July
Well, I hope you enjoyed the respite. It is now July 2007 and tomorrow is also July 2007, so it's finally time for my July walk in the Howgills.
Before we commence our finishing explorations, let me just say that during the pause, we missed the hottest summer since last year. This was inevitably due to global warming caused by all those massive coal fires my granny used to have in her kitchen. And, due to global warming (obviously), we are currently having the wettest summer since I remarked to one of my classmates in Class 3 at New Road Junior School Earby what a wet summer it was turning out to be. Probably 1961-ish... This has not been a summer but the damp extension of a very mild winter. It's probably only slightly wetter than the Knipe family holiday in Cleveleys in 1964 from which we returned to find that the main street of Earby (ironically called Water Street) had been seriously flooded and was now full of mud and dirty sofas.
Anyway, for the walk, I've picked what I hope will be the driest day of the week, but, to be honest, I'm not over-confident about the prospects. I am, in fact, expecting to get a bit wet and, possibly frightened by dark, rumbly skies.
We'll see.
I'm now off to boil me egg for me butties...
By the way, what on earth did you do with the spare time?
Did you get married, have a baby or obtain a puppy or, perhaps, a cat?
Are you now sitting comfortably?
Are you fully composed for the final couple of chapters?
In effect, are you ready? Am I ready? Will I ever finish?
Incidentally, since you ask, the garden's not looking too good at the moment. There seems to be little other than a parched dandelion. And a small ash tree...
July
Tebay - Carlin Gill - Uldale Head - Rispa Pike
10 Miles 2000 feet of ascent
It turned out to be a real steamer of a day. Me and Bruno left the car outside The Old School House, just by the kiddies playground in the dead centre of the bustling metropolis of Tebay. We'd been here before. But where hadn't we been by now?
Well, we hadn't been down Church Street in Tebay, so that's where we went first. There's a path running downhill next to the church which joins one of those semi-urban industrial-type paths you might find in a Welsh slate mining village. It runs along parallel to the railway that's not there any more and into a small industrial estate. Then it goes round the back of the railwaymens cottages. It's the sort of place where you would play as a kid. It's the sort of place I would have played as a kid anyway. And it's the sort of place I'd come back to in my Mondeo forty years later, remarking on the things that had changed and the things that hadn't changed. I'd see somebody walking a geriatric dog and think that I probably went to school with them. I wouldn't recognise them instantly. I'd like to bet that Tebay is one of those places that people come back to from far away. Just to have a look.
Anyway, we passed through the gap between the cottages, passing a middle-aged lady walking a geriatric dog, and we crossed the road. A path climbs diagonally up the fellside, soon revealing a full view of this bit on the Lune Gap. The motorway, the main road, the west coast main line, the old line to the east, the power lines, the older roads; it's an important strategic choke point, busy and noisy, all of the time. When it goes quiet, we're in trouble.
Anyway, our path stopped halfway up the fellside and so we continued, contouring on sheep tracks through increasingly deep bracken. Soon, we descended gently to the intake wall which we were to follow for a bit more than two miles into Carlin Gill.
It was surprisingly easy going. The way is reasonably level and there's nearly always some kind of track. At one point, the route runs into boulders where a sheepfold once was. It was here that I found somebody's stash of porn. It wasn't very good, though, and most of the pages were stuck together. I left it for the next person to come along - if you...er, well, never mind.
Anyway, it was very very hot. Even my ears were sweating. Bruno's tongue was about a foot long and waved and dripped. Every now and then he snapped at a pesky blackfly. I'm not sure he was enjoying it all that much. In fact, I'm not that sure I was enjoying this all that much either. But we battered on through the bracken, now uphill into some welcome wooded shade, then out again now high above the valley. It is quite a good route.
Soon, we came to Carlin Gill, and descended to the beck where the traditional banana was ritually sacrificed and consumed.
