Coledale Beck is a minor

river A river is a natural stream of fresh water that flows on land or inside Subterranean river, caves towards another body of water at a lower elevation, such as an ocean, lake, or another river. A river may run dry before reaching the end of ...

running through

Cumbria Cumbria ( ) is a ceremonial county in North West England. It borders the Scottish council areas of Dumfries and Galloway and Scottish Borders to the north, Northumberland and County Durham to the east, North Yorkshire to the south-east, Lancash ...

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

Course

The beck rises north east of

Eel Crag Crag Hill is a mountain in the North Western part of the English Lake District. It was formerly known as Eel Crag; however, the Ordnance Survey now marks Eel Crag as referring to the northern crags of the fell. It is not to be confused with ano ...

, where Pudding Beck meets Birkthwaite Beck. From there, Coledale Beck runs east north east through Coledale, between

Grisedale Pike Grisedale Pike is a fell in the Lake District, Cumbria, England, situated west of the town of Keswick in the north-western sector of the national park. At a height of it is the 40th-highest Wainwright in the Lake District; it also qual ...

and

Causey Pike Causey Pike is a fell in the English Lake District. It is situated in the Newlands Valley, south-west of the town of Keswick. Even though it has a modest height of it is one of the most distinctive fells when viewed from the Derwent Water a ...

. Emerging from the valley, the beck runs through the

village A village is a human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand. Although villages are often located in rural areas, the term urban v ...

Braithwaite Braithwaite is a village in the northern Lake District, in Cumbria, England. Historically in Cumberland, it lies just to the west of Keswick and to the east of the Grisedale Pike ridge. It forms part of the civil parish of Above Derwent. ...

, before feeding Newlands Beck, on the way picking up Barrow Gill (running north from Barrow). Wainwright singled out the latter stream for its exceptional ravine, which he described as “a gorge of amazing proportions for so slender a stream and deeper even than Piers Gill”.

Literary associations

David Wright David Allen Wright (born December 20, 1982) is an American former professional baseball third baseman who spent his entire 14-year Major League Baseball (MLB) career with the New York Mets. Chosen by the Mets in the 2001 Major League Baseball dr ...

in his poem ‘Storm’ (about the exceptional cloudburst of 1966) wrote of the Beck how “I didn’t expect the animal under our bridge...the livid rapid/ That lipped the bank and, reared on hind legs, battered/ the stone arch, hurtling missiles…. The beck had its dander up, and wonderfully….”.N Nicholson ed., ''The Lake District'' (Penguin 1978) p. 154

References

Rivers of Cumbria 2Coledale Beck watercourses {{England-river-stub