The Whinfell Ridge

Saturday 27th August 2016

On 1st August the Lake District National Park was increased in size by an extra twenty-seven square miles and I thought the start of this holiday would be a good opportunity to explore this new area of the Lake District. The walk that I chose was one that Wainwright described in his book on the Howgill Fells. The first five walks in that book are along the Whinfell Ridge, which runs from the A6 road between Kendal and Shap to the Lune valley that houses the West Coast Mainline and the M6 motorway. Instead of following one of the five short walks described in the book, I decided to walk the whole ridge in one go so after driving up the M6 I came off at Shap and came down the A6 to stop just after Huck’s Bridge over the stream Borrow Beck. My walk started with a steep climb up Ashstead Fell on a narrow, but clear path on wet, boggy ground interspersed with small clumps of purple-flowering heather. Despite some hot spells this summer it has been rather wet so the ground has not dried out after the record breaking heavy rain of the winter.

There is a fine cairn on the western top of Ashstead Fell, but there was nothing to mark the other two tops including the central, highest top. Conifers spoiled the view south, but I had grand views west towards the heart of the Lake District even though it was restricted to the broad slopes of the Shap Fells. The weather was amazing for this walk and the bright sun to the east was marring my views of the undulating ridge ahead of me. Many tops are traversed on the ridge and after passing the eastern top of Ashstead Fell a descent and long climb brought me to the conifer-surrounded top of Mabbin Crag, which is marked as having a cairn on the map (and in Wainwright’s guide), but I don’t remember seeing one. I was either really tired or I had been distracted by the conifers that now blocked my route, however a very wet path that had me wishing I’d worn my gaiters took me through the wood to the start of Castle Fell.

I followed a faint path that bypassed the very top of Castle Fell and with hindsight I wish I’d come off the path in order to visit the cairn at the top of the fell. Instead I kept heading along the path through White Moss and up to the top of Whinfell Beacon where a well-built cairn stands guard over a fine view south over Whinfell Tarn towards the town of Kendall and east towards a hazy view of the Howgill Fells. A steep descent from the beacon followed by a broad, largely flat ridge brought me to a pair of tall transmitters and the service road that serves them. Beyond this scar in the landscape there was no trace of a path so I had to make my own way up the broad, tedious, grassy slopes all the way up to the top of Grayrigg Common where a trig point sits on the highest point on the ridge. By this point I was so tired I decided that this was as far as I needed to go so I followed a path from top that heads to a wall that I followed north with views east into the busy Lune valley below that is populated by road, river, railway and motorway.

A largely pathless descent took me down the northern slopes into the valley of Borrowdale, which should not be confused with the better known valley in the centre of the Lake District. This Borrowdale is very quiet; there is no road running through it and very few people. It is a lovely farming valley with a track running along the length of it following the Borrow Beck, which I took to walk all the way back to my car. I was very tired going into this walk and I’m not sure I was really in the right mood to truly appreciate this new section of the Lake District. The undulating ridge was very exhausting and throughout the length of it all I really wanted to do was get to the end of it, which should in no way be a reflection of the quality of the ridge, however something narrower, craggier and less boggy would have probably held my attention better. My walk along Borrowdale in the warm sunshine was exactly the relaxing walk that I needed and maybe something more restful would have been appropriate for this walk. Nevertheless I had now visited this previously neglected ridge that has taken sixty-five years to be incorporated into the national park.