heading for the lakes – 14 Sep, 2018
Day 37 Land’s End to John O’Groats – Arnside to Pound Farm
Distance: 22km
Cumulative distance: 941km
I think I made the right choice having a day off…the weather wasn’t great and I managed to get a fair bit done. There was no library in Arnside, so I took a train across the River Kent to Grange Over Sands and spent a few hours typing away. I did a bit of shopping and tried, but failed, to find some second hand tracksuit pants to help warm me up at night time with the weather starting to cool down. Turns out they’re quite a difficult thing to get a hold of! I’ll wait until I get to Carlisle and have a look then. There were more pressing matters to tackle such as how I was going to approach the Lake District.
As I alluded to, I planned to take the Cumbria Way north through the national park and most of the way to Carlisle, but it was a matter of whereabouts I was going to pick up the trail. For starters, I had to walk several miles north just to get across the River Kent. Unless I was willing to take the railway bridge, which was strictly for trains only. One of the locals told me people used to try and cross it on Christmas Day (it may have been Boxing Day), because the trains didn’t run, but the local constabulary quickly caught on to the devious behaviour and put a stop to it. To the north west of the River Kent is Windermere, the largest stretch of water in the in the Lake District, and I had two options for circumventing it. Head south down its eastern shore, walking for miles in the opposite direction to where I was meant to be going and picking up the Cumbria Way much closer to its starting point, or aim for the town of Windermere itself and picking up the trail much further north. I estimated option B would save me at least a day and a half, and spare me the psychological discomfort of walking in the wrong direction. It would also allow me to meet Sam and Tiff in Windermere on Saturday, which would be the most convenient option for them. It was a pretty easy choice in the end.
I was chewing all of this over at breakfast time in the hostel, unfortunately looking out the window at some pretty persistent rain which looked to have set in. I was facing a slightly shorter day so could afford to wait around a bit, and by the time I finally checked out it had eased off to a pretty light drizzle. It fluctuated between this and moderate rain as the morning wore on, and the walking wasn’t overly pleasant despite being so close to England’s most beautiful national park. After leaving Arnside via the old church, I followed several country roads without footpaths and did my usual traffic dodging where required. The roads quietened down before the traffic returned as I headed into Levens, but a footpath appeared and I stayed on that all the way to the bridge which took me across the River Kent. Soon after I found a bit of shelter for lunch and the rain eventually stopped for good. The road up to Brigsteer was much quieter and after breaking off I crossed some beautiful fields, full of dry stone walls. This was a welcome change of scenery, and I was amazed at how many of these dry stone walls criss-crossed the landscape. There was something incredibly peaceful about the way these walls carved up the farmland.
I walked through the quiet village of Underbarrow, then past a church and along a very muddy public footpath to a farm. There was a bloke out on his tractor doing a bit of work just where the path cut through his land, and he didn’t seem to mind that I was tramping across it. He gave me an enthusiastic smile before taking off and leaving me to it. As usual I lost the path across the farm, but managed to find where I was on the map. I jumped over a gate and headed for the far corner of the farm hoping for another gate which would take me back to the road. Instead I found myself hemmed in by dry stone walls and was forced to break one of my golden rules, which was don’t jump over dry stone walls. That has nothing to do with this walk specifically, it’s more out of respect to the farmer and the handiwork of these things. If I didn’t jump it I’d be breaking another golden rule – don’t backtrack. I found a section of the wall that was a bit lower than the rest, and found a few sturdy footholds to help myself over without disturbing its integrity. Eventually after striding down a bridleway I picked up the road again, and soon after I arrived at Pound Farm where the lady on reception charged me Duke Of Edinburgh rates, bless her. That meant seven quid instead of 10 and I can happily reveal the difference was spent on a pint down at the Sun Inn in Crook once I’d set up my tent. The sun was shining by now and I was meeting Sam and Tiff tomorrow for a couple of days in the Lake District. By the time I strolled home in the dark from the Sun Inn, I was in particularly high spirits.
