A circuit of Derwent Water

Tuesday 23rd December 2014

At the end of my previous day's walk I drove to Keswick and down the Borrowdale Road heading for the Borrowdale Youth Hostel, where I was booked to stay. It was still raining and the valley was beginning to flood, so I began to question the wisdom of proceeding, though I actually managed to get a long way down the valley and reached the far side of Rosthwaite before I stopped. I was not far from the hostel and could have quite easily driven through the floods between the village and the hostel, but I was afraid of being trapped in Borrowdale and being unable to get home for Christmas. Erring on the side of caution I turned around and returned back along the Borrowdale Road and had my booking transferred to the hostel in Keswick. With hindsight if I’d stayed in Borrowdale then my options for a walk this day would have been few due to the flooding in the valley and high winds on the fells. The walk that I came up with after this change of location was to walk around the picturesque lake of Derwent Water with my main reason for doing so being to have a look at the floods.

With high winds forecast I decided to stay off the tops of the fells and headed out of Keswick on a now very familiar route that I have taken many times that crosses fields to the west of Keswick that must act as a floodplain, but since they weren’t flooded at this time indicated that despite my fears there was nothing extraordinary about the rainfall. After crossing the River Derwent I passed through the village of Portinscale and along the road on the boring bit of this familiar route. On reaching Fawe Park I usually take a narrow path that climbs steeply over a low hill before descending back down onto the main path. On this occasion, in view of the wet weather, and in the hope of getting a view over the lake, I went around the low hill on a wide track past Nichol End. I didn’t get a view of the lake and the track was no match for the path over the low hill, but once the routes combined, and despite the poor weather, I had an enjoyable walk through the dark woodland of Overside Wood eventually arriving at the northern tip of Cat Bells.

Repeating the route that I had taken both on New Year’s Day 2013 and at Easter the same year I followed the excellent path that skirts the eastern slopes of Cat Bells above Brandelhow Park. This gorgeous footpath soon revealed fantastic, though misty views across Derwent Water while I enjoyed a glorious promenade on the terrace below Cat Bells. Just before reaching the path that comes down from Hause Gate I saw a National Trust sign indicating a permitted cycle route through woodland. There were no cyclists about so I thought I’d have a bit of fun by walking down this path that zigzags steeply down to the road. This path took me down to the road not far from Manesty, where the terrace route and the path from Hause Gate also exits. A short distance along the road is a footpath that not only heads through Manesty Park, but also goes all the way across the fields at the southern end of Derwent Water. I have taken this route in summertime, in 2002, but I didn’t think I’d be able to now.

Instead I headed off along the road through small, shallow floods to the village of Grange where I was able to cross the flooded River Derwent. There was a lot of road walking at this point of the walk, which wasn’t particularly exciting, but on the far side of the valley, while walking beside the Borrowdale Road, I saw amazing views of the extensive flooding on the river. The lake itself had extended as far south as the Borrowdale Hotel, near High Lodore, so when I reached the eastern end of the footpath from Manesty I saw the peculiar sight of a footpath sign pointing straight into the middle of the lake. At the Lodore Falls Hotel I finally came off the road and headed steeply up the hillside to the waterfall, which I had visited in 2002 on my first ever visit to the Lake District and had never been back. Of course now I was seeing it at its best with torrents of water pouring over the cascade and thundering past me.

It was an amazing sight, but after only a couple of pictures my camera decided that it had gotten too wet and stopped working. Eventually I left the waterfall and rather than following a rough path that keeps beside the river I took a great path that diagonally climbs the wooded hillside below Gowder Crag. After climbing past the crag the path became a little vague and I had difficulty deciding on the correct route to take, but in the end I decided to follow the river upstream until eventually I reached a clear path that I recognized from a previous walk that I did at this time of the year. I turned left along this excellent path through woodland that eventually brought me onto the Watendlath Road not far from Surprise View, but the surprise for me was that there was no view. There is a sudden opening beside the road in the hillside giving an extensive view across Derwent Water, but in the poor weather all that I could see was rain and mist. At Ashness Bridge (no view there either) I came off the road onto a path that soon led to a gate.

Beyond the gate the path splits with the higher path going up to Walla Crag, which is the route that I took five years ago in the snow and momentarily considered taking this path now, but in the end I took the lower path that I had never been on before. This was a delightful path that keep to a level through bracken before entering a young natural wood filled with all sorts of plants that must make it a wonderful place to walk in the spring when wild flowers are in abundance. The imposing sight of Falcon Crag looming above me added to the pleasure that I had on this path that now must be a target for me to make a return visit before too long. Eventually I reached Cat Gill on the edge of Great Wood, but on entering the wood I found it to be poor in comparison to that below Falcon Crag, and even dare I say having a whiff of the plantation.

After a short descent the path split with a barrier and a muddy track on one side and a better track that steeply climbed the hillside to the right. Unsure of the correct route to take I took the better track steeply up the hillside below Walla Crag, so it wasn’t until I was thoroughly cooked in my waterproofs and the path had levelled that I realised that I had taken the right route through Great Wood. Eventually I reached the far side of the wood where a narrow path took me out of the wood to the side of Brockle Beck and the usual route from Keswick to Walla Crag. This water-filled path brought me steeply down to the edge of Keswick by mid-afternoon, which would normally have been annoying, but in this weather I wasn’t bothered. This was a curiously satisfying walk despite the fact that I never went up to the top of any hill or fell during the course of the walk. This is testament to the fact that even when the weather is bad in the Lake District there are so many great paths around you don’t need to climb a fell to have a great walk.