1st October — on a day affirming that autumn is well underway with abundant sunshine and generous showers, my wife and I made a trip to Hawes. We met old friends from our former life down in the Cotswolds who were holidaying in Middleham in lower Wensleydale. We celebrated the reunion with a lovely lunch at the Creamery, wonderfully rounded off with the renowned fruitcake-and-Wensleydale-cheese combination. All my mother’s family roots lie in this gorgeous dale and I had many happy youthful visits, and over the years many a great walk on the surrounding fells. Heading homeward, we called into the secretive side valleys of Cotterdale and Grisedale. Before we left home in the morning, I held a zoom meeting with Dan Raven-Ellison to discuss a potential collaboration with his amazing community linking walking project, looking at how we can build a distinct public transport dimension to Slow Ways around Britain. This might be as Slow Ways Ticket2Stride, a station to station country walks download.
Looking east as towards Wensleydale from Grisedale, with Widdale Fell forming the righthand horizon
29th September — My wife and I joined an early evening cruise on the Ullswater Steamer ‘Raven’ to celebrate the launching of the Ullswater Heritage Knowledge Bank within the framework of the Ullswater Way. A throng of local people abroad, many of whom have directly contributed to establishing this pioneering resource providing a focus on the culture and life of the most gorgeous of Lakeland valleys. A committee, given steerage by Tim and Anne Clarke of Patterdale, are keenly developing this unique and growing facility, built on the foundations of the Friends of Ullswater Way. There are currently various elements that I have contributed along with six of our Countrystride episodes that relate to the Ullswater setting.
Tim Clarke chair of the Friends of Ullswater Way and committe member Emma Bray during the convivial opening speeches
28th September — Mervyn Rochester from Bournemouth has been in touch today expressing his delight in the new Cicerone guides, I thought it well worth sharing with visitors to the website, many of whom will be fellow fellwalking devotees.
“I think I told you that my wife got me the eight new versions of your Fellranger guides and I can tell you that the appropriate one has been with us on every fell we’ve done this year (and that’s quite a few). I use them for everything from planning to following routes and guidance along the way. For years I always relied on AW’s guides and I continue to refer to them and read them avidly but I now only carry the Fellranger guide, map and compass and can’t praise your work more highly. We’ve also done our bit to spread the word by talking about the guides to fellow walkers whom we’ve met along the way. I’ve shown them to many a walker on a summit who’s never seen them before, left them with details and they’ve duly promised to buy one or the set! As they are so impressed! And rightly so….
“About four years ago (building on our base of fells already done) we decided to put some structure into our wanderings and tick off the Wainwrights. We’ve now done 190 so we’re actively planning on doing the remaining 24 next year all being well. Many of them we’ve now done quite a few times so we’re not a million miles off a double or triple round… I can tell you that living in Cumbria or the North with access to the fells in one thing but doing it from Bournemouth with normal constraints of life is another! Goodness knows how many motorway miles we’ve clocked up or the expense.
“Anyway, being dedicated followers and lifetime lovers of the fells we’re destined to push on through and complete the 230 Fellrangers as well! You can only imagine the feeling I got when safe in the knowledge that we had completed all the Wainwrights around Haycock, Caw Fell, Lank Rigg, Grike etc etc I read my Fellranger from the safety of my Bournemouth abode that Iron Crag is waiting in the middle of nowhere beckoning us to complete the Fellrangers in that area! I bet you don’t know anybody else who tramped all that way with the sole purpose to conquer Iron Crag?”
Walkers heading from the Ennerdale Fence wall access gate directly to the summit cairn of Iron Crag
CALLING ALL COUNTRYSTRIDE LISTENERS! If you like what we do and can spare 3 minutes to fill in a survey we’d be grateful. We’re planning our 2022 podcasts and would love to know what you want to hear more (and less!) of. All feedback really welcome. https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/Q3MWNHV
Friday 24th September, a drizzly morning in Keswick, was invigorated by recording a conversation with Kathleen Jones, author of A Passionate Sisterhood. Who has not heard of Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey, but the story of the women who lived in harmony with them is frequently ignored or poorly told. This book addresses their omission and vividly casts a light on their lives.
Kathleen Jones in the Market Square in Keswick today after our recording.
