For over 300 years, we have come to the Lake District fells for recreation, solace & artistic inspiration. During this time the Lake District has become one of the UK’s most loved places, with an average 16 million annual visitors (but averaging 40M per annum as of late). Yet at what environmental cost? Might how we relate to it have become outdated, & unfit for purpose? And how is it going to withstand the numbers expected this summer?

What, another guidebook to the Lake District, attracting yet more visitors to this most visited landscape?! Well, yes…but Scree isn’t any old guidebook. Instead of offering scenic walks to honeypot locations, or the latest word in rugged peak-bagging adventures, the routes in Scree are artistic provocations - experiments which playfully ask questions aimed at entirely rethinking our relationship with the Lake District, through writing & art, and walking, running or wheeling. And the environmental topics explored by Scree are certain to dominate debate in the coming months and years…

In seeking solace from the landscape, might we end up inscribing our own griefs and traumas upon it?

Nature, really? Whose landscape is this anyway (& who gets to say)?

Peak-bagging, fellrunning record-breaking: why the need to conquer the fells?

How can we best bring our creative energies to the fells, rather than extracting energy from them?

Scree doesn’t provide all the answers – that’s where you come in, whether by independently following the routes, creating and submitting new writing or art, attending a Scree-lab (writing & hiking course), visiting the Scree exhibition at Wordsworth House, or following route adaptations and virtual exercises to complete the experiments from home. Yet it does set out from a belief that our relationship with landscapes is fundamentally creative, making writing and art the ideal ways to explore.