The owner of a Lake District tea room will launch his first book on Sunday.
Colin Hindle, owner of the much-loved Granny Dowbekin’s Tea Rooms in Pooley Bridge, has created a handwritten and illustrated guide to Lakeland’s Best Views, which took him five years to complete.
This is the first of four volumes and concentrates on the best views around the Ullswater Valley.
The books are intended to be a companion to Alfred Wainwright’s guides and the official launch date is also Wainwright’s birthday.
Colin said: “In 2015 a great friend of mine decided to walk the 214 Wainwrights in one year to fund raise for a cancer charity in memory of his mother.
“On reaching many of the summits with him I felt some sense of deflation; there was no view, or a compromised view, or the view was better earlier or later on the walk.
“Despite owning the Wainwright Pictorial Guides for a decade it wasn’t until reading Hunter Davies’ excellent biography of him that I realised every page was designed as a complete entity so the reader never had to turn over on a windy fell to find the information they needed.
“Additionally how he had rewritten the first 120 pages of Book One in order to justify the right hand margins; and how frustrated he was in trying to achieve perfection, eventually accepting that no matter what he did there would always be errors.
“His books are objects of beauty in themselves, and it was this framework that inspired me to make this guide to the best views in Lakeland as a supplement to his epic work.”
The limited edition book is released on Sunday, costs £18 and signed copies are available to pre-order now at www.colinhindle.co.uk.
The book will be available to buy from Sunday at Booths in Penrith.
