Orrest Head and Wansfell

Monday 19th December 2016

As Christmas approached I eagerly anticipated the coming holiday as I would have another opportunity to go to the Lake District, but when my train finally arrived in Windermere it was to a grey and murky day with low cloud, however it wasn’t raining and it wasn’t windy and this made all the difference. When I was in the Lake District the previous Christmas, I had left on Christmas Eve by walking from Ambleside to the Windermere railway station and now at the start of this holiday I reversed that walk, but this time I did the fells that I maybe should have done the previous year. My first target was Orrest Head, a relatively small hill that overlooks the lake of Windermere, but a significant one as it is the first hill that Wainwright climbed in the Lake District and it was from the top of this hill that he gained his “first sight of mountains in tumultuous array across glittering waters, (his) awakening to beauty”. I first climbed Orrest Head more than ten years ago, Easter 2006, in good weather taking the recommended route that initially climbs up an tarmac track.

I decided that on this occasion I would take a different route this time on public footpaths rather than the permissive path favoured by Wainwright and I found that this was a delightful way on the sort of craggy paths that the Lake District has in abundance, but I sorely miss when away. Anywhere else in the country would love to have a path like this, but in the Lake District it is found on a less favoured route up a tiny hill. The path passes through gorgeous woodland and after turning right at a junction slowly climbs the hillside to the far side of the wood eventually joining the more popular route before passing through a gate dedicated to the benefactor who gave the hill to the people of Windermere. The cloud-covered summit of Orrest Head was only a short distance away where a view indicator shows what fells could be seen from the top if the clouds weren’t so low. It was disappointing for me to not have a view from the top of Orrest Head, but this didn’t get me down as I still was enjoying being back in the Lake District.

Picking a path that heads north, I descended to a stile, but rather than continuing on Wainwright’s recommended descent route, I turned left through a gate and down to the small, but delightful, St Catherine’s Wood. Although there was low cloud there was also no wind, which made the walking really enjoyable. There is a guy at work who often says to me: “Good walking weather!” even if it’s still dark outside, and on this walk, despite the low cloud, I would say that this was good walking weather because it wasn’t very windy. On reaching a quiet road I took a farmer's track from Crosses Farm, through Far Orrest to the Trout Beck Valley. I now had a bit of a view below the clouds along the valley and it looked splendid, even though it was still not as good as it could or should have been. After a short walk along the main road I came across a path that crosses the valley and was marked with a notice saying “Path damaged”. With this in mind I cautiously descended and when I reached the river at the bottom of the valley I found that the bridge had been almost washed away by the floods in December 2015. After considering wading across the river I eventually decided that I could be able to make it across on the remains of the old bridge, which was lying on its side.

It was quite exciting getting across that bridge, perhaps because it was a little dangerous, but I managed to get across and climbed up the hillside to Town End and from there on bridlepaths to Robin Lane. I had walked along this lane last year on my way from Ambleside to Windermere, but this time I didn’t take the turning towards Ambleside and rather I stayed on the lane into Hundreds Road following it to where the track turns sharply, and headed off onto the pathless slopes of Wansfell. I had seen this route on the map a few years ago and thought it would make an interesting route up, but I seem to have immediately, in the misty conditions, lost the path that Wainwright’s guide claims is there. Initially I followed a series of trees that seemed to be marking a route, but these soon faded and I had to make my own way through the pathless, mist-covered landscape until I reached Nanny Lane. Just before I reached the lane the view ahead of me cleared to reveal a stunning panorama of the Troutbeck Valley with fog remaining in the valley and the clouds clear of the summit ahead. It wasn’t a perfect thermal inversion and the scene was still dull, but at least I now had a view while walking up Nanny Lane.

This had been the route that I’d taken in descent from Wansfell when I climbed it in 2010 and I remembered then that the lane was very boggy, which is how it was now. At the end of the lane I took a path that veers away from the wall weaving a cunning and interesting route through the outcrops up the fell straight towards the summit of Wansfell. The Ordnance Survey map indicates that there is a higher point further north, but this doesn’t look higher and it certainly didn’t seem higher when I stood at it, so I turned around and headed back to the recognized summit before proceeding along the ridge towards Wansfell Pike at the western end of the fell. I wasn’t in a hurry, so I took my time enjoying myself as I slowly made my way along the ridge nipping up every little rise and enjoying the great views due to the temperature inversion. The sun was struggling to break through the clouds overhead and this managed to add a little colour to the surroundings when I finally reached the top of Wansfell Pike.

