Rusland Pool and the River Leven

A grey day in November. Loyal readers may recognise this view, as I opened a post with it once before. It’s taken from a footbridge over Rusland Pool. On that occasion the view was obscured by mist, I was heading up onto the hill on the right, and I would later get a proper drubbing in an absolute downpour. The best that can be said for the weather this day is that at least it was better than it had been for that previous visit. In fact, although it looked ready to rain all day, I only had to endure a little drizzle.

By the time I’d taken the photo above, I’d already come up and over the wooded ridge between the Rusland Valley and Newby Bridge, where I was parked.

When does a stream become a river? I followed the Rusland downstream, eventually reaching it’s confluence with the River Leven. Rusland Pool is so small it seems appropriate to call it a stream, but on the other hand it does drain an entire valley.

The confluence of Rusland Pool and the River Leven.

This used to be a favourite spot of mine, it’s so quiet and peaceful. It’s odd that I haven’t visited for many years.

This was a quiet walk, though I did meet other walkers from time to time. I also had to put up with the continual popping of shotguns from the ‘sportsmen’ who were hunting alarmingly close to where I was walking.

River Leven.

This was mid-November, and there was actually quite a bit of autumn colour in the trees still, but in the gloom, it hasn’t come out well in photos. The berries have fared better…

…I think that these are Spindle berries.

I’ve long wanted to have a proper gander at Roudsea Wood. The sign says that you need a permit. There’s a building on the reserve, and I could hear someone inside, so I knocked on the door to ask for a permit, but they didn’t respond. So I took that as tacit permission.

In the background of this photo…

…is the Ellerside Ridge, where I’d walked the autumn before.

Haws.

This Holly seemed unusually endowed with berries…

Bryony.

I’m always on the lookout for likely looking swimming spots; here on the banks of the Leven someone has constructed their own little diving board …

There’s a small ladder leaning against a likely looking overhanging branch on the far bank too.

This is the bridge at Low Wood. It’s a Grade II listed building:

“Bridge. C18 or early C19. Stone rubble. 3 elliptical arches with 2 round cutwaters to each side, which are roughcast, with caps. Parapet has plain coping. Probably associated with Low Wood ironworks, the site later taken over for gunpowder works, of which the Clock Tower works (q.v.) remain.”

from the Historic England website.

Low Wood is a sleepy little hamlet. I sat on a bench and dug out my stove to make a brew. It had warmed up a little, was rather pleasant in fact.

Then suddenly…

…a host of kayakers appeared, lugging their kayaks back to their cars. I’ve paddled an inflatable canoe down part of the Leven from Windermere, but not the section downstream from Newby Bridge, which I strongly suspect would be a bit too exciting for an inflatable.

I think this…

…must be the Clock Tower Works referred to above.

“Grade II* A mid-C19 saltpetre refinery associated with Lowwood Gunpowder Works and remains of an earlier C18 ironworks.”

from the Historic England website.

Backbarrow.

Another view of Backbarrow. Coniston Old Man, in the background, has a few patches of snow on it.

Back at Newby Bridge, I took some photos of the bridge…

…hence fulfilling a promise I made here. This is another listed Grade II*:

Bridge over river Leven. Date uncertain, repaired in C17. Stone rubble with limestone coping. Long narrow bridge with 5 segmental arches stepped up to centre, triangular cutwaters between rise to form refuges to both sides.

from the Historic England website.

When I wrote about this bridge before, I said that it had been built in 1651, but Historic England’s ‘repaired in C17’ suggests that it may be even older than that.

Before I drove home, I sat on a bench overlooking a weir on the Leven and made one final brew.

A highly enjoyable stroll, despite the grey skies.

And that, folks, will be my one and only post about last November. What did I do for the rest of the month? Search me!

Round Windermere I

Windermere and the Coniston Fells from the road south of Gummer How.

B was on a rugby tour to North Wales. I was originally signed up to go, but then had second thoughts. Much as I like watching B and his teammates play, and chatting to the other parents, I also fancied a weekend in the hills. After a great deal of deliberating, I decided I wouldn’t accompany the team to Llandudno, but get some wild-camping in instead.

But then, as the weekend approached, the forecast was pretty dire. Rain, wind, rain and a lot more wind was expected. I hastily changed my plans and opted for a lower-level alternative with warm and dry lodgings at the end of it.

My new plan was to walk around Windermere over the course of two days. That’s the lake, not the town – A was very confused by my plan and seemed to think I would spend the entire weekend wandering the streets of Windermere, presumably looking a bit lost whilst doing so.

