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Walked by Sally and Richard, Saturday 8th June 2019
About 8.5 miles of walking (4 hours of walking), 6.4 miles on route of Cumbria Way
For photographs taken on journey to Ulverston and on today's walk click here
The weather forecast for today was pretty dire, with the storm which had swept up the country from the south yesterday getting stuck over Cumbria today, and it had rained heavily in the night. The rain on the Velux windows of our room at Candlewyck, coupled with too much to eat and drink last night, and worry about work, had kept me awake for a large chunk of the night, but we slept to 7.30am (very late for us) and Candlewyck was otherwise a superb experience. We were staying in “The Barn” which their website correctly describes as a “boutique style private suite” and it was comfortable and spacious, with lovely views to the route of the Cumbria Way past Old Hall Farm. Sam cooked us a marvellous breakfast (with lots of local produce including Cumberland sausage) then we put on our waterproofs and said goodbye to Sam, Daria and their lovely cocker spaniel. Sam keeps labradors too, but it was the little working cocker that made friends with us.
Because we only had a short walk today, and the weather forecast implied that the likelihood of rain would decrease slightly as the day progressed, we decided to spend some time in Ulverston before leaving. We walked back down into the town, stopping to admire the cobbled streets, covered market and Laurel and Hardy statue (Stan Laurel was born in Ulverston), to buy two pieces of quiche (with a very helpful assistant in the bakery packing them up carefully so that they survived nicely until we stopped for lunch), and to drink coffee in a cafe and talk through some of my work concerns. Ulverston has plenty of independent cafes, but we chose Costa because it is large so we didn’t feel in the way in sitting there for quite some time, and because we still had money on a Costa gift card that I won in a raffle 18 months ago.
We moved on around 11.15 in light rain, and made our way to the official start of the Cumbria Way, a pyramidal sculpture designed to represent a cairn of rocks found on the route. The photo of the sculpture in the guidebook shows it surrounded by brightly coloured flowers, but the troughs where the flowers should be were in a rather sorry state today, There was another “start of the Cumbria Way” sign with a seat, slightly further on. We left Ulverston by way of “The Gill”, an attractive path by a little stream. We climbed steadily, with good views back to Ulverston and the Sir John Barrow Monument on the top of Hoad Hill. The monument, which we’d first noticed on the train on the way into Ulverston yesterday, looks remarkably like a lighthouse, but it is clearly too far from the coast for that to be the case. It appears that John Barrow was some high-ranking official in the Admiralty, and the monument was indeed modelled on the Eddystone Lighthouse. Unsurprisingly, given that we’d had views from our room to Old Hall Farm and the route of the Cumbria Way, we also had good views back to Candlewyck. As we climbed higher, the views behind us got better and now we could see Morecambe Bay beyond Ulverston. We also began to get misty views ahead to the Coniston fells.
The guidebook makes much of the fact that today’s route is bitty, which I suppose it is - there were short sections on minor roads, followed by sections on footpaths and tracks, and we almost doubled back on ourselves from time to time. However the guidebook’s description had made us think that this was going to be one of those really frustrating days when you don’t feel as if you make much real progress, but in fact today’s route led us steadily north and, despite the weather, was much more attractive than I’d expected it to be. Although the countryside was gentler than it will be later on, it was definitely a Cumbrian landscape, with stone-built cottages and stiles over dry stone walls which have been constructed by including some protruding stones. I found these stone-step stiles quite difficult; the stones were slippery in the wet and also tended to be uneven and too far apart.
We passed though fields of cows, and later fields of sheep, and a succession of farms. We’d turned right onto a road at Higher Lath Farm and descended towards Windy Ash. However about halfway along the section we’d expected to follow along the road, a sign painted with white paint implied that we should turn left onto a grassy track across a field - so we did. We followed the line of this for several fields, but then encountered a fence with no way through, with a stream with no obvious crossing point beyond. Out came the technology...OpenStreetMap showed that we should be further to the right i.e. on the line that the Harvey’s and OS maps both show. So we turned right along the fence and soon rejoined the route shown on the maps. We realised at the end of the day that the route we’d followed is actually an official diversion, though we should have cut across the final field at an angle.
We were reassured that we were now on the correct route again because two male walkers were coming towards us. However, when we met them it became clear that they hadn’t got much idea where they were...and they were meant to be going in the same direction as us, also walking the Cumbria Way. Their confusion arose because they were still looking for Newbiggin (which we’d have walked past on the route shown on the map, but not on the one we’d followed) whereas we were actually half a mile further on. We eventually managed to persuade them where we actually were. This wasn’t their only problem today - in discussing where we were heading, it turned out that they too had hoped to stay somewhere near Lowick, but Serpa (who will book accommodation as well as transferring baggage) had booked them into Lowick in Northumberland...So they’d got accommodation somewhere nearby, but not perfect (I’m not sure where).
We parted company and we initially headed off in front of the two men, but later we let them take the lead. We were walking at a very similar speed, which can be problematic. After a brief stretch on the B5281, we turned right into the village of Broughton Beck, and then on a path which initially followed the beck. We passed some Shetland ponies, one with a foal. A mile or so further on, the two men again came walking back towards us because they’d reached a dead end. Richard, becoming quite expert with the Harvey’s map (which we were using today in preference to the OS map, simply because the Harvey’s map was printed on waterproof paper) had spotted that we were looking for a footpath off the track to the left, so order was soon restored again.
We reached Gawthwaite where the route crosses the A5092 and also enters the Lake District National Park, and the men headed off along the main road. We were continuing on the Cumbria Way, but first of all we wanted somewhere to eat lunch. Even though it was approaching 2pm, we weren’t particularly hungry, but we did now feel able to cope with more food after the cooked breakfast. We’d hoped that there might be a bus shelter on the main road, but there wasn’t. However, there was a phone box with no door, which proved perfectly adequate; the lack of door meant that there was room for both of us and our rucksacks!
We climbed out of Gawthwaite, on a road, then a track. We were now following a larger group of walkers, but they were gaining on us so we weren’t able to test our hypothesis that they were a Duke of Edinburgh expedition. There were now good views to the Coniston Fells and, to our delight, our first glimpse of Coniston Water. However, fairly soon we started to descend, after some meandering reaching the road at Kendall Ground.
We turned right, still on the Cumbria Way, but where the Cumbria Way then turned off the road we kept straight ahead, for the walk to Lowick Bridge, about a mile away. After crossing another minor road we took a path through delightful woodland to Everard Lodge. The route around Everard Lodge was less pretty and not well signposted; we got it wrong to start with! Soon however we were crossing meadow to Lowick Bridge, with the Church in the adjacent hamlet of Lowick to our right. Unfortunately the final field had rather long grass and so was damp underfoot.
We turned left onto the road in Lowick Bridge and it was a little after 3pm when we reached The Red Lion, which seemed full of barking dogs (it later transpired that the problematic ones were staying in an adjacent room). We were welcomed with genuine warmth by Lucia, who seems to be known as Lucy. Ironically, it stopped raining soon after we arrived and after a pleasant meal and conversation with some of the locals (including a rather talkative man with yet another dog, this time another delightful spaniel which of course thought Richard was wonderful) we went for a short walk across the main A5084 and then beside the River Crake, on the road which eventually follows the eastern bank of Lake Coniston. At last we had a clear view to the Old Man of Coniston, with Wetherlam to its right; the summit of Dow Crag, to the left of the Old Man of Coniston, stayed firmly in the cloud.
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