Lake District Haute Route Part 1

Monday

It was hot in the car park in Ambleside when we parked up and I didn’t feel underdressed in shorts.  I said goodbye to Jill and headed off via Rothay Park.  The initial part of the walk followed the route we had taken the year before on the Macmillan Mighty Hike.  Seeing the same paths again, although travelling in the opposite direction, brought back many memories from that excellent day, the tiredness, the elation, the Jelly Babies.  Walking this way, over the foothills of Loughrigg Fell, meant it was all uphill and therefore very warm in the heat of the day.  To compensate there were stunning views over the green scenery, all bracken, trees and the valley ahead.  A cuckoo called by the side of Loughrigg to accompany me.  Amid such splendour I felt a kind of emptying out of myself, that accustomed sense of losing oneself in the wild, open countryside, a kind of kenosis, to use the technical term.  It also felt strange being amongst these great fells, but not planning to walk up any of them.  Normally a walk along a valley is just a prelude to a big hill, but not this time, despite the alluring sight of the peaks of Langdale and Coniston in the distance.

Down by Skelwith Force, I sat to have a bite to eat and to enjoy the beautiful view of the surging river, the jagged rocks and the overhanging trees.  Beyond this was an easy bit of walking along a wide, well-surfaced path running along the riverside.  There were plenty of people out making the most of the good weather.  After Elterwater I was trotting happily up the track towards Little Langdale when a bloke stopped me with, ‘You’ve got a proper map.’  He and his girlfriend were looking for Baysbrown and had drifted off the map printed on the leaflet they had been following.  They had missed their turn after the Elterwater Hotel so I pointed out a path to take them back to their correct route.

Coming over the other side of the rise, I spotted a kind of gazebo outside Dale End Farm.  At first I thought that they might use it for sitting outside and catching the sun, only it was a bit public with a wide track passing by.  Instead I was delighted to find a table covered in cakes, with an honesty box to pay for them.  I grabbed a hunk of lemon drizzle cake for later.

There was some more new ground for me after Little Langdale, passing the eponymous tarn.  It was an absolutely stunning setting with the water, some spruce trees and the might of the Consiton Fells behind it all.  A woman was sitting a little way off the path sketching the scene.  She could hardly have picked anything better.  The beck formed by the outflow from the tarn was crossed by Slater’s Bridge, a higgledy-piggledy construction of clapper bridge (flat stones) and hump-backed packhorse bridge.  Another bit of casual gorgeousness, with damselflies flitting underneath it by the water.

The path then made an easy way through woods, only partially hiding old quarry workings, down to Tilberthwaite.  I was pleased to see my car in the car park, meaning that Jill had taken my advice and driven here for a walk.  Under the shade of a tree, with a sleepy and unbothered sheep as my companion, I tucked into my delicious slice of cake.  Pity Jill wasn’t there for a taste of it.

Before leaving I revisited the Andy Goldsworthy sheepfold, almost consumed by bracken, then took a very well-made path through the woods, tracking the main road to Coniston.  This dropped me in the centre where I could have a refreshing pint of Bluebird at the Black Bull.  It wasn’t long before Jill joined me there.

Our rooms for the night were in the Lakeland House guesthouse.  They were compact (I banged my head on the toilet when trying to pick up a fallen bottle) but nicely done out, right at the top with a great view of Coniston Old Man.  We had a good meal at the Black Bull then a couple more drinks at the Yewdale Inn, which had very good beer and friendly, bantering staff.

Tuesday

The sky contained a little more grey cloud this morning, though it still felt warm.  After a good breakfast, settling the bill and picking up a cheese sandwich from the ‘artisan’ bakery round the corner, I said goodbye to Jill, who was going for a walk alongside the lake then a boat ride back, and set off on the day’s expedition.

I had only ever driven up the first section of Walna Scar Road and I rather wished I had taken up Jill’s invitation to do so that day.  It was extremely steep and I was soon feeling rather hot.  Once above the trees and houses, the views opened up to the fells, the clouds remaining high enough not to obscure anything.  There were a few people around, both in the car park and on the road.  A woman behind me seemed to be catching up but then hung back.  A group of lads cut up the hillside near Boo Tarn.  Two people ahead of me on Walna Scar kept a fixed distance away but just near the top they paused, as they had been doing from time to time, and I caught them up.  ‘You’re doing a pace,’ the somewhat chunky bloke said to me.  I thought I was taking it steady, saving my strength.

