We walked through a gate, turned right and followed a faint path upwards. At first this was easy going and then the steep side of Ashstead Fell made its presence felt. Now I must admit to feeling slightly worried here about how I was going to fare on this walk with such illustrious fell walkers. The last big walk I had done was the week before Easter and I was feeling really unfit, I was counting on the fact that everyone else had done along walk up Cross Fell the day before and that Andrew had walked up Skiddaw 10 times in a week not so long ago! Perhaps their legs might be not as fresh as mine, oh how I hoped!
Luckily for me the steep gradient lasted just long enough for me to retain some form of dignity, before a nice little flat area appeared for us to rest slightly, to say that my calf muscles were burning up was an understatement! This respite allowed for some great views backwards over the A6 to some of AW’s outlying fells, luckily for me Andrew and Roger spent a good few minutes discussing which was which while I quietly caught my breath. Another steepish but not too long ascent and then the ground levelled out and the conspicuous thing that I had seen from the road turned out to be a large cairn. The walking up to the cairn was really nice as the path was across peat, very soft and springy underfoot, that coupled with the trees below us and a small crag below the cairn made for a very impressive location.
From this first top we were able to survey a fair amount or the rest of the walk with at least 4 other “tops” visible, we just couldn’t work out which was which at the moment! The next one was pretty obvious so we headed towards it. Again this was very nice walking through little clumps of bilberry, heather, cotton grass and other green stuff, all the time along a great path on the springy peat. My Sam is a water lover, he loves nothing more than paddling just about anywhere and in anything, up here he found a little area that on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being liquid and 10 being solid must have been an 8 at least, best described as “glutinous”. He went in and attempted to swim while Harry and Bethan, who have much more sense just looked on in disbelief, what a mess!
This behaviour made my companions laugh, but I am used to it by now, they soon stopped laughing as Sam brushed past them and transferred some of the muck onto their legs, I was glad I was the only one not wearing shorts today! He then made matters worse and more embarrassing for me as he kept trying to “shake” off some of the muck, unfortunately this tended to splatter all over everyone, sorry!
We soon passed over Ashstead Fells second top and headed towards the third which had a great view up or down Borrowdale, a discussion that Andrew and Ann had, you know the one, which way is up and which way is down. A brief stop and then we headed off towards Mabbin Crag, again the way forward was obvious as the path headed down and we even had a little bit of rock to clamber down before following a wide gap between forestry plantations up and onto Mabbin Crag.
As we neared the lowest point between Ashstead Fell and Mabbin Crag Sam again found something to “swim” in. This time it was something that must have lain dormant since the last ice age as myself and Andrew smelt something before we saw Sam in the pool of mud. It stank! Rotting vegetation and wildlife, it was horrible. As Sam came out and started to shake himself down everyone scattered to all points of the compass, and I don’t blame them! Andrew was by now finding this extremely funny, telling me that my car would stink on the way home, I was just hoping that our return route to the car would be along Borrowdale and next to river where Sam could try and clean off the mess that by now covered ¾ of him.
We reached the top of Mabbin Crag without any further incident, another nice summit. I was loving this ridge so far, I liked the trees, they make a nice change of scenery, the paths were very easy underfoot and the little bilberry and heather were easy on the eye. At the summit cairn Harry and Bethan sat down near the cairn waiting patiently for their photos to be taken. Ann commented on them being such posers, I thought about this as I watched Sam rolling about in the grass trying his best to wipe all the mud and crud off himself, totally oblivious to the peaceful scene behind him of two clean Golden Retrievers waiting……………………
Leaving Mabbin Crag behind we had a great view along the rest of the ridge, it was a great view but it did seem a long way to Grayrigg Common. One subtle difference became apparent to us though, from the col between Mabbin Crag and Castle Fell the land changed to more normal sheep grazing sort of upland, not my favourite sort of walking. At least the descent off Mabbin Crag held one last bit of interest to us though, hidden away from sight from the valley floor was an old ruined something that begged closer inspection.
It turned out to be an old hut with the roof still intact, but looking rather derelict. No one wanted to enter so Harry went exploring while everyone looked on, he came back alive and had nothing much to say about the interior so we headed away.
As I have said the terrain that we now walked on was sheep grazed upland moorland and try as I might I just cant think of anything to write about it! A long uphill trudge brought us to Castle Fell and I was getting hungry but it was decided that we would press on, damn!
A very steep drop down from Castle Fell brought us back onto the path that we had detoured from to reach Castle Fell and then a longer uphill trudge to Whinfell Beacon where we had lunch, yippee!
We sat and chatted about various stuff while attempting to shield food from Sam, luckily I had a ready supply of Gravy Bones which kept the dogs around me for a fair amount of time letting everyone else enjoy a peaceful lunch, did I say luckily? Harry and Bethan behaved but Sam was definitely on the scrounge as usual. Normally when I take sandwiches on a walk I invariably share half and half with Sam but today I was starving so I had them all to myself, sorry Sam!