Looking down to Lakeside and Summer House Knott.

True to form, I started my walk in a light rain. I’d elected to leave my car in the small car park below Gummer How, which as well as being relatively near to the southern end of the lake has the huge advantage of being free.

I’ve long wanted to do this walk, since picking up a copy of ‘Windermere: Walking Around the Lake’ by Duncan Turner. He suggests catching the ferry from Fell Foot to Lakeside, which neatly avoids the main A590, but I was making an early start and the first ferry wouldn’t be until late morning, so I decided to string together footpaths and lanes to take me around the end of the lake.

Dropping down the road towards Fell Foot, I could see the Saturday Morning Park Run taking place in the park. TBH has been a couple of times and has encouraged me to give it a go. One day perhaps.

Eventually, I picked up a delightful path through Beech woods carpeted with Bluebells…

…which brought me out close to Staveley in Cartmel, a small hamlet which I’m not sure I’ve ever visited before. Which is perhaps why I’ve never heard of Millerbeck Light Railway before…

St, Mary’s church is slightly outside the village.

I hoped to pop in, but found the door locked. The church was restored in 1897 by Lancaster architects Austin and Paley, whose work I seem to encounter almost everywhere I go. Apparently, there’s a listed eighteenth century stone sundial in the churchyard which I missed, so I shall have to go back. I could hardly miss the huge lychgate…

…which seemed a bit out of proportion with the modest church.

A footpath through a caravan park and then a minor road brought me to Newby Bridge. I had to cross the busy main road twice, but that didn’t prove to be as big an obstacle as I’d thought it might be.

The five arch stone bridge from which Newby Bridge gets its name was built in 1651 and is really rather elegant, so I ought to have taken a picture of it. Next time.

I did take a picture of the Swan Hotel from the bridge.

It was still early at this point – people were still eating breakfast inside.

Having come this way, I now had the option to include the small hill above Newby Bridge which is Summer House Knott…

…or Water Side Knott…

The OS map has both names. I took several photos of this map and various parts of it. It shows paths not marked on the OS map, so is very handy. I would go over the Knott, down to Finsthwaite, up to High Dam, down to the YMCA centre on the lake and then follow the lake shore path off the top of this map.

Incidentally, long-suffering readers might recognise the map since I used another photo of it to navigate on another walk in the rain, through Border Moss and Yewbarrow Woods, back in the winter.

A short climb brought me to…

…Pennington Lodge Tower, or Finsthwaite Tower, depending on who you believe. It’s currently under repair, I think the work of the National Trust. The plaque high on the wall reads…

Erected to honour the officers, seamen and marines of the Royal Navy whose matchless conduct and irresistible valour decisively defeated the fleets of France, Spain and Holland and preserved and protected liberty and commerce 1799.

Originally it had three floors and a view, but the top floor has been removed and it is now surrounded by trees (source).

It’s a listed building, so in theory should be being carefully preserved, but I can’t find any reference online to the repairs. The naval battles referred to, from 1797 and 1798, are apparently the Battle of St. Vincent, the Battle of Camperdown and the Battle of the Nile, decisive victories against the navies of Spain, Holland and France respectively. My knowledge of the Napoleonic wars is obviously very sketchy, since it’s only the latter, when Nelson was commanding the British Fleet, that I was aware of before. Hard to imagine now a situation where Britain could be at loggerheads simultaneously with so many of our European neighbours. Ho-hum.

Incidentally, Summer House Knott, along with Finsthwaite Heights, is on one of Wainwright’s Outlying Fells Walks, as are Claife Heights and Latterbarrow which will appear later.

Great Knott Wood, to the north of the tower, is now owned by the Woodland Trust, who are working to restore native deciduous woods here…

As I approached the point where the path left the wood, I came across these…

Another memorial of sorts, recording the areas industrial heritage, when it produced wooden bobbins for the Manchester cotton industry.

It’s many years now since I visited the bobbin mill at nearby Stott Park, but I remember it as a fascinating tour. Our guide was a former employee of the mill, when it was still  a commercial enterprise, rather than a working museum, and he had lots of interesting and some times gruesome stories to tell.

Finsthwaite.

St. Peter’s Church, Finsthwaite.

I was hoping to have a gander inside this church too, but despite signs outside saying that the church is kept open for visitors, it also seemed to be locked. Which is a shame, because I suspect the inside is well worth a look. It’s quite a recent building, the work of, you guessed it, Paley and Austin.

Since I couldn’t go inside, I sat in the porch for a moment whilst I took on some water.