One of the targets of this walk was to have a look at The Spout, at the top of Carlin Gill and find a route which gets the walker from there into Blakethwaite Bottom (fine wild camping spot by the way).
I'd never been up Carlin Gill further than Black Force, apart from a traverse high above it in 1975 or something - during which me and our kid encountered outrageously steep grass and couldn't light up a B&H because it was too windy. So I trepidated a bit about the prospects of a desperate scramble up loose shale next to a beetling waterfall.
So, we followed the familiar route up by Carlin Beck, over the very-much-less-scary-than-I-thought-it-was-last-time path that I thought was a bit scary last time, and along by the foot of Black Force and then into the final secret recesses of Carlin Gill, where there is a rather beautiful waterfall. It would be a good idea to come here in the midst of a cold winter, if we ever have another cold winter to be in the midst of - when the fall might be frozen. It could be quite magnificent.
There's quite clearly no dignified way to get up the hillside beside the waterfall. It's much too steep and rocky. The only way forward (well, perhaps not the only way forward) is to go backwards - back down the gill, but for only a short way.
A hundred metres downstream and the hillside becomes more possible to climb. So that's what we did. It is, though, outrageously steep grass and you do need to make a determined assault. Once in transit with the top of the waterfall, we made a stumbling contouring traverse, and then a final, equally outrageously steep descent on grass made ever-so-slightly more comfortable by the use of the gluteus muscles. This finally put a hole in my ancient tracky-bottoms. Any witnesses would be able to testify that my choice of underwear for the day were - the blue ones...
Bruno, incidentally, doesn't have a head for heights at all - he just doesn't notice them. He is fitted out with two pairs of very efficient crampons which react to steep and slippery slopes in a natural, instinctive and thoughtless way. So he's never quite sure why I'm crawling about on the grass and sliding down hills when I could just leap down them like wot he does. It would be a puzzle to him if he was at all bothered to puzzle about things other that where his toy has just disappeared to and why some idiot is encouraging him to find it...
But we digress. From the top of the waterfall, it's a very short hop and skip into that very fine wild camping spot - Blakethwaite Bottom. It was here that we stopped and I let Bruno watch me eating my egg and tomato sandwhich.
After lunch, we made our sweaty way up Uldale Head and across the moors to Rispa Pike, where, the more attentive readers will remember, there is a small shelter. Here, we both collapsed in our own respective big snotty heaps. Much too warm for this sort of thing. Much too warm to think about writing anything. Here, I decided, we would stay for a while. It would be a long while. Tebay was within easy walking distance, and there was no rush. We could sit and listen to the late summer silence... Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz Beyonce's pants...
I realised at this point just how quiet the fells were. There was absolute silence. In the distance, then, I heard a dull rumble. Warcop, I thought. Some soldiers playing at blowing things up. Half an hour had passed since we arrived. It had slid passed, sneakily and quietly. There was another rumble, away to the North. I opened my eyes and saw the black sky. Bugger. I hate thunder storms when I'm out on the moors. They're great when you're watching out of a window with the lights turned off - with a cup of cocoa. But not up here.
So we left. We headed down the hill to pick up the path running down Ellergill. Two shepherdy-types passed on ATVs. The sky rumbled and grumbled.
We passed quickly over the rough moor to Waskew, getting the navigation right this time, and down on to the road (where, incidentally, I found three pounds fifty spread out on the road) - and back to the car. As I opened the car boot, the heavens opened with a very loud crack and by the time I'd got myself into the driver's seat, I was wet through. Bruno, who was in the car already, missed the drenching with a doggy snigger.
But what have we learned today?
Well, we learned that following the intakes from Tebay to Carlin Gill is a perfectly good way to get to Carlin Gill - and this solves a problem about the length of walks available to the walker who parks on the Fairmile road.
We also learned that passing The Spout is relatively easy, if a bit steep.
And we learned that sometimes, even on these friendly hills, you have to make a quick exit.
And we learned that we can still walk the hills, even after all that fuss last year.
Smug mode...
