Hosts who will help the Lake District

An Ambleside guest house with strong links to the Lakeland fells has joined the Lake District Foundation visitor giving scheme.

Guests planning to stay at Haven Guest House will now have an opportunity to make a donation when they stay at the property, and the owners will also donate £1 for every direct booking.

Allie and Chris Hodgson

The guest house is run by Allie and Chris Hodgson who are closely connected with an event that helps the local community across the valley in the Patterdale area. They are members of the team that organises the annual Hodgson Brothers Mountain Relay race which in turn helps raise funds for the people and the places around the event.

“Over the years we have built a close relationship with many people in the local Patterdale community; we rely on the goodwill and generosity of the landowners and residents in the valley so try to put something back into the area on an annual basis,” said Chris. The event is named in the memory of two of his sporting brothers who died tragically young.

Runners in the Hodgson Brothers relay in the Lake District

“So we are delighted to help the Lake District Foundation which funds conservation, environmental and cultural heritage projects in whole of the Lakes. As well as raising funds we want to raise awareness of the Foundation and will be publicising their work in our guest house”

Recent Foundation projects have included a grant of £4,500 to the Cumbria Local Nature Partnership, enabling them to lead the development of a strategic approach for managing the biodiversity of the National Park; and a grant of over £2,600 to the John Muir Trust, which last year took over responsibility for the management of a large part of Helvellyn. The money will fund a new project aiming to increase the populations of threatened arctic-alpine species found on the high crags of the Helvellyn range.

“The relay organisers made a donation this year to the John Muir Helvellyn project, and this is something very dear to our hearts,” said Chris.

In 2018 the relay organisers also supported Glenridding Village Hall; Patterdale School & Nursery who raise nearly £2000 by serving refreshments at the event; and the King George V Playing Fields in Patterdale which is race HQ and who are currently raising funds for a new pavilion.

 

The Lake District Foundation inspires people to care for and donate to projects that care for the spectacular wildlife, landscapes and cultural heritage of the Lake District and Cumbria.  The LDF supports the delivery of the shared aims of the Lake District National Park Partnership as the main fundraising and grant making partner. This is achieved through innovative and successful fundraising campaigns locally, nationally and internationally. The Lake District Foundation encourages partners to work together to ensure a coordinated approach to fundraising and income generation. For more information visit www.lakedistrictfoundation.org.

 

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New Kendal show by Cumbrian artist

New paintings by Cumbrian artist Linda Ryle are on show at Kendal’s Abbot Hall gallery.

The ten recent oil paintings fill the wall reserved for contemporary art in the gallery’s shop and all are all for sale. The display will run until the end of January.

Linda made her name in the 1970s making belts for celebrities. She went on to develop an extensive and unusual career including craft work and different periods of painting. A major retrospective, Time Regained, was staged at Grasmere’s Heaton Cooper Studio two years ago.

Born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Linda trained at Goldsmiths’ School of Art, London in the 1960s, and now lives in Cockermouth. She is married to the painter Julian Cooper.

She designed and produced leather belts for the shop Ace on Chelsea’s Kings Road (and later at Covent Garden market) whose clientele included singers, actors and celebrities such as Elton John, Lulu, Bianca Jagger and Brit Ekland.

As a painter her work included farm animals and cats, some of which were published as cards, but by the mid-1980s she had diversified.  There was, for example, a series of small canvasses based on dreams, after she had become immersed in the ideas of Carl Jung, the analytical psychologist.

Linda’s first solo show was in 2004 at the Percy House Gallery in Cockermouth. The paintings of trees, river and beck had begun in the late 1990s, inspired by the sound and movement of wind through leaves and branches, sunlight on pebbles, the drag and flow of reeds.

The new display in Kendal, interior objects, are oils painted on linen.