Silver How and Lang How

Monday 21st August 2023

The weather forecast was not great for this walk so my original plan of going up the Crinkle Crags, which I was never really enthusiastic about, was quietly abandoned and instead I headed along the ridge that I seemingly always do when staying at High Close, the Langdale Youth Hostel. This lovely ridge starts at Sergeant Man and passes over Blea Rigg and Silver How before reaching its lowest point at High Close, where there is a road crossing, and then swells again into the mass that is Loughrigg Fell. Wainwright praised the ridge saying of the route from Silver How to Loughrigg that “there are few more beautiful and interesting” but I came down this ridge from Sergeant Man two years ago so I didn’t want to walk far on this occasion. It was already raining when I left the hostel but it didn’t last long which left me free to enjoy the walk along the ridge through bracken while trying to follow the clearest path that keeps to the highest point on the ridge. Despite low clouds I soon had good views, north to Grasmere, south to Elterwater and south-west all the way to Windermere and this made the walk worthwhile. My first steep ascent brought me to the top of Huntingstile Crag and from there the ridge undulated until eventually another climb took me to the top of Dow Bank whose multiple tops were decorated with cairns. After crossing one of the many paths that traverse this ridge I climbed up to the top of Spedding Crag and was amazed at the complex terrain and the many paths on this ridge.

This ridge is best done from Sergeant Man heading east, downhill, as it can become tedious in the other direction and navigation is very difficult whenever the mist is down, as I had now. Nevertheless, I kept going and after passing the Megs Gill path I climbed up into the clouds and headed towards the top of Silver How. My goal on this holiday was to de-stress, for a rest and recuperation, so I had nowhere I particularly wanted to go and was happy to just wander around wherever I felt like going, perhaps visiting fells I hadn’t done in a while, but I was not going to go out of my way to bag certain fells. Therefore, I was not frustrated by this bad weather and was just happy to wander around. The low cloud and faint paths didn’t make the ascent easy, but the gradient was gentle up grassy slopes and before I reached the top the clouds lifted briefly to reveal a complex undulating plateau with no prominent tops and all too soon the clouds dropped again so I continued on up to the top of Silver How. Although I was enjoying my traverse of this ridge, I didn’t want to stay on it for much longer, espesically as I had seen from that glimpse that the terrain would now be much more difficult to navigate and I knew that the weather was forecast to worsen. For now I kept going along the ridge aiming for Lang How and soon the cloud lifted to confirm that I was going in the right direction.

Steep ground forced me, and the path, around Lang How, but if I was going to reach the top I needed to come off the path to climb the grassy slopes until eventually I reached the cairn that marks the top. Unlike Silver How, Lang How is rarely visited, I am not even sure if I have ever visited the top before, even though it is higher. From Lang How I made my way to a prominent cairn, further west, near Swinescar Pike, though maybe not at the top, which seemed to be unadorned. Beyond there the ground rises about a hundred metres to the Castle How tops, but the wind was now beginning to pick up and soon it started to rain so I decided that it was time to come off the ridge and take a route that I’ve never taken before and descends via Blindtarn Moss. As the rain fell more heavily I followed a slender path past a scattering of stunted juniper trees through an area of the Lake District that sees few people, despite being near Grasmere, above the flat bed of Bindtarn Moss. Later, swathes of tall bracken made for a trickier descent past a waterfall to eventually reach Blindtarn House and enter Easedale where I joined the path from Easedale Tarn which I followed all the way into Grasmere where the rain finally eased. I didn’t stay, but quickly passed through the village and Dove Cottage to join the path known as the Coffin Route that links Grasmere and Rydal.

At a convenient bench I stopped to have my lunch and by the time I set off again it had started to rain. Once the Coffin Route left tarmac behind this was a fantastic walk with a lovely stony surface underfoot and seemed astonishingly popular with many people on it, and since the path was quite narrow it was a tricky to get past everybody. Eventually I reached Rydal and I couldn’t resist taking a look at the picturesque view of the waterfalls at Rydal Hall before continuing on to Ambleside. With the rain now falling intermittently I tried to make my back to the Youth Hostel, which wouldn’t have been a problem if I had been in a car, but I was walking and I did not take a good route. Google Maps suggests going via Loughrigg Terrace, which is an excellent idea and I wish I had gone that way, but instead I followed the narrow A593 road, which doesn’t have a footpath and does have blind corners. I thank all of the drivers who managed to avoid me and for those who came close to hitting me, I don’t blame you. I should never have been there. Eventually I reached the safety of an overgrown path and soon after that I came to a quiet side road, signposted to High Close and the Youth Hostel, so I was then thankfully able to safely make my way up the hill and back to the Youth Hostel. I loved the start of this walk along the ridge over Silver How and Lang How, but once it started raining I lost all enjoyment in the walk and by the end I was soaked.