Quite the most majestically sited Roman structure in Britain (Britannia). Commanding a fabulous prospect of the Scafells and the wild heights at the head of Eskdale, the visitor can find not only internal structures including the headquarters building and granary but, outside the playing-card shaped fort walls, a bathhouse and a parade ground with a dais of stones collected during the creation of the open space to exercise the garrison.
The Scafells from the north gate of the fortDais of stones gathered to create the parade groundview down upon the parade ground to the fort walls, with the dais to the right above the brackenLooking over the headquarters building to the granary backed by the craggy slopes of Border End
Tucked away in the upper reaches of Aira Beck beneath Birkett Fell and the wild open common at the northern end of the Helvellyn range, lies this old farming community. Now one farmstead, where once there were seven. Recently sold and currently lying dormant awaiting reviving under regenerative farming stewardship, it provides a window on a former age. When I first wandered through the steading, some thirty years ago, I ventured all the way up the beck’s course to Stybarrow Dodd and Great Dodd. I watched with admiration Mayson Weir and his neighbours working as a collective, as had always been the way. They gathered the widely dispersed Herdwick flock with dogs, walking and calling loudly (this was before quad bikes). It is a corner of heaven that needs to remain sacrosant, sheltering sublimely beneath Dowthwaite Crag.
Wednesday 22nd September I attended the formal opening of the Silecroft to Whitehaven stretch of the England Coast Path project at St Bees. It is Natural England’s proud boast that when completed the entire England Coast Path will be the longest long distance path in the world. Currently 70 miles of the Cumbria path is open between Morecambe Bay and the Solway Firth. It is far more than just a narrow path as a coastal margin has been identified as part of the access corridor throughout. This will make a visit to the coast anywhere rewarding and a genuine opportunity to sense the magic of nature at the green and salty blue interface.
Cutting the ribbon is Mohammed Dhalech from Carlisle, chair of Mosaic Outdoors – the coast path opens the coast to all in our society
Monday 20th September my wife and I took an afternoon window of opportunity to visit Burgh-by-Sands and Drumburgh on the now quite lost course of Hadrian’s Wall. Stones of which can be found in St Michael’s, the parish church of Burgh, set upon the Roman Fort of Aballava (place of the apple trees).
St Michael’s church
Drumburgh Castle is a hybrid bastle-cum-towerhouse from where the broad expanse of the Solway Firth may have been surveyed. There is an altar beside the grand stone steps and the near castellated top is the viewing platform (I have in the past climbed the metal internal ladder to stand on that airy perch). Opposite Lowther House, was formerly a pub betrayed in the quaint lingering text. From the village lane one can look south to the Caldbeck Fells. While I spotted a new haaf net set casually against the saltmarsh bounding hedge at the edge of the tidal Solway shore.
Drumburgh CastleYours truly lending scale to the Haaf net.
Sunday 19th September promised glorious sunshine in Galloway a golden opportunity not to be missed for a road trip that turned on Newton Stewart. En route, short of Creetown, my wife and I called in at the two Neolithic chambered cairns called Cairn Holy I and II. The setting is gorgeous, but more impressive are the details of the six thousand year old monuments. The stone’s are not haphazard they are meticulously and purposefully positioned to cast shadows in a very precise way when lit by the sun at the key solstices and the dawn’s and setting sun’s rays play into the inner tomb and on the faces of the stones. Tomorrow Tuesday 21st is Equinox midway between mid-summer and mid-winter, this is perhaps the most significant moment of all. Find one cup & ring mark on the monument, in an area simply brimming with Neolithic monuments all connecting the sea, the land and the heavens. The eastern facade of standing stones, akin West Kennet Long Barrow, aligned to the far headland of the Antrim coast when viewed from the north and one prostrate stone pinpoints where the sun’s shadow moves at the mid-solstice moment (this coming Tuesday at noon). The place has so special. We met two joyous and colourful Zimbabwean ladies and an American guy whose addiction to the setting and the place is infectious. He told us that a farmer ploughing the nearby fields was constantly picking up fractured funeral remains in caskets suggesting the area was littered with burials and a considerable Neolithic community was nucleated in this vicinity.
These ladies had been to the site with their children some years ago and were renewing their happy memories again today.The shadows are all important, connecting the observer to the immediate, landscape and stellar setting.Rock art limited to this one cur & ring feature.Yours truly standing beside the drystane wall bounding the Cairn Holy monument… what stories these fractured stones could tell.
Mark Richards: Outdoor Writer 