Ad lib, ad fib

Among the stipulations is that lawyers and politicians are refused entry, on account of being professionals.

Since there is no such proscription upon itinerant journalists, it must – as always – be taken for granted that every word of today’s column is cross-your-heart-and-hope-to-die kosher.

There was a piece about it all in the Answers to Correspondents column in last Wednesday’s Daily Mail. At the time of reading, a brief toe in Lakeland water, we were in the residents’ lounge of the Santon Bridge.

The contest was started in 1974 in memory of Will Ritson, a 19th Century publican at Wasdale Head of whom it was said that he wouldn’t know the truth if it gave birth to twin lambs in the top field.

Now eagerly promoted by Copeland Council and by Jennings Brewery, it invites exaggeration – ad fib – from all quarters, though usually with a Lakeland flavour.

There’ve been through-the-teeth tales about local hunts being forced to give the fox 72 hours notice in writing of their intentions, of Wassie – the Wasdale monster – and of a plot by Essex lads to steal all Cumbria’s mountains.

It’s doubtless the way they tell them.

Local farmer Joss Naylor, awarded the MBE for services to fell running and to charity, has won twice, Mike Naylor, his nephew, took the title on his dissembling debut.

“It’s the first time I’ve told a lie in my life,” he insisted, and Buttermere wouldn’t melt in his mouth.

FOR all that you couldn’t make it up, the Biggest Liar competition comes but tenth in a 2009 book – Wacky Nation – that lists England’s strangest “sporting” events.

Sadly, neither the World Egg Jarping Championship at Peterlee Cricket Club nor the annual conker confrontation at Trimdon Colliery get a mention at all.

The world gurning championship is ninth – they have fond memories of that in Cockfield – the world crazy golf contest eighth and some barrel fair rolls in at seventh.

Bog snorkelling’s fifth, nettle eating fourth – the record’s 76ft of nettles in half an hour, it’s said to be one hell of a laxative – the world worm charming championship surprisingly only second.

It’s held on a school field near Crewe, the record 576 in an hour – charming, or what? – and with a rule to prevent cutting the poor little beggars in half and thus doubling the tally.

The world gravy wrestling championship, held in a pub paddling pool near Bacup, is in top place. Locals are again said to have an advantage, but probably they’re all in the same boat.

RAIN’S the other thing for which the western Lakes is famous.

At school they taught that England’s wettest place was Wasdale Head, these days it’s said to be Seathwaite with an average 124 inches a year.

In a 72-hour period in November 2009, poor Seathwaite copped for 450mm – almost 18 inches.

We went. The sun shone upon the righteous, upon the little Holy Trinity church – where a priest known as Wonderful Walker served for 66 years until his death at 92 – and upon the welcoming Newfield Inn, where a black dog lay basking before the stove.

Headed “The Seathwaite Riot”, newspaper cuttings framed on the wall recall the incident in 1904 when the Newfield landlord decided that one of a gang of itinerant workers had had enough to drink.

He and his mates then smashed up pub, church and vicarage. Unless they desisted, the landlord is supposed to have said, he’d have to shoot them. They didn’t. He did.

One died, two were badly injured and carted off to the poor house infirmary at Ulverston. Charged with manslaughter, the landlord appeared before understanding local magistrates.

The dead and injured, it was crucially said, were from Millom. Like his gun, the landlord was discharged.

These days the Newfield’s altogether more agreeable. Just one problem: we were in the wrong Seathwaite.

The wettest is 20 mountainous miles north. “Mind,” said a friendly local. “this un must come a bloody good second.”

MILLOM’S maligned. One or other of these columns visited in 2002 after PC Terence McGlennon was posted there, had to take six weeks off with stress simply upon being given the news and subsequently won an industrial tribunal.

PC McGlennon would go to the ends of the earth to do his duty, it was said, but to Millom? It was a punishment station, he claimed, and a colleague apparently agreed.

“A lot of families are related by marriage, one way or another,” he said.

They’d had trouble finding a vicar, too, four priests having turned down the job after the Reverend Philip Greenhalgh left for Weardale.

Instead of Millom, however, we took the train in the opposite direction to Maryport, where the Lifeboat Inn offers a perfectly decent 4 per cent abv bitter – Dishwatter – for 99p a pint and the local Sea Cadets’ headquarters is up the road.

Outside there’s a boat with an arrow and gold lettering on the hull.

“This way up,” it says.

MARYPORT’S a Roman town.

Hadrian colonised west Cumbria in the 2nd Century AD.

If Millom were a latter-day punishment station, however, what of the fort near the top of Hardknott Pass to which a cohort of Dalmatians – 500, not 101 – was billeted.

Hardknott Pass, one of the few Lakeland roads that runs east-west, is 1-in-3, said with Rosedale Chimney in North Yorkshire to be England’s steepest road.

Some call it precipitous, others simply perilous. The clear advantage of having a fort up there would have been that cantankerous Cumbrians would have been half-dead before they even arrived. The disadvantages are legion.

The foundations, remarkably, are preserved. There was a bathhouse and a granary; on a good day you could see the Isle of Man and on a bad un next-to-nothing.

Unlike the Dalmatian cohort, we found a real ale pub at the bottom.

SO, homeward, to the other Seathwaite, a cul-de-sac hamlet near Borrowdale that’s up to the oxters in rain and in records.

Grey, gallumphing, Great Gable is blamed.

Basically it’s little more than a group of houses in a farmyard, names like Derwenthead and Seathwaite Farm Cottage and not the more vivid Bucket Down or Sodden Hell.

There’s a telephone box and public conveniences towards which the National Trust invites donations in a collecting tin, lest folk be no longer able to spend a penny.

Someone’s also left a bath outside, as if they hadn’t had their fill already.

The sun’s shining once again, clothes blowing in the breeze. How often may Seathwaite suppose that it’s good drying weather?

So is another column fabricated – that is to say, constructed. Next week, no doubt, we shall temperately return east of the Pennines. This was just something for a rainy day.