In Praise of Small Hills and Wide Horizons

A view from Arnside Knott – an Insignificant Hill with Disproportionately Magnificent Views.

The most truly beautiful views of British scenery are obtained from minor elevations, of from 500 to 1,500 feet above the valleys from which they rise.

Mountford John Byrde Baddeley

This quote comes form the Thorough Guides series, written at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. I read it quoted in Nicholas Crane’s ‘Great British Journeys’. He was following in the footsteps of H.V. Morton who was in turn following Baddeley in climbing Drum Hain above Sligachan on Skye.

Until Morton led me to this spot, I wouldn’t have believed such a view existed in Britain. I have been there twice now, and will go back. Drum Hain stands about 1,000 feet above sea level, about three miles from the ridge, and forms a rocky viewing gallery at a mid-point in the arc of the Black Cuillins. Facing you is a single ridge almost six miles long. Only here, on Drum Hain, is it possible to absorb the ridge in its entirety. It is a spectacle of unrelenting ferocity.

Are you reaching for a map? Are you wondering when you might make it to Skye and check out that view for yourself? I am.

I’ve often discussed with friends the idea of compiling our own hill list – of Insignificant Hills with Disproportionately Magnificent Views. (Clearly, a snappier title would be needed). Many of the hills are pimples close to the west coast of Scotland, climbed when inclement weather, indolence or exhaustion have kept us of their bigger brethren. In fact I wish that I had kept a list because I doubt if I could find many of them on a map now. A small hill above a bend in the river by Perth, which I climbed with TBH when A was a small baby does spring to mind. Muncaster Fell at the eastern end of Eskdale is another worthy contender – not high enough to qualify as even a Birkett, but more deserving of a visit than some which are. Our own limestone lumps are also clearly good candidates, even if they don’t all pass Baddeley’s watermark of 500 feet. (Who said ’round numbers are always false?” ….ah! Samuel Johnson – the power of the internet.)

Nicholas Cranes’s book is a fascinating read, particularly if, like me, you missed most of the television series (it’s great that the BBC keep commissioning his quirky programs, but a shame that they are content to let them slip by unheralded.) I love the way he seems to be compelled to immerse himself in the landscape, sometimes literally when he chooses to ford a river or cycle an old pass in torrential rain. Each account in the book of a famous literary traveller of the past offers a window on Britain at the time when they travelled. It struck me the other day that many of the books I enjoy reading are hard to find in bookshops at least partly because they are so hard to categorise – in many ways this book is a series of biographies, with lots of history inevitably thrown in, but I notice that on the back cover it is listed as ‘non-fiction/travel’.

Not so long ago I read John Hillaby’s ‘Journey to the Gods’. I seem to be slowly picking up all of his accounts of long walks from second-hand book shops. This one covers a walk through Greece with his wife Kate. I first bought a Hillaby book purely because it was about a long distance walk. But experience has taught me that books about walks can be execrable – of the “Ate my breakfast. Climbed a hill. It rained. Climbed another hill. Pitched the tent. It rained.” repeat ad infinitum school. Hillaby’s is such a good companion because he is both a polymath and polyglot. Whomever he meets and wherever he is, he seems to be able to make himself understood and to understand in turn. And he’s so well informed – on history, botany, ornithology etc. A real renaissance man. As John Steinbeck wrote of his friend the marine biologist Edward Ricketts: “His mind had no horizons. He was interested in everything.”

Another Arnside Knott view.

Leopard Stick

Whilst I generally remained aloof from the horseplay on our Haweswater foray, I did eventually submit to the lure of sticks. I was beguiled by the markings on this dead branch on the woodland floor. B had his powers, I found my leopard stick.

This is the surface of the wood beneath the bark, which has fallen off. Presumably these patterns are in some way part of the process of decay? Anyone know anymore?

Horse Lassitudes

Our walk on Sunday, a circuit of Haweswater, was always destined to be gently paced, since S was walking rather than lording it in his own personal houdah. But then we found so many distractions to hold us up still further. There were the snowdrops already mentioned, but the principal form of entertainment was provided by sticks. Picked up at the start of the walk as walking sticks, they quickly became, briefly, weapons – first staves, then guns, before mutating into gates: “What’s the password Dad?”

But it was when they fleshed out into horses that the fun really began.

We had to find smaller sticks to use as crops. And somebody has clearly been subjecting S to that sentimental Rolf Harris number ‘Two Little Boys’ (do the NSPCC know?), because he soon joined A on her mount…

Progress never threatened to rise as far as a canter – there were no ‘legs furiously pumping their stiff green gallop’ here.

