Beautiful Blea Tarn sitting in the valley with the Langsdale Pikes as backdrop on a bright Autumn morning, Lake District, Cumbria, England, UK


Blea Tarn is situated in a small hanging valley between Great Langdale and Little Langdale. The tarn itself was shaped by glacial ice moving over the col from nearby Great Langdale, but the ice was cut off as the glacier shrank, leaving "moraines very different from those at the head of the main valley". A carpark for twenty vehicles is sited close to the tarn with an all-ability trail leading around the tarn. The tarn is forested on its western shore with rhododendrons also found there, the other shores being grassland. Blea Tarn was characterised in 1969 as being low in nutrients and acidic but not having suffered from fertiliser pollution. Brown trout, perch and pike can all be found in the tarn. Blea Tarn was designated a SSSI in 1989 because of its importance for palaeo-environmental studies relating to the Devensian and Flandrian times. Pollen analysis from Blea Tarn shows evidence for elm branches being collected as fodder from 3300 BC and forest clearances occurring from around 3000 to 2000 BC corresponding with the dates of the Great Langdale axe factory.


Size: 5472px × 3648px
Location: Blea Tarn, Langsdale Valley, Cumbria, United Kingdom
Photo credit: © ©Woodward/Woody / Alamy / Afripics
License: Royalty Free
Model Released: No

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