The Eamont Way

Penrith, Cumbria. Tuesday 18-April-2023.

The Eamont Way is a new walking route of 5.5 miles from Penrith Railway Station to Pooley Bridge Steamer Pier. It is the work of Friends of the Ullswater Way. It is actually a collection of existing paths with new signs and gates and was only inaugurated on Friday 14th April, a few days before this walk.  

Having missed the inaugural walk we decided to give it a go ourselves and then walk back via Askham following another walk from my Lake District Walks with History book. The latter is described as "an atmospheric walk across lonely moors dotted with mysterious Bronze Age remains". 

Part 1: Outbound along the Eamont Way.

We downloaded and printed off the map. 

Download map (pdf, new window)

We then walked up to the station and found the start point. A short walk down to the A66 and then cut off down a side path.

River Eamont. Fairly full after recent rains.

This barn conversion near Sockbridge is called Wordsworth Cottage. Apparently it was formerly part of the estate once owned by Wordsworth’s grandfather who lived in nearby Sockbridge Hall.

The route goes through a mixture of fields and lovely country lanes.

We saw many daffodils but not yet up to Wordsworths "A host, of golden daffodils". We also saw many cute lambs who all ran to Mum when you approached the fence to take a photo.

Kirkbarrow Hall. This Gothic house on the main road, now a dairy farm, once belonged to Leonard Dacre, described by Queen Elizabeth as a "very cankred subtill traitor" for his role in the Rising of the North (1569).  Read more on the Friends of the Ullswater Way site.

The walk is pretty level, no huge ups and down through beautiful countryside.

The boat house at Pooley Bridge and the end of the Eamont Way.

Part 2: Return via Askham Fell.

A lovely place for a rest, looking over Ullswater.

Getting up onto Askham fell with views of Ullswater.

Galava & Brocavum were two local Roman forts. The Roman mile (mille passus, lit. "thousand paces"; abbr. m.p.) consisted of a thousand paces as measured by every other step—as in the total distance of the left foot hitting the ground 1,000 times.

The bronze age Cockpit stone circle. According to the book no-one knows for sure why it was built or why, as friend have pointed out, the grass is always greener inside the circle. 

The Cop Stone, another Bronze Age mystery. About 1.5m high and 1m thick, today a solitary stone but believed originally to be part of a cairn ring about 20m in diameter.

Heading back to Askham, the imposing Lowther Castle with the Pennines in the background.

Moving time 5:09:20. Distance 25.23km.

Lovely day for it but about 25km in all so definitely felt a bit weary afterwards. Our poor feet!

Fix The Fells - January 2022

Gowbarrow Fell, Cumbria. Saturday 29-January – 2022.

My first experience of volunteering in the Lake District. Very different from London where I used to volunteer pulling shopping trolleys, etc out of the River Wandle.

This was an experimental collaboration between Fix The Fells and Friends of the Ullswater Way in association with the National Trust. Fix the Fells do exactly what you would expect. The NT Rangers do the serious path building and the volunteers do ongoing maintenance. Today's outing was making sure the various drainage channels that cross the path are clear ensuring water flows and thus preventing unnecessary erosion.

I was surprised to learn that the Ullswater Way is a recent creation. FOUW lobbied for its formal designation by joining up existing permissive paths and after some negotiation with various farmers and relevant authorities launched it back in 2016. So when we walked it first it would have been brand-new. 

We did it for a second time starting during the first lockdown as part of our allowed exercise: "In the Footsteps of Dorothy" i.e. Dorothy Wordsworth, sister of William. It took us several outings to join up all the dots and complete the circuit. During that time we discovered FOUW and joined a couple of their very interesting lectures via Zoom over lockdown. This is their first foray into volunteering.

We were all given a shovel and a brush and then proceeded to do a gentle walk round the Gowbarrow loop. As we came to each drainage channel one or two of us would stop to clear it out under the tutelage of a Fix The Fells volunteer whilst the rest leapfrogged onto the next one.

We did this for a couple of hours and then stopped for lunch.

More of the same in the afternoon with a final leg down alongside Aira Force and back to the car park. Along the way we saw large bags of rocks and gravel that had been dropped by helicopter for some major path construction on the steep slope to / from the summit where all the walkers feet had caused a fair amount of erosion.

Some bags contained gravel, some had big rocks.

A sturdy path does, apparently, encourage walkers not to stray off onto the grass and cause more damage.

The final stretch down alongside the stream.

At the end I took a small side trip with the chair of FOUW out of the car park to Dorothy's Gate with a quote from Dorothy's poem, "I never saw daffodils so beautiful".

We all thought that it was a successful day. So much so that Mary and I are hoping to join Fix The Fells as one of their volunteers.

Update: 03-Feb-2022.

I completely forgot to mention that we saw two red squirrels after two years with nary a single sighting. They are like buses, nothing for ages then two come along all at once. One ran across the road just as we were approaching Aira Force and another was on a squirrel feeder next to the picnic area. 

Also we made the ITV regional news:

That's me in the brown fleece and cream beanie, Mary is next to me in black.

Fame at last? Well maybe not.

Walks Around Ullswater 2016 Day 04 - Askham and Lowther Park

Penrith, Cumbria, UK. Saturday 12-November-2016.

Walks around Ullswater - Walk 9 Askham and Lowther Park.

We finished off the week with a short circular walk though woods and parkland.

Over the River Lowther.

Lowther Castle.

The River Lowther again - it was a circular walk!

This old door and mossy stones put me in mind of The Secret Garden.

We finished off with a visit to Stuart Broadhurst Ceramics where the man himself was fascinating on the topic throwing teapots - his specialism. I had to buy one, they are objects of beauty.

That was the end of a brilliant week's walking.

Walks Around Ullswater 2016 Day 03 - Brothers Water, Glenridding and Lantry's Tarn

Penrith, Cumbria, UK. Thursday 10-November-2016.

This day we decided to combine two walks from our map Walks round Ullswater: Walk 2 Brothers Water and Walk 3 Glenridding and Lantry's Tarn. 

Early on we met some free range chickens enjoying a rootle in the leaves.

It was a beautiful walk with vivid greens and browns and dappled sunshine.

More great views of Ullswater.

For most of the walk the sun shone. Walks don't get much better than this.

Towards the end the rain started to drizzle but to compensate provided us with a spectacular rainbow.

The two routes were joined up a lunch-time walk between the two circular walks.

Another great day's walking.

Walks Around Ullswater 2016 Day 02 - Pooley Bridge to Glenridding

Penrith, Cumbria, UK. Tuesday 08-November-2016.

We found an excellent map from Footprint - Walks around Ullswater - which was our guide for the rest of the week.

Walk 7 Pooley Bridge to Glenridding.

Starts off low-level with some rushy lakeside.

Up high we found a lonely K9 pumpkin phone box (Note: there is no such thing as a K9. A friend thinks it is actually a K6).

More gentle lake views.

A view of the Ullswater Steamer.

I love this combination of tree roots and fallen leaves.

On our way back down to lake shore level.

Double the distance of our first walk. A one-way trip courtesy of Nigel and the two-car shuffle in which we managed the whole of the eastern shore.