Eventually we left Eaves Wood at Waterslack, crossed the railway and the road, into the Sixteen Buoys field. S particularly enjoyed clambering over all of the stepped stiles in the drystone walls.

In Sixteen Buoys our sticks underwent a magical transformation…

 

The three horses were very pleased to see us.

Well, very pleased to see our apples, which didn’t remain on view for very long, since they were soon snaffled.

A scrounger to perhaps rival a Fatdog, a cairngorm reindeer, the aggressive Mam Tor sheep or my mate Uncle Fester, the largest of the horses was eyeing up S once the apples were gone, or at least that’s what S seemed to think.

Into Gait Barrows National Nature Reserve, the moles are thriving here and the molehills have spread across the field. There are plenty of rabbit holes too. A ‘fell’ into one, but didn’t report any White Rabbit experiences.

Back in the woods around Haweswater, S helped me to photograph the snowdrops and then took a well deserved rest…

Further round, where the path crosses a boardwalk by the lake and there are benches, we stopped for a snack. The sun came out and it felt positively balmy, not like February at all, quite spring like in fact.

B had collected a motley assortment which he referred to as his ‘powers’, (because he is a ‘power ainjer’) – a couple of snowdrops, an interesting piece of bark, some pine cones and some snail shells. We bumped into his friend C and her mum as we headed for Moss Lane. He gave her his snail shells, retaining the largest for himself naturally, she fished in her pocket and produced a stone and tuppence to give him in return. All the children had been flagging by now, but B perked up and he and C wandered up Moss Lane together chatting contentedly. A meanwhile helped me with S who had finally decided that we were walking in the wrong direction and that we really ought to explore some of the gardens along the lane. This often happens – he doesn’t seem to trust my route finding.

Mist, Sand and Victorian Rubbish

Out on Friday with all the family and our house guests, my cousin, his wife and their youngest daughter. Our route was short – down to the Cove and across the Lots, but took a long time because S walked a lot of the way, and because we stopped for quite some time at the Cove.

On the way to the Cove I was surprised to discover primroses flowering on the grassy bank on Cove Road. I shouldn’t have been since I find that I was equally surprised when I found them there a week earlier last year.

Views form the Cove were quite restricted by the mist…

I’m intrigued by this large post seen here poking out of the water in the channel. It was revealed by the erosion of the substantial marshy foreshore which used to extend someway out into the bay here. I’d love to know when it dates form and what it’s purpose was.

TBH accompanied the kids for a clamber up to the small smelly cave in the cliff…

The ‘beach’ here is usually muddy, but today it was a mixture of mud and sand. We drew pictures in it, and clambered on the rocks…

A and B collected various shards of pottery – their treasure, whilst I found another remnant of the Victorian tip here – a glass bottle stopper.

Our newly sandy beach.

Despite the sand, A managed to find a revoltingly slimy mud which she rolled into a ball and insisted on bringing home: “It’s clay Dad!”.

On the cliff-top path which climbs up to the Lots, there are a couple of benches. I’ve photographed a very confident robin here before. This time a robin sat very nonchalantly on the wall, perhaps the same one, given how fiercely territorial robins are.

When it eventually moved, it was only to move closer to sit on the back of the bench.

 

I love the detail of the texture of the feathers on these photos. I’m also struck by how very spherical this bird is. When I draw robins (I’m an inveterate doodler) I tend to start with a circle for the body – not quite as inaccurate as I thought?

Snowdrops

Heading homeward from the Wolfhouse Gallery after our walk on Thursday, S fell asleep in the backpack. He and I left the others to go for their lunch, whilst we took a slightly longer route home in order to prolong his nap. At present, any walk around the village is a snowdrop walk. These snowdrops are flowering in an old orchard near Silverdale Green.

Here are more on the verge of the lane from the Green:

In general, the best places to look for Snowdrops is on the lanes. Moss Lane and the Row are both spectacular. These snowdrops are in Bottoms Wood…

…but they are in the corner of the wood, just beyond the wall of the garden at Bottoms Wood Cottage.

Apparently, it’s not at all certain that snowdrops (or more descriptively snowpiercers) are native to the British Isles. Generally they are found near to houses and villages and are also particularly associated with churches and monasteries – perhaps due to a connection with the Feast of the Purification of Saint Mary celebrated on the second of February.