There is a route down the south-western slopes of Wansfell that isn’t marked on maps and wasn’t described in Wainwright’s guide until the most recent Walker's Edition. That describes this as the best approach for beauty, seclusion and a seldom-seen side of Wansfell, and in descent I really enjoyed it despite the fading light and mist below a certain point. It passed through landscape strewn with dead bracken, past a large cairn that overlooks Ambleside and the remains of an aqueduct observatory until finally I plunged into Skelghyll Wood. The abundance of leaves on the ground made following the path through the wood difficult until I reached the main path near the top of Jenkin Crag, where I followed the bridlepath that gradually descends the hillside to the southern end of Ambleside. This was a surprisingly satisfying walk, and it was great to be back in the Lake District. Despite poor weather, a lack of wind and a view upon Wansfell had made this into a good walk in what turned out to be good walking weather.

Langdale, Uldale and Simon’s Seat

Saturday 10th September 2016

While travelling to Scotland for my holiday last September I had stopped off at a section of the Lake District that had only just been incorporated into the national park, and while coming back I likewise stopped off in a new section of another national park: the Yorkshire Dales. The Howgill Fells were savagely cut in half when the national park was created with the northern fells being missed out. On first August this year the Yorkshire Dales National Park was enlarged by twenty-four percent and now includes the whole of the Howgill Fells. I came off the motorway at Tebay and after a tiny distance I stopped off in the little farming community of Longdale. Although the weather was very good with the sun shining under blue skies, it was quite clear that there had been just as much rain there as I had endured in Scotland and soon I encountered paths that were thick with mud. I was following Wainwright’s direction as given in walk fifteen of his guide to Walks on the Howgill Fells, which directed me across the beck and up through a lovely wooded area into a field full of sheep.

Once I reached a track on the other side of the field I slowly gained height on a long, dreary walk towards the heart of the Howgill Fells that lay before me. After almost two weeks of poor weather in Scotland the sun had finally come out and I had driven south under clear skies but as the day progressed it become cloudier with hazy sunshine, although this was still a welcome change after the poor weather that I had endured in Scotland. The path was initially very good, but after coming across a deep pool of water that blocked my way, the track dwindled away and I dropped onto a tiny path that climbs through the valley of Uldale. This path was very muddy being little more than a sheep trod which made this an arduous trudge as I made my way up the valley. The path never improved and eventually I reached the top of the pass at Blakethwaite Bottom where the dramatic Carlin Gill snakes down the other side of the pass. The top of the pass is marked by the Blakethwaite Stone, which doesn’t look significant, but on a map it is vitally important.

The old county boundary for Yorkshire used to follow the Carlingill Beck up to the Blakethwaite Stone and at that point turned uphill to reach the eastern ridge. The boundary of the Yorkshire Dales National Park, until recently, followed this old boundary line since it was thought that the Yorkshire Dales should be wholly within Yorkshire. However, in 1974 the counties in England were radically changed and the county boundary was moved so that the whole of the Howgill Fells now lies in Cumbria. For many years this old county line marked the boundary between the protected and the relatively unprotected, but now the whole of the Howgill Fells are within the protection of the national park and I turned to climb the steep, grassy ridge following this now obsolete boundary. At the top of the ridge, on Docker Knott, I was so exhausted from the effort of the climb that I stopped for a rest to have my lunch. The walk didn’t get any easier after I had eaten as I then descended steeply into Churn Gill only to climb all the way up the even steeper bank on the other side.

Steep sided valleys and grassy ridges are the hallmark of the Howgill Fells and this walk was treating me to a clear demonstration of these steep grassy ridges. Once I had eventually, exhaustedly, reached the top of Simon’s Seat I could finally relax as the walk was now downhill all the way. I was on the highest peak in the newly incorporated section of the Howgill Fells and I could see the heart of these fabulous hills rising clearly up to the Calf, the highest point in the range. That was behind me as I headed back north along the ridge that drops gradually and narrows slightly before rising to the Ordnance Survey pillar atop Middleton. The view ahead of me as I slowly descended was quite striking and I stopped several times to take in the far reaching vista and enjoy the sunshine that I had so rarely seen in Scotland. At the bottom of the valley is a beautiful old footbridge made of stone that crosses a stream with an oddly familiar name: Langdale Beck.

I was now in the valley of Langdale, which is not to be confused with the Langdale in the heart of the Lake District. At the start of this holiday I walked through a Borrowdale that is not the well-known valley in the Lake District and at the end of this holiday I was walking through Langdale, but not the one the tourists flock to. This Langdale is a pretty little valley with a lovely beck flowing through it and a smattering of trees to add to the charm. However the ground underfoot was exceptionally muddy in places which caused me quite a few difficulties, and added to all the other muddy paths that I encountered on this walk rather sours my impression of the whole thing. The mud was worse than anything I had seen in Scotland and really put me off the walk, which would have benefited enormously from being carried out in drier weather. The walk ended by passing through farmer’s fields and back to the misappropriately named hamlet of Longdale.