Place Fell and Moor Divock

Saturday 3rd January 2009

On the last walk of my holiday at New Year I travelled from Glenridding to the village of Askham where I could catch a bus to the railway station at Penrith. I was quite tired when I started this walk as it had been a tiring week with some long challenging walks, though fortunately with good weather. The weather on this walk, however, was continuing as it had started on the previous day by being grey and overcast with a stiff, cold breeze, which was a marked change from earlier in the week when there had hardly been a breath of wind. Although it wasn’t colder, the wind made it feel like it was significantly, but the views were still clear enough so it did not spoil my walk in any way. At the start I had to walk out of Glenridding and into Patterdale, which is a journey I’ve taken on a number of occasions so I am very familiar with the various routes I could take. On this occasion I chose to take my favourite: along a disused water channel (a leat) above Glenridding, over Mires Beck and over the headland into Grisedale. To get into Patterdale from there I chose to walk along the road for the first time instead of using the footpaths, but it doesn't really compare with the footpath below Glenamara Park.

From Patterdale I took a path that led me up to the complicated Boredale Hause where it is crucial to be on the correct path before you get into the pass or it will not be easy to find the correct path out of it. Following Wainwright’s advice I had stayed left, which ensured that when I reached the ‘Chapel in the Hause’ I was at the right point to take the path up Place Fell. I'd never been to Place Fell before, though I'd been trying to plan a walk up the fell for years. I had found it difficult to incorporate it into a walk before because Place Fell is isolated from other fells; there are no high connecting ridges and the only link to another fell is the low Boredale Hause. It was a great relief to be finally be able to climb it, but I wasn't impressed with the path from Boredale Hause. It is a wide, heavily manufactured, gravelly path, but steep nevertheless. There are some good rocky bits at the top, but they were all too brief compared with the size of the fell, which is a big sprawling mass with a complex terrain and many footpaths. It’s a fascinating area, but it seemed a little too big and sprawling; it is too wide with little variation so it didn’t seem to me to have any secret hidden corners that one could explore. The best bit would appear, from the map, to be the steep rocky slopes that fall into Ullswater, but a further visit would be required to ascertain whether Place Fell really has more to offer than appeared from my visit to the top on this walk. From the summit I took the best line across the vast fell over Hart Crag and down to Low Moss on an excellent footpath that then goes around the small hill of High Dodd (which I had to climb over) and descends over Sleet Fell. I found this final descent very steep and slippery in the frosty conditions, and I slipped over more times on that descent than I had all week! Once at the bottom I walked quickly along quiet narrow lanes to Howtown, past the picturesque bridge in Martindale and stopped off at the Church on the Hause for lunch. Once in Howtown I began to climb the steep grassy hillside opposite to the vast moorland above. This was leg-breakingly steep, probably the steepest ascent in the whole of the Lake District. When I finally reached the top I went over to bag Bonscale Pike, a Wainwright that I’d never visited before, and then crossed the shallow valley of Swarth Beck to another Wainwright that I’d never visited before, Arthur's Pike. With those two bagged all I had left to do was cross Moor Divock to get to Askham, which was not easy as the moor is vast and there are no paths that go in the right direction, though plenty that go in the wrong direction! Using my GPS to keep me in the right direction I tried to keep my speed up as I battled across the moor, though at one point I got my feet wet when I went through the thin ice in a bog.

Eventually I managed to get to Askham and was just in time to catch the bus. That was the second time I’d crossed Moor Divock, the first being in 2004 when the use of a map & compass was necessary to get across the moor even though the weather was clear. I won’t be in a hurry to cross the moor again. This walk was a bit of a drag with very few really great sections. It seemed rather low key compared with the great walks that I had been on during the week, but I suppose the fells I had just walked over were small compared with the giants I had been up only the day before. Place Fell was not the awesome place I had hoped it would be; it was just too wide and tamed by an abundance of paths. Moor Divock was wilder, but was also bleak and inhospitable having none of the attractions that makes the Lake District such an appealing place. This walk was also blighted by having to walk against the clock, with my mind always on the bus that I needed to catch in Askham. This is often the case on the last day of a holiday but seems to be unavoidable.