Today, on a circuit around Haweswater, we passed the one place I know where snowdrops grow in profusion in an apparently wild state, although Challan Hall is not too far away and further along the path there is a curious abandoned building by the lake.

It’s easy to think of snowdrops as small, simple white flowers, but there’s more to them than that…

Signs of Spring at Woodwell

For various reasons we missed our doses of fresh air therapy for several days. (Although we did have a wander around the fabulous National Railway Museum at Shildon. I must admit that until last week I had never heard of it and I thought that the National Railway Museum was at York, but if you are in County Durham, fancy a free day out, and like trains, then it’s recommended.) It became apparent that we were starved of good walks when instead of suggesting ‘soft play’, the zoo or swimming for a half-term day out, the kids requested a trip to Woodwell (they do expect to use the playground and be treated to cake at the Wolfhouse Gallery as part of the walk).

On the walk down TBH drew my attention to a garden pond by the path.

“That looks like a real Heron.”

“It is a real Heron!”

The bird was so stationary, intent on the pond, despite our proximity, that she took it for one of those models that householders use to deter herons from snaffling their goldfish.

In Bottom’s Wood a few spears of Ramson leaves thrust through the leave litter.

The hazel catkins have opened.

The woods thrummed with bird song. At Woodwell I heard my first drumming woodpecker of the year. TBH mocked my enthusiastic identification of robin and great tit song – “Your two birds”. She has a point – I was baffled by everything else. Trying to find the source of a strident piping I saw two nuthatchs. One seemed to be chasing the other. (You can hear the call here.)

The fields around the Wolfhouse were home to many lambs. These two were fairly steady on their pegs…

…and were already indulging in robust head-butting games…

Some of their peers, I assume more recent arrivals, still had their umbilical cords dangling, and seemed to be wearing ill-fitting coats…

This fellow seemed particularly lacking in confidence…

…and very shaky when he stood up…

 

…but, like our own little ones, was in no doubt about what he wanted…

…or how to get it.

 

The mild spell has arrived at exactly the right time for these lambs. I enjoy a cold snap, and would have welcomed more snow in this area, but the tentative steps of a nascent spring are most welcome.

A ‘stirring the pot’ – the spring below the cliff at Woodwell.

Heaven 17 and the Strange Case of the Missing Birketts

I’ve never heard of Birketts before now. What random set of rules are there for Birketts, Mark?

The Birketts are listed in the book ‘Complete Lakeland Fells’ by Bill Birkett. Not to be confused with Marilyns, Nutalls, Hewitts or Wainwrights alternative hill lists covering the same or a greater area. The ‘random rules’ are indeed arbitrary, or at least unclear:

In deciding just what to classify as a top I have applied various criteria both to the 1:25000 OS maps and to the actual physical form on the ground.

So secret criteria then. One overt criteria is that the fells must be over 1000 feet high. Another is that they must lie within the national park. So Benson Knot above Kendal, and further east Lambrigg Fell, Docker Fell and Roan Edge are all out. These four are only just over a thousand feet and the last three are all hard by the M6, but to my mind at least, it’s logical to include all as Lakeland Fells and they can be strung together to make a very pleasant walk.

I seem to have somehow managed to bag 17 Birketts so far this year, and I’m not really supposed to be bagging Birketts. Funny little blighters aren’t they? – some real gems and some where the only question can be “why?”

 

I would like to bag 17 all year. Mike lives a charmed life.

After this exchange in comments on a previous post, and a sudden rush of blood to the head, I decided to take the latter as personal challenge and resolve to climb at least 17 Birketts this year. I was thinking that since I had already ticked off 3 on Sunday, this was a manageable total to aim for. Repenting at leisure, I realised that in January I had actually walked over another 5 Birketts, namely Tarn Crag, Sergeant Man, High Raise, Calf Crag and Gibson Knot. What’s more if we hadn’t skirted around the top of Codale Head, dropped off the ridge just short of High White Stones and left Helm Crag for another day due to failing light we would have had 8 that day. So with 8 down and only 9 to go perhaps 17 is not much of a challenge after all. Never mind – I shall stick with it, 17 is a satisfyingly arbitrary total to aim for, and as I have said elsewhere, I like targets which I’m confident I can meet or maybe exceed.

There are 541 canonical Birketts in total. If we allow my suggestions of the 4 above we could extend the list to 545. The problem with that would probably be deciding where the borders of Lakeland are, particularly in the east, if the National park boundaries are not used. So 541 then. Except that looking at the section of the book that deals with the Birketts around the Kentmere valley I found some other omissions. The description of the route over Brunt Knott above Staveley begins:

Unfortunately Potter Fell and its three tops, including that of Ulgraves, have had to be excluded from this walk because of access problems.

