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Carrock Fell and High Pike walk

Early last century, the local folk marveled that anyone would wish to climb Carrock Fell for fun and one remarked: 'Aa' the world ganged away' yon'. The Caldew, river of the dale, might be expected to flow south to join the Glenderamackin, but meanders northwards to meet the Eden in Carlisle.

From a cluster of buildings which make up Mosedale, swing left opposite a red telephone box. We are now in Swindle and using a strip of tarmac leading to the former Carrock mine complex. On the opposite side of the valley, a path climbs to Bowscale Tarn, which is north of Bowscale Fell. Look carefully for a narrow track which heads off right and goes steeply up Carrock Fell. The clue to its presence is a green salt bin at the roadside, close up to a wall on the left-hand side of the road.

The track, although narrow, threads a Course between boulders and gorse. As height is gained, the view up Swindle is impressive, the former mining complex being clear to see, along with vehicles whose owners are picnicking by the mine cottage ruins or on the riverbank. After a screen run has been negotiated, the gradient eases near a sheepfold, and from here to the summit the track is at best intermittent until another sheepfold provides shelter from the elements.

Among the minerals found on Carrock Fell were wolfram and gabbros, the last named occurring on spoil heaps of long-closed mines. On local crags, its hard no flaking surface is a delight to visiting climbers. The summit was once ringed and contained a hill fort, some of the stones being used in the sheepfold. The rest form what seems to have been a circular wall and are deduced to be the remains of a preordain fortress.

Eastwards, the impressive view takes in the terrain beyond Penrith to the Pennies. Elsewhere higher mountains, Blencathra, Bowscale Fell and Bannerdale Crags, which are close by, curtail the view. Bowscale Tarn is just in view but is better seen from the next section of the walk.

Coleridge, one of Wordsworth's friends, was fond of visiting Carrock Fell. He knew the fell's climatic extremes and noted in a letter to a friend in 1800: Westward over Milton Hill lies High Pike. The terrain may be boggy but a track improves beyond this midway point. High Pike is not our immediate objective. If conditions are clear, visit Great Lingy Fell Hut akin to a large garden shed  - which provides shelter and also rest for the weary. The hut, which can be seen from a fair distance unless it is misty, is maintained by the national park authority, from their base at the Blencathra Centre. Over 1,000 visitors a year sign a visitors' book, some hardy walkers spending the night there.

On a visit in 1989, we inspected the visitors' book, in which a wag had noted: 'Someone left the door open; please restock with chickens.' More recently, it included: 'Stayed here overnight. Mice tried to eat our breakfast. Very cold, dark at night.' (Now there's a surrise.) The first prize must go to 'one M & S employee and one recent escapee.

Having sampled the delights of the hut on Great Lingy Fell, retrace your steps on the clear path heading north-northeast for High Pike, which normally is in clear view ahead. A short detour brings its summit underfoot at 2,I59 feet (68m). A substantial slate seat contains two inlaid memorials. The first is to Mick Lewis of Nether Row who died at the tender age of sixteen in 1944. (We believe he had enlisted in the RAF under age and was reported .missing on a bombing mission.) A later Inscription is in respect of his mother, who died in 1970. The summit has its trig point, a beacon site and wind shelter and, surprisingly, the ruins of a shepherds' both, long deserted but truly a room with a view.

Retrace your steps back to the main track and start to descend to lower ground, towards the site of Sanded Barites Mine. You should turn off right to eventually walk above the banks of spoil that were so obvious when starting the descent. Keep walking almost parallel with Carrock Beck and in due course you will reach a ford and footbridge besides the unenclosed road. Then, two miles (3km) of easy walking beside the unenclosed road leads back to Mosedale, passing the impressive crags of Carrock Fell, where the famed gabbros climbs are to be found.

Farming is mainly concerned with sheep and beef cattle. Notice, during the ascent, a patch of woodland by the river. Presiding over a stretch of verdant grassland is the Roundhouse, an architectural curiosity, only the roof of which is visible from this angle. A path of loose stones eventually gives way (where there is a cairn) to a green track. Bow scale Tarn, in its corrie setting of dark crags, its turquoise waters held back by a moraine laid down in glacial times, is revealed at the last moment.