It was a funny feeling to reach the top of Walna Scar Road and, rather than turning right up to Dow Crag, carrying straight on and dropping down the other side. From the descent there were excellent views to the Scafell range in the distance.  Marching on I could feel myself starting to settle into the rhythm of a walking week: get up, walk, sleep, get up, walk, sleep.  At the bottom of the road I stopped at a lovely spot by Long House Gill, with a little packhorse bridge and a rocky channel through which the stream chattered.  There were dragonflies and damselflies darting back and forth, including a surprising one with dark wings.  Later I discovered that this was a Beautiful Demoiselle, one of only two types of damselfly with opaque wings.

A section of tarmac walking took me to Seathwaite (resisting the lure of the Newfield Inn).  There were trees all around and a series of small cataracts on Tarn Beck, running alongside the road.  I had to turn off just near the church and spotted a middle-aged couple standing outside their house, drinking either fruit juice or cloudy cider, that I thought I might have to ask directions from.  A footpath sign emerged from the foliage eventually, so I didn’t speak.  I feared my jealousy at their idyllic situation might have come out.

A winding path through woods crossed the River Duddon, either via a picturesque bridge or some picturesque stepping stones (I did both for good measure), then climbed steeply up by Wallowbarrow Crag.  Up ahead there were people’s voices but I couldn’t see anyone on the path.  It was only when I got above the trees that I saw the group of climbers on the Crag, calling up and down to one another.

The next short section was probably my favourite single bit of path.  It was on an old, somewhat overgrown, farm track between stone walls.  There were scattered trees, rocks, bracken and heather.  There were views to all the fells around, views that were unusual for me, coming from an unaccustomed angle.   A cuckoo called, as one had done in the Duddon Valley and would again in Eskdale.  Suddenly ahead of me a stoat appeared, hopping along the track.  We both stopped and stared at each other.  Later I found an Annie Dillard quote that captured our momentary confrontation, describing it like sworn enemies, or ex-lovers, encountering each other as if each had been thinking of something else.  The stoat sized me up then darted into a hole in the wall.

From Grassguards it was a bit of a slog across deforested bogland before entering the still standing plantation and plodding along with no view, no breeze and the company of midges.  Finally on the far side, between Green Crag and Harter Fell, the views returned, revealing the magnificence of the Scafells, Esk Pike, Bow Fell and the Crinkles.  At the top of the descent I had a look at a small, sketchy path that would cut out some distance, particularly along the road, but decided it was too sketchy.  Nevertheless, I did turn off the official route to drop to a lower path running parallel to the road for some of the way.  It had been a long day, it seemed, and my walking shoes were on the limit of their utility.  The boots were going to have to come out.

With relief I arrived at the Brook House Inn and found Jill sitting alone inside.  It looked a bit dingy and dark, and the staff were rather casual, bordering on indifferent, but it had an excellent selection of beer and I had what would be my tastiest pint of the week, a Siren Craft Yulu (from Down South).  Notwithstanding the loveliness of the beers, we left for the Strands Inn, our residence for the night, where we had a quiet night with lots of laughs.  When the waitress, a late middle-aged woman, brought me my dessert and just said, ‘Tart?’ I couldn’t help but respond, ‘Same to you.’  She didn’t look the slightest bit amused.  I finished the evening with an act of sacrilege, forgoing the beers brewed on site and having a pint of German pilsner.  My excuse was that I needed something sweeter to drink.  God forgive me.

Wednesday

The decent breakfast was served to us by the landlady, Lesley.  ‘Dost tha know what tha wants?’ she asked.  We did, and it was excellent.

It was a dull day outside but it was still mild.  Once Jill had driven me back to Boot, I soon warmed up.  Passing by the Boot Inn, I thought it looked rather more attractive than the Brook House Inn, even if the beer selection wouldn’t have been as good.  You live and learn.  The hamlet of Boot has a visitor attraction, Boot Mill.  It looked rather run down and half-ruined, in a picturesque way, and was surrounded by other pretty buildings with bright flowers all around.

There was no one around as I climbed away from the houses, alongside a wall and through a sea of bracken.  Eventually the bracken gave way to open, grassy moorland as the path took me up one side of a wide, shallow valley.  It was crossed with stonewalls and peppered with trees lower down, expansive and green further up.

For some reason I was thinking about the Canterbury Tales, which I have never read, though I have a recording of the prologue in Middle English on a poetry CD.  It describes springtime, with everything green and the flowers coming to life, and how at this time of year ‘folk longen to go on pilgrimages’ (this last word pronounced with four syllables).  It felt apt, for the season, and perhaps figuratively for what I was doing.  A pilgrimage would be a long, arduous journey with some edifying suffering along the way, ending at a shrine where a saint’s relics were housed.  Having endured the journey, the pilgrim would say a prayer, perhaps in devotion, perhaps to ask the saint a favour.  I was certainly making a long journey, and feeling the attendant aches and pains, though my goal was less clear.  It was more a pilgrimage to the Lakes as a whole, performing an act to devotion to somewhere I have come to love and need in my life.