The weather was really beginning to brighten up at last. It hadn’t actually rained all that much to this point, but had always seemed to be on the point of drizzling. Now there was sunshine and warmth.

Climbing out of Finsthwaite, I was taken by this blossom covered tree…

An apple tree, I suspect?

A short ascent brought me to High Dam…

…where we swam a couple of times last summer.

Whilst I’ve visited High Dam many times over the years, I’m not sure that I’ve ever followed this bit of path beyond the reservoir, which isn’t on my map. Nor have I climbed Stott park Heights, the high ground on the left here…

…an omission I shall have to rectify another time.

The path dropped down the hillside via some deep cuttings which looked like they must have been blasted through the rock, which doesn’t make much sense on this seemingly little used track. There must be some explanation?

I had to walk a little way along the road, but was soon on the lake side path.

I had my cag on almost immediately when, for the first time that day, the heavens really opened.

In truth, the shower was short-lived, but with dark clouds scudding past and occasional further flurries of rain, I kept my coat on, probably longer than I needed to.

It looked like there might be a wedding party underway at Greythwaite Old Hall, and I hoped the weather would improve, both for them and for me! The path was well-marked and very easy to follow, so on the whole I wasn’t really looking at my map much. For that reason, I was quite surprised by the short sharp climb past High Cat Crag. Sadly, I immediately lost all of that height again on the minor lane which eventually took me to another lake shore path.

By the time I passed through these wonderful Bluebell woods at Rawlinson Nab, the rain had just about done, for now at least.

I’d been debating with myself about the options for the next section. I could stick to the shore, or take any one of a number of routes across Claife Heights, the most ambitious of which would divert to take in Latterbarrow. I’d pretty much decided that if the weather looked fine I would choose the Latterbarrow option and since I had some blue sky and plenty of sunshine, I took the minor lane and then a path into Far Sawrey, rather than dropping back down to the shore.

I was heading for High Pate Crag and High Blind How, but before I reached either of those I followed a slight trod leading away from the main track, which brought me to a superb viewpoint.

Belle Isle and Bowness-on-Windermere.

I’ve walked in Claife Heights many times before, but have always thought that the one downside of those walks was the frustrating lack of views, so this was a real revelation. I’d been walking for quite some time without much rest, so decided to sit here a while and eat the couple of apples I had in my bag.

The weather still looked quite bleak in the hills around the head of the lake.

Whilst Gummer How and the southern end of the lake looked a satisfyingly long way away…

A large area of trees around High Pate Crag had been felled. There ought to have been views of the Coniston Fells, but they had been swallowed up by clouds.

The area abounds with tarns. I’m guessing that this one in the distance…

…with trees around it’s western shore, is Moss Eccles Tarn, once owned by Beatrix Potter and which I passed on a previous Calife Heights wander.

High Pate Crag, and the area around it, had good views across to the Langdale Pikes.

Whilst High Blind How turned out to be appropriately named, since the trig pillar there is completely surrounded by mature conifers and has no view at all…

At 270 metres, this was the highest point of the day.

Unnamed tarn near High Blind How.

Telephone mast? And the hills north of Ambleside.

I was heading now for Latterbarrow, but the weather had finally caught up with me again and I had more rain.

Latterbarrow, with a prominent cairn on top.

Fortunately, it stopped pretty much as I reached the top…

I stopped again here, for another drink and to take lots of photos.

The views were changing all the time, with clouds and showers constantly on the move.

I was even treated to a bit of a rainbow over the lake…

Paths exist here which aren’t on my old map. They were evident on the ground and I trusted that, since they seemed to be going in a convenient direction, it would be a good idea to follow them.

Blelham Tarn with Black Fell behind.

The paths took me down to High Wray, from where I was anticipating a long road walk.

Looking back to Blelham Tarn and Latterbarrow.

However, new paths…

Have been created which either shadow the road, or, in one section, leave it altogether.

The weather was looking decidedly grim again.

In Pull Woods…

..it had started to rain a little and it soon started to absolutely tip it down.

It continued to rain as I diverted to cross the river Brathay by the footbridge opposite…

Holy Trinity Church, Brathay.

Another unusual looking church. Having come out of my way to see the church, I decided against climbing the hill to see if the church was open. It was getting late and was still chucking it down.

Fortunately, by the time I reached Ambleside it had finally stopped, so I could enjoy the view down the lake before hobbling to the Youth Hostel, seen on the left here…

…for a shower, some dry gear, food and a couple of hard earned beers.

Duncan Turner gives this side of the lake as 13¾ miles with 1816′ of ascent, but I tacked on extra bits around the southern end of the lake, over Summer House Knott and over High Blind How and Latterbarrow, which made it, well…quite a long way.

