Day Thirty Three

Friday 28 May – Keswick to Caldbeck.

I can usually navigate my way cross-country with few errors, but get me in a town and all bets are off. It’s partly the map’s fault – the footpath I needed is airily shown passing straight through a large hotel, which it doesn’t. I had to guess exactly where it went, and spent a few curses extracting myself from a suburban cul-de-sac.

Having found the right road out of town, I then turned on to a bridleway which rises quite steeply. Others were using the route – this is a feeder for Skiddaw and Latrigg Fell, as well as the path I was to take. First a steep zig-zag path leaves on the right for Latrigg then, near a car park, a new (I guess) limited abilities path makes a gentler ascent to the Latrigg viewpoint – what a good idea. Soon the path to Skiddaw heads relentlessly upwards on the left, leaving this Back o' Skiddaw wimp to take a lower path which soon started to contour round Lonscale Fell.

Smooth at the start, the path got rougher as it traversed the slope below Lonscale Crags, then improved again as it passed the ridge known as Burnt Horse. Turning North West to cross a peat bog (not very boggy, actually, after the recent dry weather), I reached Skiddaw House. Now, this a YHA hostel, and it says on the website that it is very welcoming. But the gate seemed to be locked and carried a “private” sign; nearby was a “no public right of way” sign, so I didn’t feel very welcome.

I turned away and crossed some more peat to begin yet another contouring exercise – which is an attempt to dress up the fact that I sauntered along a lovely level path for about three and a half miles. Above Mosedale the path reaches a road end. Three cars were parked up while their occupants roamed the fells. A grassy bank by Grainsgill Beck was a pleasant lunch spot.

Then the hard work began. I followed a track up the bank of the beck; it had been metalled in the past, but was now breaking up. When I reached the site of disused mineral workings, the track became much more interesting. It scrambled up near the beck, sometimes rocky, sometimes boggy, and sometimes rocky and boggy. I call it a path, but actually it is designated as a bridleway. The idea of riding, or even leading, a horse up here was quite mind-boggling. I envisaged the RSPCA being helicoptered in to serve a summons and rescue the poor beast.

Over something less than a mile, this assault course took me from 1,000 to 2,000 feet, and then turned North for a gentle climb up to High Pike, the last fell top on this journey. Before me, and to my left, the Solway Firth could be seen in the haze, with the North Cumbria plain in the foreground. A helpful orientation table helped me identify places I had visited or walked in the shadow of in the past few days.

I made a bodge of coming down from the summit, following a treacherous path which oh-so-gradually diverged from the route I needed. Realising this eventually, I whipped out the magic phone to get a GPS reading, and took the opportunity (how sad am I?) to catch up with my emails. The grid reference helped me to get back on course without difficulty, and a string of paths and lanes took me into Caldbeck.

Although it is not among the high fells (the country had become rolling and lush) Caldbeck is an authentic Lakeland village, and very unspoiled and pretty. After supper, I duly did the tourist thing and sought out the graves of John Peel (the fox-hunting man, not the lugubrious DJ) and Mrs Mary Harrison, better known as the Maid of Buttermere. She was a pub landlord’s daughter whose renowned beauty drew Wordsworth and Coleridge to check her out, and a con-man who “married” her bigamously, and was later hanged for posing as an MP (who’d want to do that today?); she later dodged the limelight by marrying a Caldbeck farmer.

[I later read Melvyn Bragg's The Maid of Buttermere. Although it's a bit odd stylistically, veering from novel to documentary, it's a page-turning read, and brings the early 19th Century compellingly to life. Highly recommended.]