Fell View Cottage to coast at Annaside and Gibson's Spout Waterfall

I'd been in Cumbria for a few days, staying in St Bees and doing some very productive family history research in and around the villages of Frizington and Arlecdon and in the Whitehaven Archive and Local Studies Centre. Richard meanwhile had driven up from Norfolk yesterday, and last night we had both reached our base for the week, Fell View Cottage on Hyton Farm near Bootle. The weather forecast for the coming week, in which we hoped to combine walking on the coast path with other things, had been rather mixed, starting with pretty dire weather today. However, it wasn't raining this morning, and a check of our various Apps implied that rain was unlikely for several hours, so we decided to walk from the cottage to the coast (and therefore the England Coast Path). Where possible, I always like to connect from the place we are staying to the path we're walking, so this would be a good start.

The instructions for reaching our cottage had told us that the track from Bootle lead to three farms. Now, after leaving the one where the cottage was, we headed across fields and around one of the other farms, labelled as Old Hyton on the OS Map. Here we joined a track which led to the railway line and the River Annas. We turned right at the river and followed it under the railway line, and a short distance further on, a footbridge took us across the river. We turned right into a field and followed around the edge of it, close to the river. This brought us out onto another track to the north of Annaside Farm.

Now we had a choice: we could take a track to the right, which would be the one to take if we wanted to walk along the coast to the north, or we could take a track to the left, which would be the one to take if we wanted to walk along the coast to the south. Both tracks looked good, so we decided to turn it into a circuit; we went left and we were soon at the coast, where an England Coast Path sign told us we were 1.3 miles from Gutterby and 2.5 miles from Tarn Point. We turned onto the ECP and followed it across a field with rather long grass (which led to wet feet) in the reverse direction to the one we would take on our longer ECP leg from Tarn Bay to Silecroft Beach. We passed two separate cars in the field, with people camping alongside (or, in one case, apparently on top of the vehicle). We reached the track we were planning to take away from the coast and briefly contemplated going further, but we didn't want to push our luck with the weather and we we weren't absolutely sure that we'd be able to get through to our return route via the next footpath to the north.

After visiting the beach, we therefore headed inland again, now with lovely views to Black Combe, the mountain that sits behind the coast strip.  The track took us back to Annaside Farm where we briefly rejoined our outward route. However, rather than retracing our steps along the river, we instead headed along a path to a bridge to Kiskin. It's a public footpath and there is a public (if very minor) road the other side of the river, but we discovered after crossing the bridge between the two that this is apparently private. Ah well. We continued along the road past Hyton (another Hyton...) and under the railway, then up to the more major road that leads from Bootle Station at Hycemoor to Bootle.

Before returning to the cottage, we walked up to the centre of Bootle. Although most of my family connections in Cumbria are further to the north, there are occasional links closer at hand, and I wanted to look at the parish church, just in case. Richard pointed out that they might have been nonconformists, so we had a quick look at Bootle Evangelical Chapel too. We took the track back to the cottage and had lunch. It still wasn't raining. In the afternoon we went to Muncaster Castle; they have a Hawk and Owl Centre and it was  during the Flying Display that the rain started. By the time we drove to The Wild Olive in Gosforth for  a most enjoyable meal with Richard's brother and his wife, it was absolutely chucking it down.  But we'd had a very good day.

The information folder in the cottage described a walk from a parking place the other side of Bootle to a waterfall called Gibson's Spout, where Crookley Beck tumbles down from the fell to join the River Annas in Bootle. We decided to explore this after a profitable day of family history research in the stunning Duddon Valley  and Eskdale.  We decided to walk all the way, which was fine, though it was uphill all the way from Bootle. First of all we had to walk to the village. Hyton Farm is primarily a beef farm but Sandra, Anne and Jim's daughter, breeds Suffolk Sheep. On the way off the farm we noticed a Suffolk Ram; a magnificent creature. 

The route to the waterfall left Bootle by way of Mill Street, and the road meandered as it climbed. Eventually we reached the place where the instructions had told us to leave  our car (had we driven here) and the road became a track which climbed across an undulating bracken-covered landscape, now with good views to the coast. We were passed by a horse-rider. Eventually, as described in the instructions, we took a footpath to the right, through quite dense vegetation. This brought us to the waterfall, which was pretty, though the vegetation prevented us from getting upstream or downstream at all.

We returned to Fell View Cottage for a slightly late meal, pleased that we'd explored the countryside the other side of the A595 as well as the coastal scenery. It was a very pleasant evening, and on our way back to the cottage we stopped to photograph the iconic Black Combe, which was the backdrop to so many of our walks this week. Apparently it is heather-clad later in the summer so turns purple; that must be lovely.