I was interrupted in my reverie by a shout from behind.  It was a mountain biker coming up the same path I was walking.  ‘Sorry for spoiling your peaceful walk,’ he said as he came past.

The ground levelled out around the placid sheet of Burnmoor Tarn.  A few Belted Galloway cattle dotted the scene and Scafell rose like a towering green wall ahead.  The bridge over the outflow from the tarn was missing so I splashed through and then noticed a couple some way in front, the only people apart from Bikey that I had seen that day.  They moved off ahead of me as I approached.

The path dropped down to Brackenclose in Wasdale, and I stopped to take pictures of the tiny sundews that I now knew could be found there, having spotted some a couple of weeks ago.  I caught the couple up anyway as we were making our way over the dry, stony bed of Lingmell Beck, partly because I knew the way – I was heading onto more familiar territory from now on – and partly because the bloke was hiding in the gorse bushes answering a call of nature.  At the far side of the Wasdale Head Inn, I sat down to eat a sandwich before the big climb of the day.  The couple caught me up and we said hello again.  This time they stopped for a chat and I learnt that they were from the Netherlands and that they were also doing the Lake District Haute Route, only they were using a baggage company to shift their gear around.  It somehow didn’t occur to me to ask how they found out about the route.  Perhaps Trail Magazine has a lot of subscribers in the Netherlands.

I saw them a little later when they too stopped for lunch, further up into Mosedale and we wished each other well for the climb.  It had been one I had been facing with some trepidation.  Although I had done it twice before, each time at the start of the walk, in my mind it was very long and steep.  Considering this, I set of at a gentle pace and made sure I didn’t rush.  Somehow, this did the trick and as I rose higher up the pass, I found I was ticking along quite nicely.  It was a funny feeling that once I got to the top of the pass, I wouldn’t have any higher to climb.  No need to yomp all the way up Pillar, no reason to clamber over the scree up Kirk Fell.  That feeling of having it easy gave me a little more incentive to trot on.  Near the top, with the wind picking up, I asked a bloke coming the other way how windy it was.  Quite, he answered and explained that he had removed his wide-brimmed hat (‘Never leave home without it,’ indicating his baldy head) up there.

With that out of the way I bobbed down the path into Ennerdale with the old familiar Black Sail Hut ahead.  Passing by, aiming for the toilet and thinking of a snack, I glanced through the door and saw Matt, one of the wardens, inside.  I stepped in to find him talking to Kirstie, his boss who also ran the Ennerdale YHA down the valley.  She was briefing him about fire regulations.  As she was doing so, Chloe, the other warden, and Matt’s girlfriend, came back in, discreetly waving at me, so clearly remembering me from our recent visit (‘Nice to see you again,’ she added later).  The ex-teacher in Kirstie was to the fore.  ‘When are you going to do this?  Give me a date.’  When she was finished she left to visit the loo.  ‘She ran up here and she wants us to give her a lift back.  We’re not going to,’ Matt explained.  Kirstie returned.  ‘I wish I hadn’t decided to run back.’  Chloe played the mindgames, ‘You’ll enjoy it once you’re running.’  After she left, Chloe said Matt had turned up at 5:30 that morning, having made a late decision to drive back from ‘home’ at night, ‘as a surprise’.  It just resulted in panic.  I left them to spend their afternoon on a ‘Cars [as in the animated film] marathon’.

Just outside, another Dutch woman stopped me and asked for directions for the Coast to Coast path.  I did my best, having helped some people out when we styed at Black Sail last time.  I moved on just as the rest of her group arrived and she seemed to make a small moue of disappointment at my not staying to talk to them all.  Oh well.

The Scarth Gap climb felt like a doddle, having skipped up Black Sail Pass and being in a great mood.  On the other side, the badly eroded path was being actively worked on by Fix the Fells volunteers, including frequent TV presence and star of Terry Abrahams’s Life of a Mountain series, Iain Gray.  I passed a banal comment rather than leaping up and down shouting, ‘TV star!  TV star!’

The final section of path for the day was along Buttermere, which was very easy going and I was feeling pretty fresh, unlike my usual jaunts along there where my legs are screaming from yomping up and down fells with Pete A.  I was a bit earlier than expected, at 15:45, and Jill was having a long day, riding on the La’l Ratty train and walking along the River Esk, so I wasn’t surprised not to find her there.  It was mild enough to sit outside to drink my pint but, as I was nearing the end of it, a small spot or two of rain started to fall.  Just then Jill arrived so we went inside for another drink.  Yet again, my Dutch friends tracked me down and they walked in the pub too.

The evening was in the familiar haunt of the Royal Oak in Braithwaite.  Pete A was already there, having yomped over some fells, as is his wont.  A jolly night was had by all.