They are also excluded from the alphabetical and height order lists in the appendices. But because of the right to roam legislation, two of those three tops now fall within access land. Ulgraves still lies just outside. So – any Birketts completists reading: pull on your boots, there’s two more to bag (or three depending on your attitude to a little harmless trespass).

So 544, excluding tops beyond the National Park (I notice that there are several more potential tops between the A6 and the M6 which are excluded, above the Lune Gorge, around the ‘other’ Borrowdale if you know it). At a rate of 17 a year that’s exactly 32 years. (There’s clearly some kind of magic at work here, can it be just coincidence that 544 is a multiple of 17?). Of course, I have climbed a lot of them before, but it seems somehow ethical to make a clean start and blog them all. Hang on though – I’ve already blogged two last year – Scafell and Slight Side. 10 down and 534 to go. It’s a doddle this armchair bagging.

 

The uncredited quotes come from Bill Birkett’s book, Ken at Where The Fatdog Walks, Mike at northern pies, and Martin at Summit and Valley.

Kentmere

The bridleway deposited us in the valley bottom at Kentmere Hall, just west of the village of Kentmere. The oldest part of the Hall is a 13th or 14th Century (depending where you read) Pele Hower or Tower House – a smaller, but more complete example of the kind of fortification found closer to home at Arnside Tower, and at numerous other nearby locations – most areas in fact sufficiently close to the border, on either side, to have been effected by the cross-border reiving.

Clustered around the tower are a host of other buildings clearly of various ages and pedigrees. It must be quite something to live and work on a farm with a 700 year history.

From here our path followed the river back to where we had parked. Curiously, although we were close to the river, the lie of the land was such that we rarely saw even glimpses of it. The river flows into Kentmere itself – a very odd shaped tarn.

Apparently the original marshy mere was drained and then the area was dug for diatomite – a deposit consisting of the fossilized remains of an algae, rich in silicate and used for a number of industrial purposes. This happened in 1950 according to Wikipedia, or 1840 according to Aileen and Brian Evans in their wonderful guide ‘Short Walks in Lakeland Book 1: South Lakeland’. Since the Tory party’s latest mission seems to be to rewrite history on Wikipedia according to the whims and errors of David Cameron, I’m inclined to believe the latter. It’s that digging which gives the current mere its strange child’s doodle of an outline.

The photo doesn’t show it, but by now it was snowing quite hard. We weren’t bothered, we didn’t have far to go and were deep in conversation. X-Ray is a very well travelled chap, having live and worked abroad for a number of years. He regaled me with stories of travelling around Turkey and hitch-hiking home from soviet-era Budapest in the winter. Indonesia is one of the few places that we have both visited, but my knowledge pales by comparison: X-Ray has travelled extensively in South-East Asia.

Some how we got on to walking and our experiences of trekking in Nepal and New Zealand (him) and Peru (me), before, more parochially, discussing the Pennine Way. I walked it with my Dad, and various other hangers-on, back in 1985. It turns out that X-Ray has an ambition to tackle it himself. And the West Highland Way. And the Camino de Santiago de Compostela. Starting from Lancaster. Clearly X-Ray is a man after my own heart – when he daydreams he really goes for it. After those revelations we were so busy building castles in the air that the end of the walk came as a double surprise both sooner than expected, and passing as it did through a factory yard, disconcertingly industrial in such a rural setting…

 

Later, when X-Ray joined us for tea and I regaled the assembled company with his vague plan to walk the camino, TBH raised an eyebrow: “Oh yes – and you reckon you’re going with him do you?”. She knows me too well.

Since this is part of my continued exploration of the River Kent I did manage to take one photo of the river, from the bridge which we crossed at the beginning and the end of the walk:

The river is very straight here – I wondered whether its course might have been altered at some time.

Ice Bell

I love to walk alone, but a walk in good company is hard to beat. I’ve know X-Ray for a few years now, but we normally meet in the Wagon and Horses, the George and Dragon, the Sun or another of Lancaster’s many hostelries. A perfect opportunity to natter you might think, but there’s nothing quite like a lengthy stroll to grease the gears of conversation. We covered a lot of ground on Sunday. One of the many topics we touched upon was school sport, and our attitude to competition. Now unlike X-Ray, I’m very competitive – not to the point where I let losing upset me, but I like to compete and when I compete I like to win. An element of that competitive streak informs my blogging.

