I’m between a cement factory, the M6 and a pylon. I’ve trekked through a bog, down a tunnel usually reserved for cows and fell into, eventually fording, a stream. The rain drizzles: the clouds darken. Tate Modern it ain’t.

Below a pylon are 800 fluorescent tubes. In the failing light they stand straight pointing towards the sky with a faint glow. This is one of the star exhibits of FRED, the largest open-air art exhibition in Europe continuing until October 15.

Spread across Cumbria from the popular Lake District to the less touristy west coast of the county are more than 35 installations including roadside haikus, medicine cabinets filled with tourist pills, suitcases with scents from your past and the new take on the great British institution, the garden shed.

Steve Messem, the festival director, meets me at Low Sizergh Farm near Kendal, an organic producer with cows, vegetables and fairies. Trotting around the two mile path a sign points out that fairies have right of way. This is Messam’s own piece – An Under-Complicated Experiment in Mutual Awareness. Along the path are more signs pointing out types of fairies, like wood nymphs. But I have a problem.

“I can’t see any fairies Steve”

“Well, you’re obviously not gifted” he retorts.

He looks harmless enough so I’m not worried about personal safety and I let him explain his piece subtitled “Do Fairies Believe in Us?” It is a way of seeing the world through a child’s eyes but also through a fairy’s. Why do children want to see fairies? “I’ve been doing things with fairies for years” he points out. The word fairy is used in the strict sense of supernatural woodland being as opposed to its musical hall Carry-On connotations.

This is the fourth year that FRED has been running. After a career of music journalism and photography Messam found himself in Cumbria and feeling artistically bereft. “I wanted to find other artists out there who didn’t do brown pots and portraits of cats.”

He has a point. Think of Cumbria and the perception is usually of one giant pot of jam, with a gingham cover, slowly being devoured by pensioners. It’s the Granpa Simpson of English Tourism. The councils and National Park show no tendency to inspire anyone younger than 50 to visit and conspire to keep things the same – for ever.

But back to the fairies. Messam pointed out that there is no real contemporary gallery in Cumbria for rural artists to exhibit their works. FRED (the festival got this name after the obscenity it replaced was found to be illegal) uses cafes, libraries and most importantly the hills, dales and fells of the region to show off their works. Artists need to submit an idea which fits within the environment and landscape of Cumbria.

We then drove to Sedbergh a cute town that in the last few years has remade itself into the English version of Hay-on-Wye with copious book shops replacing grocers and pet shops selling whippets. One book in particular caught my attention in the Sedbergh Library – British Tits by Jane Anderson. Originally a book found in a charity shop detailing the lives of these animated species, the artist Jane Anderson with the help of copious Tippex has erased nearly all the words in this academic tome except for “tits”. Obviously on one level this is worth a titter – sorry- but what she is trying to do in her work is highlight cultural misunderstandings and the humiliation that occurs because of them. A very strict form (an academic book) suddenly becomes warped and can be transformed into a figure of fun.

In the heart of the Lakes, Ambleside became home to Kurt Schwitters, the famous Dadaist, just after the Second World War. A museum in the town exhibits his later work mostly created because he was in dire poverty and needed food and lodging. Schwitters remains an inspiration to contemporary local artists Russell Mills and Ian Walton whose work Head is a garden shed covered in gold leaf containing a single light bulb. This is a homage to the British psyche, the works of invention and inspiration that can be created within a small grubby wooden room at the end of the garden. This is where dreams become reality … or where you keep the spade.

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The day was waning and my final stop on this art odyssey through the beautiful, rugged landscape of this county, was Shake Pole, a work by Richard Box under the pylon off J39 (Shap) on the M6. It is an amazing feeling as the daylight disappears to see the fluorescent tubes glimmer and flicker around you.

But how are they lit up? Well there is some controversy here but generally the cables stretching from pylon to pylon have 44,000 volts going through them and they “leak” electricity downwards lighting up the bulbs. They are not fully lit up but shine with the first flicker of light when you have just switched them on and the electricity is finding its way. The bulbs directly below the cables are the best lit. Some are coloured. Their core has degraded and red and green tubes become apparent. It is at once calming and reflective but also worrying, where is this electricity coming from and where is it going to? What effect is it having on us? Like all good art it asks questions of us rather than resolving them.

NEED TO KNOW

Low Wood Hotel is a four-star hotel with leisure club, watersports centre and marina on the shores of Lake Windermere in the Lake District. It has 110 rooms Rooms are available from £80, B&B and £105 for dinner, bed and breakfast. Rates are per person per night, inclusive of full English breakfast and dinner where indicated, use of the Low Wood Leisure Club, VAT at 17.5%, and are based on two persons sharing a double/twin room. These prices exclude Bank Holidays, Christmas and New Year periods.

Getting there

Virgin Trains has fares from London to Oxenholme (Lake District) from £33 return, which includes a seat reservation.

FRED

FRED annual art invasion in Cumbria runs from the 30th September to 15th October - 16 full days. This year over 60 artists from across the UK and beyond have created 35 projects in all new locations around Cumbria.

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