock had subsided and stories had been shared, then a sense of exhilaration took over and, dare I say it, pride that we had all survived unscathed in such exceptional conditions.

Numbers of campers have fluctuated considerably as young men have adjusted their perceptions of communal life under canvas. The popularity of the camp grew steadily after the war, until by 1954 there were some 70 boys, divided into junior and senior camps. These numbers continued to rise until by the 1960s there were often over 100 boys choosing to spend their Whit holidays exploring the mountains. This was an era when foreign holidays were unknown to most, and adventurous young men were seeking their challenges closer to home. These numbers began to decline in the 1980s as wetter, windier weathers took their toll. However, the smaller camps of some 50 keen walkers were much easier to manage, and meant that party sizes in the hills could be restricted to groups of ten. After camp was cancelled in 2001, then abandoned in 2002, only 28 boys signed up for the following year. One might then have predicted the demise of Borrowdale Camp and an end to serious fell-walking at MGS, but since then, numbers have built up again steadily until 2014 when some 80 boys attended.

Alan McDonald continued to lead the camp for some twenty-five years in his own quietly efficient way. We owe him a great deal. His expertise in the fells helped us cope with the exponential growth of safety considerations, whilst his ability to make the right decision in the face of adversity gained him huge respect. Since Alan’s retirement, Ashley Hern has proved a worthy, witty and wise successor, understanding that the formula for a happy and successful camp has evolved over many years and requires adjustment only when circumstances make it absolutely essential. I like to think that any Borrowdaler from the 1980s can walk into the marquee and find everything just as he left it, and I imagine too that he would find several staff just as he left them, though possibly a little worse for wear.

It is easy to forget from one year to the next just how impressive our campsites in Borrowdale have been. Seemingly inaccessible crags draw the eye ever upwards from the moment of arrival. This is truly one of the most beautiful corners of England, a place where stream, pasture, woodland, man and mountain co-exist in awesome harmony. We are privileged indeed to have a toehold here within striding distance of Scafell and Great Gable, privileged to spend a week in this magical landscape and its transforming stillness.

It is also well-nigh impossible for a boy, on his first visit to the valley, to appreciate all the echoes which fill the place he is in. It is almost forgivable, though not quite, when he wants to leave the dale to spend a day eating fish, chips and ice-cream in Keswick. The special quality of the place has not touched him yet with its stories, ever-changing light and haunting sounds, yet it surely will. Those who once set foot in Borrowdale tend to return again and again, and, dare I say it, are better people as a result.

Adrian Dobson