For a while now Ron, of Walking Fort Bragg, and I have enjoyed a rivalry over Crooked Tree photos (Tom at Wigger’s World seems to have unwittingly entered the fray with an outstandingly twisted tree). Photos on Ron’s blog have also prompted me to search out images of spider’s webs and water droplets. The stunning wildlife photos on In a Dark Time have me pondering whether I need a new camera. Which is a purely hypothetical speculation since I shan’t be buying one any time soon, and anyway we know what’s said about bad workman and their tools…

The quality of thought and expression on several blogs that I follow makes me wonder whether I really ought to ‘keep my mouth shut and be thought a fool, rather than open it and remove all possible doubt’.

Anyway, whilst we descended into the Kentmere valley on Sunday, our bridleway crossed a tiny streamlet, thoroughly coated in ice. And (in the bottom left corner of the photo) a long icicle which by hanging into the stream had accreted new layers of ice at its base to create an ‘ice bell’. I’ve spent enough time on icy hills, I must have seen this phenomena before, but was I ever aware that I was seeing it? This time I was looking out for it, inevitably because I saw photographs of ice bells on the Internet. Incidentally, were this a competition then I’m afraid that Riverdaze would win hands down. But I’m happy – I found my very own example and have added one more motif to my totemic alphabet.

Next time I intend to get a close up which is actually in focus.

Two Birds, One Stone

‘Killing two birds with one stone’ is not only a favourite saw of mine, but at work virtually a modus operandi. If I can achieve two targets at the same time, or use an unwelcome initiative to promote my own agenda, then so much the better. Unusually, on Sunday, I managed to adopt a similar tactic away from work, by combining a third Wainwright bagging trip with X-Ray and a fifth walk along the Kent. (Previous trips are recorded here and here respectively.)

We parked in Kentmere near to an incongruously sited factory, crossed the river and wandered downstream to the attractive Sawmill cottage. From a footbridge over the mill stream we watched a heron in the shallow margins of the river – which after the precedent of the red deer in Grasmere last time out, maintains the record of our best wildlife encounter in the first few minutes of the walk. The mill stream is Park Beck and our route would take us uphill parallel to that stream before a round of the horseshoe watershed which Park Beck drains. We followed a good bridleway, soon snowy in places. We were overtaken by two pairs of mountain bikers, although they weren’t really making much faster progress than us. Through the day we would see several more bikers on this and other bridleways – clearly a popular area. Fords over Black Beck and twice Park Beck had excellent stepping-stones which made them easier for us than for the cyclists. After the second ford we left the bridleway and struck off following a very faint path, obscured by snow, up the slopes of Capple Howe.

There was a total cloud cover, but the cloud was high and the views very extensive – to the Coniston Fells and Black Combe in the west, Windermere, Morecambe Bay and the Forest of Bowland in the South, the Howgills and beyond to the east, and more immediately, to the north the fells of the Kentmere Horseshoe.

Windermere

Capple Howe is a decidedly insignificant pimple, but although it isn’t a Wainwright, it is a Birkett – so another box ticked. I was reminded about Birketts reading Mike’s account of ‘Squelching Around the Dodds’, and once reminded remembered that I have Bill Birketts book ‘Complete Lakeland Fells’. Yet another list of hills, just as arbitrary as Wainwright’s it has the advantage of having 541 hills – or many more excuses for messing about in the fells.

From Capple Howe its a very short climb onto Sour Howes with several knobbly tops. We decided that the middle knobble was highest.

 

Sour Howes Knobbles with…….in the background? (Could be Red Screes?)

I was surprised that on the short walk round to Sallows, our highest ‘peak’ of the day at an unimpressive 516m, we met several other walkers. There was more snow than this photo suggests and some patches of older snow were frozen pretty hard. Since X-Ray doesn’t own any crampons and I generally walk in glorified trainers these days, we felt justified in our decision to stick to low, gentle lumps for today’s walk.

Looking back to Sour Howes from Sallows.

Sallows – the obligatory summit photo. (I forgot to take one on Sour Howes or Capple Howe.)

Blog product placement – X-Ray angles for a sponsorship deal from New Balance.

Our descent route followed a series of grouse butts…

…and briefly the sun even made an appearance, although this soon transpired to be a bit of kidology on the part of the weather which was soon to take a turn for the worse. The proliferation of hill lists makes our modest round sound a little more impressive – two Wainwrights and three Birketts bagged. And a pleasant saunter down the valley still to come (in another post).