"Cockley Beck" is a hymn to the beauty of nature and the joys of solitude and silence. In 2005 it was listed in the Guardian, alongside the works of the Wordsworths, Coleridge, Norman Nicholson and others, as one of the great British classics of nature writing - being described as a 'lovely, elegant, intense piece of work'. Cockley Beck is a mountain farm at the head of the Lakeland valley of Dunnerdale, to which John Pepper retreated for nine winters in order to find something other than wage slavery and a mortgage. The book describes the 'glorious wilderness' he encountered, as well as the local inhabitants - who told of their lives in these remote valleys of rock, forest and water. This offbeat, highly personal and atmospheric book captures the spirit of place and people, and fully deserves its reputation as a classic.
