Half-term Happenings: Back to Little Salkeld

Addingham Church.

We were all keen to get out for a family walk, none more so than my dad, but he struggles with the cold these days and I wanted to find a route which had both the potential for a good walk, but also the option to cut the walk short if need be. After a bit of deliberation, I hit upon the idea of two shorter walks based around Little Salkeld in the Eden valley. We parked initially by Addingham Church near the village of Glassonby (curiously, the village of Addingham no longer exists).

This walk, or variations on it, have become a firm favourite of ours. Here’s A beside the Saxon Cross in the churchyard…

And here she is posing for a similar photo back in 2011….

In the intervening years the cross seems to have shrunk!

I can rarely resist the temptation to have a peek inside any churches I pass and Addingham certainly repays the effort. The lady on the right here is St. Cecilia, an early Christian martyr. I thought that the instrument she’s shown playing seemed entirely unlikely, but apparently she is often depicted playing it and it’s a real instrument – a portative organ or organetto. My lazy internet research also revealed that St. Cecilia appeared on the reverse of the old Edward Elgar £20 note.

There she is bottom left, beneath Worcester Cathedral. Presumably because she is the patron saint of musician’s. I can’t say that I’ve ever realised that she was there. How many times I have handled notes like this one, over the years, without ever really looking at them?

Then again, I didn’t know that King David is traditionally associated with the harp either, a fact which appears in the Book of Samuel, just before the more familiar story of David and Goliath.

Talking of familiar stories, here’s Saint George and the unfortunate dragon in my favourite window at Addingham.

Addingham also has two hogback gravestones, which, I’ve learned, were unique to the Viking settlers in Britain and haven’t been found in Scandinavia. The best preserved example is at St. Peters in Heysham, which I’ve walked past many times, but never been inside – an omission I must rectify soon.

It’s a short downhill stroll from Addingham Church to the huge stone circle of Long Meg and her Daughters.

I didn’t take many photos on this occasion, just these of my mum and Dad and my brother, but the stones have appeared on the blog many times before.

Winter Aconites on a roadside verge.

Another short stroll brings you to Little Salkeld, where we enjoyed a fabulous lunch in the cafe at the Watermill….

Steve and I then walked briskly back up to collect the cars and park them in Little Salkeld, whilst the rest set-off for a wander along the River Eden to Lacy’s Caves…

We managed to catch them up at the caves themselves.

By the time we had turned to walk back to Little Salkeld, an already cold day had become even colder, but that didn’t detract from a marvellous family outing.

Lacy’s Caves and Long Meg

A Saturday afternoon and we decided to dragoon the boys into coming out for a walk with us. In honesty, I can’t remember how we arrived at the decision to repeat a walk along the River Eden, taking in Little Salkeld Watermill, Lacy’s Caves and the Long Meg and her Daughters stone circle, but it was a good choice.

We began with lunch in the cafe at the mill, which was delicious, then set off towards the river. There was a paper notice tacked to the signpost indicating that some part of the footpath had been damaged by flooding and then closed, but the notice looked quite old, so we decided to ignore it.

TBH and I have done this walk three times now, and each time we’ve seen lots of Buzzards in this first part of the walk. Closer to hand, there were flowers and insects to admire and a tree heavily laden with rather tart apples.

Small White Butterfly on some sort of Hawk’s-beard, possibly Rough Hawk’s-beard.

Tachina Fera.

Forest Bug.

More fungi.

Earthballs.

A weir on the Eden. Force Mill opposite.

We did eventually see some signs of flood damage, but that had nothing to do with what happened next. I’m not sure how, but I lost my footing and fell down the steep bank towards the river. Little S was first to react, grabbing hold of my ankle as I slid down the slope, which, frankly, could have ended badly for him,  but between us we managed to halt my fall. I was a bit bruised and grazed, my camera took a whack, and I think we were all  slightly shaken, but ultimately, no harm was done.

The view of the River Eden from Lacy’s Caves.

Lacy’s Caves.

These are not natural caves, but were hewn from the rock by order of the local landowner Colonel Samuel Lacy. There are several connected ‘rooms’. One of them still has some planks in it and some metal brackets fastened to the wall, as if there had been a bench or a bed here. Apparently, Lacy may have paid someone to live in the caves as a ‘hermit’, which was a fashionable thing to do for a time. There are more pictures of the caves here, from our last family visit, made at a time when Little S genuinely was still little.

The boys may be practically grown up now, but they weren’t above a game of hide and seek in the caves, which, I’ll admit, was pretty hilarious.

I remember these wooden posts from last time too. This is one from a series erected around the Eden Valley area and designed by artist Pip Hall. They’re textured so that rubbings can be taken.

Mixed flock of Jackdaws and Rooks.

More fungi.

One of Long Meg’s daughters.

More daughters with Cross Fell in the cloud and the radar station on Great Dun Fell behind.

The uncountable daughters.

The Long Meg stone circle is amazing and, on the evidence of three visits, almost guaranteed to be virtually deserted.

Long Meg.

And again.

There’s some more detail and folklore regarding the stone circle in my previous post about a visit, here.

We first learned about this route from a leaflet published by Discover Eden. It was available as a PDF online, but these days you have to buy it. One word of warning – the leaflet gives a longer version of this walk, including a visit to Addingham Church, as 4½ miles, but my phone app gave 6 miles for our truncated version. No wonder our original round took us 6 hours when we had a toddler with us.

Long Meg Walk V – Lacy’s Caves

Our path had been running almost parallel to the Settle-Carlisle railway line and also to the river Eden. When it finally brought us to the banks of the river we were close to the viaduct where the railway line crosses the river. The step bank is wooded however and we couldn’t get a clear view of the viaduct. The Eden is a substantial river by local standards and when we came level with a weir on the river it was possible to scramble down the bank to get at least a partial view.

Shortly beyond that point the bank became less steep and we had our first view of Lacy’s Caves.

These curiosities were hollowed out in the 18th Century for the local landowner Colonel Samuel Lacy and it’s rumoured that he even paid someone to live here as a ‘hermit’. There is a series of connected rooms, some of which, alarmingly with S hurtling about in high excitement, have openings looking out over drops into the river. Fortunately, for once he didn’t fall in.

From the caves it seemed like quite a long way, first along the river a little further…

…and then back up the hill to the car. It can’t have been however, since the whole walk is a mere four and a half miles. Four and a half miles which punches well above it’s weight.