Maps: Start at the bottom and work up! (Some of the paths are missing from this 1:50,000. You really need OL7 to track the route)

Technical notes:

The photos were taken on an old (in digital camera terms) Fujifilm camera, chosen because it’s very compact and because my Panasonic is too bulky in my rucksack if I’m carrying overnight gear.

There’s no Google-Earth map of my route because the app decided, as it does from time to time, that I had logged out, and I couldn’t log back in again because I don’t use mobile data. The next day it worked fine, except that somewhere on the drive home the data for the day disappeared into the ether.

 

Paddling the Periphery*: Harrow Slack, Lilies of the Valley, Belle Isle.

Once we’d decided that we would spend some time at home together over the summer, we resolved to try to get out and be active, turn our hands to something new from time to time, generally make the most of what’s on offer on our doorstep. We tried archery, not once but twice. We cycled along the shore of Windermere, and would have cycled again, but for difficulties with a defective cycle carrier. The boys and I dabbled in gill-scrambling. All good. But top of our wish list of things-to-do was a spot of canoeing. Attentive readers will be aware that as long ago as last New Year I expressed a yen to go “messing about in boats: to do some sailing; to buy, beg, borrow, blag, build a Canadian Canoe”.

Well we sailed on the Kent Estuary back in May – I don’t think that ever made it on to the blog – but it was terrific fun. And now we have some Canadian canoes, inflatable ones, having decided to take the prosaic approach of buying them.

 

We’ve two canoes, a two man and a three man. I don’t intend to review them, we’re very happy with them, but I don’t really have anything to compare them too or sufficient knowledge to to give an objective assessment. However, there do seem to be some real bargains out there and if you’re interested in some details leave a comment and I’ll get in touch.

We’ve had them out three times so far; twice at Fell Foot Park and, sandwiched between those outings, another trip on Windermere, but this time starting on the Western Bank from Harrow Slack car park. We travelled across to it on the Bowness Car Ferry (above).

 

These photos are from that second trip. It was pleasantly sunny, but very windy.

 

We paddled along the shore with the wind behind us, took a tour around two small islands called Lilies of the Valley and then landed back on the lake shore….

 

…to stretch our legs, climb trees….

 

…and photograph the local fungi….

 

 

Back in the boats we cruised past the two small islands again and then followed the western shore of Belle Isle, keeping out of the wind which was funnelling down the lake.

 

Belle Isle is comparatively large and is privately owned, with a house on it. Here we are (some of us anyway) hugging its sheltering bank. The two islands behind are the Lilies of the Valley.

This photo…

…is from our third trip. The people in the boat in front are our friends B and M. (Tempting now to add ‘Bargains’ to that, but if instead, I call them M and B I shall only think of Mitchells and Butlers – I dread to think what these low rent free associations say about my character and misspent middle-age?) Anyway, that’s our friends B and M, M and B. We’re canoeing on the River Leven. We did that the first time we launched the boats from Fell Foot Park too. Then, the water levels were much higher and there was quite a strong current. We managed okay, but we met others who were struggling. B, who had two kids in an inflatable dinghy which was rapidly deflating, was making no headway at all, and in the end we gave him a bit of a tow to the shore.

I’ve since found a copy, stashed away sometime ago, just in case I ever got around to buying a canoe, of John Wilson Parker’s ‘Atlas of the English Lakes’.

This clip of the front cover pretty much sums it up. It’s a lovely book, a sort of ‘Wainwright for the Lakes’ with hand drawn maps, handwritten text and lots of detail about access, boat launching etc. All that, and it’s published by Milnthorpe’s Cicerone Press.

Anyway, he warns against paddling downstream in the rivers flowing out of the Lakes in general, and down the Leven in particular, precisely because there can be a strong current and you’re then faced with paddling back against it. It is a pleasant trip down to Newby Bridge, and just about the right distance for us at the moment, but perhaps we shall have to be a little more circumspect in future.

Fell Foot Park has the advantage over Harrow Slack of other facilities besides somewhere to launch – toilets, a play area, a cafe, an ice cream shop, room to throw a Frisbee, picnic tables etc. We try to not be in a position to need the cafe however – brewing the tea is part of the experience.

*So will the blog now have a sub-title “Paddling the Periphery?” Credit where credit’s due – this suggestion is from Alan Sloman’s comment on my January 2013 post about wanting to do some sailing and canoeing. Hopefully, there will be many more  ‘Paddling the Periphery’ posts to come.(Probably only when the weather is kind though).