A book on hermit Millican Dalton should help restore his reputation as Borrowdale's best-loved eccentric, says Harry Mead.

THE best - and the most succinct - advice for any journalist is chiselled at the entrance to a cave in Borrowdale: "Don't waste worrds, jump to conclusions!"

Almost certainly deliberate (not quite a jumped-to conclusion there), the misspelling probably recognises the rolling Northumbrian 'r' in the speech of Northumberland-born Millican Dalton, who occupied the cave as his summer home for several decades last century.

Known as the Borrowdale Hermit, he styled himself the Professor of Adventure. His annual return to Borrowdale was greeted with excitement by Keswick children: "Millican Dalton's back, Millican Dalton's back.''

For this hermit was no recluse. Dressed, as Michael Entwhistle strikingly observes, like a cross between "a tattered Scoutmaster and a Boer War veteran", he was a familiar figure around Borrowdale, sometimes on his old blue bike, often striding, or rather loping, over the fells, and occasionally poling himself along Derwentwater, on a "raft" that was little more than a tree-trunk and a few branches.

The professor pioneered outdoor holidays. Promoting "Camping Tours through Lovely Scenery,'' a prospectus of 1913 asked: "Why not have your own real adventures and thrilling experiences, under safe leadership, and study Nature at first hand, instead of merely in books?''

Entwhistle suggests that in the range of activities he offered, including gill-scrambling, canoeing, rafting, rapids' shooting, sailing, and outdoor cooking, Dalton virtually conceived multi-activity holidays.

He was certainly the first and last to offer "Hairbreadth Escapes (arranged by circumstances)''. These might come while "Dangling Over the Precipice," "Astride the Razor Ridge," or "Lost in a Mountain Mist" - some of the experiences he promised. He tempered the thrills with "Dinner on a Desert Island," and "A Sunrise Breakfast by the Lake".

Born in 1867 at Foulard, near Nenthead, England's highest village, and christened with his mother's maiden name, Dalton was the son of a smelt-mill agent and his wife.

After attending a Quaker boarding school in Wigton, near Carlisle, he became a fire insurance clerk in London, to whose suburbs the family had moved during a lead-mining slump.

The boy Dalton's adventurous spirit was expressed in the use of a rope ladder to enter and leave his bedroom, in a corner tower of the family home. The city clerk chose to commute from a tent in an Essex field. And he soon quit city life, to work as a mountain guide, in Switzerland and Austria as well as Britain.

Borrowdale became his base, centred initially on a tent at High Lodore, later in the quarry cave near Castle Crag.

On two levels - the upper one known as The Attic - the cave was furnished with items from a local tip. Cooking utensils and various gadgets were suspended from wires, quarry slates served as plates, and dripping water was collected in barrels. Dalton lived largely on his homemade wholemeal bread and oatcakes, tainted with cinders and ashes, and various berries in season. He slept on a bed of bracken, which provided what he called "wondrous comfort''.

Unlike your bog-standard hermit, Dalton entertained guests at his refuge, which he dubbed the "Cave Hotel". In 1919, it even hosted a wedding reception for two former office colleagues of Dalton, who attended the wedding, at Rosthwaite, in his usual climbing outfit, complete with rope.

Whether the seat of his trousers, rolled up above the knee, was covered with a canvas patch similar to one stitched to his shorts - to keep his rear dry when seated - is not recorded.

In 1940, the height of the Blitz, Dalton was ordered to "put that light out" - extinguish his camp fire at dusk. He wrote a letter of protest to Prime Minister Winston Churchill in Downing Street, but received no reply.

Entwhistle says some people believe the inscription at the cave entrance was carved not by Dalton but a friend exasperated by Dalton's dogmatism during an argument.

He was a pacifist, teetotaller, vegetarian and socialist. Once, he astonished the Keswick postmaster by refusing to accept the interest on a small savings account.

In winter Dalton migrated to Essex and, later, the Chilterns. Using an old sewing machine he made rucksacks, sleeping bags, tents and other outdoor items. He advertised them as "much superior to factory made; less bulky than Norwegian, third of the weight and half the cost''.

Entwhistle notes that by also offering such items for hire, he helped to open up outdoor pursuits to more than the well-off.

But though Dalton, who never suffered a cold, always insisted the outdoor life was good for health, his attempt to live through the severe winter of 1947 in a hut put him in hospital, where he died aged 79. He once remarked: "I find the simple life is the happiest.'' And he wrote: "Free I am as the buzzard... Freedom is everything.''

Latterly known to few except serious Lake District aficionados, Dalton merits the higher profile that Entwhistle's well-researched and affectionate tribute, amply illustrated with pictures of its striking subject, should achieve.

* MILLICAN DALTON: A SEARCH FOR ROMANCE AND FREEDOM by MD Entwhistle (Mountainmere Research) £8.99, or £9.59 by post from the author, The Hollies, Windermere, Cumbria, LA23 1EL, Tel: (01254) 884696.

Published: 26/10/2004