William Wordsworth knew this tarn well and, in his Song at the Feast oj Brougham Castle, made mention of a tradition held locally that Bow scale Tarn was te home of two immortal fish. A Victual writer, Eliza Lynn Linton, wrote that they 'used to be called Adam and Eve'. She had not met anyone who had seen them but 'they are nonetheless there'. Bow scale is said to be the haunt of the schelly, a fish that is believed to have been landlocked at the end of the Ice Age. The tarn is usually chilling and choppy, but one of the authors recalls a hot summer's day when he and his son went for a swim and dried off on sun baked rocks.


Ignore the path leading round the tarn. At the outflow, seek a path that zigzags up a steep slope and extends along the top of Tarn Crags. Walk southwards to a pimple on the skyline. The pimple is a cairn marking the top of Bowscale Fell at 2,303 feet (702m). Notice, as you walk, the durable mat of hill plants, including Nards stoical, in tussocks, the plant being known to dales folk as 'bent'. There is much sphagnum moss in an area known for the soggy state of the ground.

The rocks of Bowscale Fell are especially hard, the flags and grits having been toughened by heat and pressure after their formation. This is especially noticeable where dark slates form Bannerdale Crags (2,240feet/683m), now conspicuous to the south. The summit is reached after an exhilarating ridge walk on a path that can be sloppy in places after heavy rain. We found a drowned common shrew in this area. The cairn with a slab of slate set vertically that stands at the head of the crags is not the summit, though it deserves to be. The summit cairn is visible a short distance away, on your right-hand side.

From here, walk northwest, straight ahead but along a well defined footpath that swings towards the col and the now very prominent Fouled Crag, a feature of the Blencathra massif. A prominent footpath is seen on the steep slope ahead, but turn off left, down an eroded slope, to a path that leads for several miles by the enchanting River Glenderamackin to Mungrisdale.

The path has the compar.y of a beck until, where the beck from Scales Tarn creams as it descends, the waters combine to become a fully fledged river, though it is as yet of modest size. The eroded route becomes a rocky path that forming yet another mine track has a grassy surface. As the walk proceeds, notice how the rush bobs are replaced by patches of gorse that seem to bloom for most of the year, and that gorse is eventually replaced by a veritable sea of bracken, clothing the valley and the slopes of flanking hills to a high level.

Keep left, on the grassy path, ignoring a broad wooden bridge that, spanning the river, gives access to Southern Fell, an eminence that is scarred on its upper slopes by ice channels and notable for its squelchy nature when walked across. The fell will be forever associated with a series of apparitions seen during the early part of the eighteenth century. On two occasions, marching soldiers were seen. The first appearance was in 1737. On the second, in 1745, the troops had carriages with them. (It is unlikely that carriages could be taken up there and no wheel ruts were ever found.)

Where the river has cut a deeper place for itself, the ever wet rocks are colonized by mosses and ferns, and rowan trees grow from cracks in the rocks. The river is now joined by Banner dale Beck, a dry knoll being a good place to dine. There is no bridge across Banner dale Beck, but the water is usually shallow and improvised stepping stones are numerous. The stretches of path beyond the beck are inclined to be sloppy during wet spells.

In summer, notice the many black beetles that roam the grassy parts of the path and places where sheep dung is frequented by large numbers of beetles. Birdlife in a valley lagged with bracken is not numerous, but you will almost certainly see a kestrel hovering while on the lookout for prey, its ability to hover for a long period being made possibly partly because its tail is longer than that of other falcons. In sunshine, notice the chestnut mantle; the head and tail are grey. Bull fell Beck, another tributary, its source on Bow scale Fell, is spanned by a wooden footbridge. The local hill known as the Tongue provides a dramatic backdrop for Mungrisdale, the hamlet we now reach.

Turn left at the road for a short road walk back to the car, but notice the huge vicarage (now in private hands) and just across the road the modest Kirk it once served. St Kentigern's Church is on an ancient Christian site, and managed to escape the ravages of the Victorians who in many places transformed such churches into large and pretentious places of worship. The church has a cobbled porch, a three-decker pulpit, churchwarden's staves, an old bible and prayer book, and a font covered by a wooden steeple.

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