Rydalwater by Modern Nature

Originally commissioned as an improvised guitar piece for the Caught by the River Aerial Festival programme, 'Rydalwater' recalls Jack Cooper's childhood visits to Windermere.

Jack writes: "It’s difficult to reminisce about the past at the moment. The family I was a part of when I think about days out in the Lake District still exists, bonded forever by the twenty years we spent in each other’s pockets, but now we are spread out all over the country and, in my father’s case, the world.

Disregarding the pandemic for a second, it’s not impossible to imagine the current incarnation of our extended family piling into a couple of cars and heading up the M6 for a day out around Windermere. My wife, my mum, sister and her two girls did just that a couple of years ago. I’m sure when this pandemic is over, we’ll do it all again.

But what I wouldn’t give to be in the back of my dad’s car, tearing up the M6 at six o’clock in the morning for a day out in the Lakes. The thought of racing raindrops across the back windows of the car with my sister while my Dad complains about caravans or tractors; my Mum singing along to Madonna on the car stereo is almost too much to even think about. The Little Chef at Staveley is long gone, but there’s some comfort in imagining our Rydal Water; its banks and contours slightly more eroded, the pebbles we stood on still there, under the water."