famousfolk:
Millican Dalton

MANY people dream of swapping their humdrum city existence for a tranquil outdoor life in a stunningly beautiful place such as the Lake District. Millican Dalton made that dream come true and lived in Borrowdale, with very little money, for nearly half a century.

He was born on April 20, 1867, to Quaker parents at Foulard near Nenthead, in the lead-mining area around Alston. Millican - whose name came from his mother's maiden name - went to Brookfield, the Friends’ School in Wigton before his family moved south to Essex.

His father died when he was just seven. He started in a comfortable career as an insurance clerk in London before, at the age of 36, finding the call of the outdoors irresistible. He quit his desk in the City and went to Borrowdale, where he offered adventure holidays to the unsuspecting public.

The challenges offered by the self-styled Professor of Adventure included: "Dangling over the precipice, climbing the Needle, varied hair-breadth escapes, being lost in a mountain mist, a midnight row on Derwentwater and a sunrise breakfast by the lake."

Millican lived at first in a tent, then in a split-level quarried cave half way up Castle Crag in the Jaws of Borrowdale, returning south to a hut in the Chilterns, in Buckinghamshire, in the winter. He lived in a huge cave under Castle Crag and named it Cave Hotel.

A waterfall poured through the roof but Millican found shelter behind a pile of slate debris and kept the worst of the draughts at bay with an old blanket. A small wood fire gave out a little light and warmth and even in his late 70s, Millican would spend the nights lying on the hard rock floor, covered by an eiderdown he’d had for 50 years.

He lived off his wits. A dump in the nearby village of Grange provided basics such as old pans and materials he could make into camping equipment. He survived on what little he earned as a climbing guide on Napes Needle and the other crags he knew like the back of his hand.

As a vegetarian, his staple diet was wholemeal bread baked daily on a griddle "a lucky find at the Grange tip" over a wood fire. He also enjoyed hazelnuts picked up from the woods round his cave.

Millican's only luxuries were coffee, as dark and thick as treacle, and a constant supply of cigarettes. Nothing was allowed to interrupt his chainsmoking and he would hold his cigarette between his toes as he kneaded his bread, stirred his porridge, or brewed his coffee.

Dressed in a style all his own, Millican was an eye-catching figure. A slouch hat sheltered his tanned, heavily bearded and weather-beaten face. His home-made shirt and jacket were roughly put together and left unhemmed. Whatever the weather, he wore shorts that could convert into shorts, which he claimed to have invented, and old cloths fastened around his lower legs in the style of puttees.

Years of living so close to nature had given him a distinctive smell and would-be adventurers who sought him as a guide tried to keep down-wind. In 1940-1941, Millican - always addressed as The Skipper - braved snow, ice and sub-zero temperatures to remain all winter in the Cave Hotel and keep well clear of the London Blitz. A visit from a Keswick air raid warden prompted Millican, a pacifist, to put out his campfire and candles and to write to Churchill demanding an end to the war because it was interfering with his liberty!

Intelligent and well-educated, Millican, a teetotaller, was a man ahead of his time who loved to pit himself against the elements. He climbed trees in winter to keep fit for climbing, built a raft named Rogue Herries and on his 50th ascent of Napes Needle, lit a fire at the summit and made a pot of coffee.

During the cold winter of 1947, his hut burned down but undaunted, he moved into a tent. Millican - a distinguished member of the Fell and Rock Club - contracted pneumonia and spent his last few days in hospital before dying in Amersham on February 5, 1947, aged 79 years.

MILLICANISMS:
The best air-raid shelter in England - talking about his cave
Don't waste words, jump to conclusions! - carved into his cave wall