Another longer descent towards the communication towers beckoned after lunch. This ridge walk was turning out to be full of ups and downs, much more than the map or AW’s book suggested. We soon reached the communication towers, even though they had seemed like a long way away, strange. We even had the dubious pleasure of a paved road between the two towers to walk on, hard work after all that nice soft grass!
As we reached the second tower I think we were all feeling a bit tired and some discussions on whether to carry on to the final summit of the ridge or head back down into the valley ensued. As I had not done the walk that the others had done yesterday, even though I was pretty knackered myself, I thought I would leave that conversation to the others! I had a wander over to the wall that separated where we were and where we possibly wanted to be to see what lay ahead. The dogs followed me, overtook me and found a way over the wall before I could see that there was some stepping stones let into the side of the wall that made for an easy way over, as long as you had long legs that is!
While Sam and friends investigated another suspicious looking pool of something or other I waited on the other side of the wall for the others to make a decision, looking at my map I thought that if we were to head down we wanted to be on this side of the wall anyway, ish! Soon the others joined me and headed up towards Grayrigg Common, ok then!
When we reached the top Roger had already managed to get Harry onto the trig point for a photo, I tried to bribe Sam up but he just looked at me, meanwhile Bethan had seen what I had tried to bribe Sam with and in a move that startled me she jumped straight up took the Gravy Bone I was holding there out of my hand and promptly sat down on top of the trig point, I was impressed once the shock had worn off! Roger then had a go at bribing Sam but just ended up with a pack (is that right, or should it be flock, herd or gaggle) of Golden Retrievers trying to eat out of his hand!
So that was pretty much it for the ridge walk, all that was left was to descend back down into Borrowdale and walk back to the cars, no problem until I thought that we were only half way along the walk, ouch! We headed back the way we had come until we started to head further down into the depression that led into the valley. This was quite funny for me as by now I had given up all pretence of navigation and was quite happy following Andrew. If it had been up to me I would have just headed straight down as Borrowdale was in sight below but Andrew and Roger had noticed a bridleway on the map that led into the valley from the communication towers. Soon the party had split into 4 separate groups as Roger headed for the wall, Andrew and Ann headed slightly downhill towards a point where the bridleway neared the wall and myself and Ann headed towards a sheep trod that looked easy to walk upon, each to their own!
We all met up again after a while at the wall and again the dogs showed the way over for us. Now it was a case of following the wall until we reached the bridleway. The OS maps show a wooded area here and unlike most wooded areas of the lake district that are recently planted by the forestry commission this one was an old wooded “natural” one, it made a nice change to see spaces between trees, but then again AW does mention “The plantation on Whinfell Beacon” in the Howgills book, he suggests that the woods are a man made plantation of Larches, and the best reason he can come up with as to why they were planted here relates to the use of the nearby summit as a beacon in times gone by ie Whinfell Beacon. Today there is a large communication tower for radio and micro waves, in yesteryear beacons relied on fires to signal things and needed a ready supply of fuel for the signal fires, hence the Larches and a supply of firewood, very clever these olden people you know! And there was me thinking “Those trees are nice” while AW takes the time to sit and ponder upon the reason trees are there in the first place, and comes up with a very valid reason as to why, did someone have too much time on his hands?
We soon reached the bridleway, followed it down a short distance and met the main road/track/bridleway along Borrowdale. From above Borrowdale looked like a nice quiet valley, we now had chance to get a first hand idea of this as we walked back along it. At least Sam had chance to clean himself up in the river as we passed it.
This was a long walk back to the car. Easy and flat along a nice track, but very, very long! On this long walk we passed by two places on interest. The first was Low Borrowdale Farm which is apparently for sale, a working farm. The second was High Borrowdale Farm, now a ruin but with the look of some sort of maintenance having been carried out on it.
The last section of the walk was a case of heads down and get on with it sort of thing until we reached sight of Hucks Bridge once more. Back at the car Sam did his best to embarrass me once more as he did his usual lying down thing. This involves him lying flat out on the ground and not wanting to get back into the car, he even manages to get his paws wrapped around the lead so that I cannot even drag him towards the car! The others thought this highly amusing and I played along for a while until enough as enough and some brute force and ignorance was called for. The result was Sam ended up in the boot and I was hoping that the others forgot the old adage about dogs and their owners! We said our goodbyes and Ann asked me how long it would take to get back home. I replied with an optimistic hour and a half. It turned out to be two and half as the M6 was full of people who had been somewhere else than the Whinfell Ridge! The Lakes must have been busy but in all we had seen one couple ascend Ashstead Fell before us, never to be seen again, one couple walking along Borrowdale and no one else all day apart from one car driving up towards high Borrowdale Farm for a viewing of the for sale property.
All in all I had really enjoyed the walk, even the “boring” bits after Mabbin Crag. Ashstead Fell from the A6 was a delight. It was a nice change to walk in a totally new area to me, and in such illustrious company as well.