Most of us are familiar with the phrase 'The Ice Age'. It conjures up a picture of great ice sheets and glaciers covering the landscape, a time of perpetual winter and of harsh conditions inhospitable to life.
This booklet attempts to explain what ice-age conditions were like in the Lake District. Although the framework of the district is written in its geology with the rocks controlling the major outlines, it was the work of ice and cold climate processes during what we rather simply call 'The Ice Age' that fashioned the present day appearance of our district and left the fells and dales looking the way they do.
The booklet will try to illustrate in simple terms how we can show that ice and glaciers once existed. We experienced not just one Ice Age but several. For the last 2.6 million years of geological time the climate has swung back and forth between periods of relative warmth and very severe full glacial situations - a cycle we are still in today. How cold was it in the Lake District? How much ice did we have? When did the glaciers and ice sheets build up and melt away? Do we have any evidence of life during these ice-age times? All are relevant questions. Evidence to help us piece together this jisgsaw of ice-age times is out there in the Lakeland landscape of today.