The hill, the tarn, the pie and the Westie
Stuart Maconie reveals the hidden Lakeland mountain that calls him back time and time again…
THE TWEET FROM Paula Carroll summed up the feeling.
“Do you have to share Bowscale Fell with everyone? I want it all to myself!” It was followed by a little yellow-face emoji with a wry lop-sided grin.
When I posted my itinerary for the day of this feature, I received many rueful responses of this nature. When they’re queuing to get on to Striding Edge and there are bouncers on the windshelter on Skiddaw (“Sorry, no cotton, no trainers… I don’t make the rules mate. Try Ullock Pike.”), it’s still possible to have a Lake District fell to yourself on a Bank Holiday, or a glorious half-term afternoon, providing that the fell you choose is something a bit like Bowscale Fell. (Sorry, Paula.)
If I crane my neck a little from my Cumbrian home – and OK, if I’m standing on the roof – I can see Bowscale Fell. It stands at the end of the long north-eastern shoulder of Blencathra that runs in grassy waves over Mungrisdale Common and Bannerdale Crags. It forms a dramatic backdrop to the neat, shy village of Mungrisdale, which is home to a lovely little church, a spanking village hall and a fine pub called The Mill.
Bowscale Fell has everything I want in a Lake District fell walk in one compact half-day walk. It has an easy, raked ascent to a proper high fell top (it may be the easiest way to a 2000-footer in the whole of the Lakes), a broad, grassy promenade with panoramic views, a little windshelter for you to have your butties in, and a glittering, secret, beautiful, wonderful mountain tarn.
Like all of the fells at the ‘ Back o’ Skiddaw’, Bowscale is unfrequented but not desolate, wild but not overly bleak. It offers easy, lonely walking in one of the most unspoiled areas of the Lake District.
It is much loved locally. Nothing symbolises the synergy of hill and community so well as the existence of the Bowscale Pie, made just up the road at The Pie Mill in Threlkeld. It is, deservedly, one of their biggest sellers.
On my first ascent of Bowscale Fell, a couple of decades ago now, I got my first real taste of what the fells are like in mist. I soon realised just why writers like Wainwright are so guarded and cautious about fog and clag on the high fells. One minute we were strolling along on a warm, bright summer’s day, looking forward to coffee and a pasty at the summit, Muffin the Westie gamboling on
ahead. The next, a thick shroud of cloud descended and that old phrase about ‘not being able to see a hand in front of your face’ suddenly rang worryingly true. After about twenty minutes of disoriented and increasingly desperate circling, Muffin led us down a gradual, gentle descent into what turned out to be entirely the wrong valley.
All turned out well though; hill fog can disappear as quickly as it descends and a stiff breeze soon sent ragged wisps of it disappearing overo the hillside. It was the first of several fellwalking scrapes that the feisty little dog would get us out of and the first of several trips to Bowscale Fell that she would make. I’ll tell you more about the last one a little later.
There would be no such problems today. That was certain as I viewed the cloudless crystalline blue skies and was informed by the weather presenter that this was set to be the hottest day of the year so far. It had been very different on Boxing Day 2015, when Storm Desmond raged across northern England wreaking devastation in town and country alike. The whole of the northern bank of Bullfell Beck in Mungrisdale was swept away and, as we were to find out, is still a confusion of deep gouges and grouts today. Fortunately, here just at the foot of the Tongue (as Bowscale’s central spur is known) the River Glenderamackin is shallow enough to be forded easily, especially if you don’t mind a bit of a splash. This afternoon, as the sun blazed down over distant Blencathra, it was positively refreshing.
The route climbs steadily and uneventfully up the south flank of the tongue. It’s not difficult, but in this unexpected heat it was more draining than usual, so all the more reason to stop often for water and a mop of the brow.
Pausing also allowed us to enjoy the unfolding view to the rear, back towards the bulky whaleback of Souther Fell, across to the rocky nose of Bannerdale Crags, and beyond that, Atkinson Pike and the dark, forbidding lines of Sharp Edge.
Soon enough the ridge was crested and the gradient eased in an expanse of grass. A few paces took us to the main ridge path between Bannerdale and Bowscale and a tremendous view into Roughton Gill and the heart of these quiet hills. A local saying goes ‘Caldbeck Fells are worth all England else’ which is often (wrongly) taken to mean that they are the most beautiful or glorious in the land. They are lovely, but it’s a more hard-nosed compliment than that, referring to the richness of the mineral deposits that have been mined here since Elizabethan times. (German engineers came to advise on the project, and there are still German surnames in Keswick.)
Our route turned north, easily and airily across the summit plateau to the wind shelter. It was here that I planned to produce with a flourish the snack named for the fell, the Bowscale Pie itself (chicken, mushroom, white wine, tarragon… mmm…)
Unfortunately it was at this point that I remembered that said pie was sitting on the kitchen table at home, overlooked in some last-minute
This is the kind of secret delight that Cumbria only offers up to those prepared to get out of their cars and off the beaten track…”
rucksack rearrangements. Fortunately, photographer Stew has stashed a couple of pork pies in with his lenses, and we lunched on them in the shelter on what was turning into a scorcher of entirely un-Cumbrian proportions.
The stroll north across the top is a delight, with views across to Carrock Fell and High Pike, and accompanied by the joyous, unspooling song of larks. Below in the Mosedale valley, where today the local kids would surely be picnicking and paddling, I could just make out the tree-shrouded and slightly eerie Roundhouse. In its time it has been a private house, a religious retreat, and the headquarters of bespoke guitar makers Fylde. I have promised to treat myself to one of their creations one day. Their Cumbrian pedigree only deepens their appeal for me.
But another treat soon comes into view: Bowscale Tarn, a sheet of deepest indigo cradled in a perfect bowl a few hundred feet below. This is the kind of secret delight that Cumbria only offers up to those prepared to get out of their cars and off the beaten track for a couple of hours, and is all the more perfect for that.
You can make the descent to the tarn as hard or as easy as you like. I’ve picked my way down (and up) through the crags that loom above the tarn but it’s surely better to ease one’s way down the broad, green shoulder and peel off right when the contours and gradient appeal.
The tarn was a hugely popular tourist destination in Victorian times, and Wainwright says its subsequent decline in popularity is proof of the superior taste and judgment of our frock-coated and stovepipe-hatted forefathers. But he was always saying things like that and conveniently forgetting things like rickets and child labour. But they were certainly right above the loveliness of Bowscale Tarn, a delicious place, calm and refreshing on a day like today, sombre and wild in the depths of winter.
We had it almost to ourselves, the only other soul about being a young woman who sat on a boulder contemplating the still waters enigmatically. Perhaps she was wondering about the tarn’s two fabled inhabitants, a pair of huge fish that were said to be immortal and able to speak. The tarn was also rumoured to be bottomless. In fact, it’s about sixty feet deep, but you can understand why these stories spring up. There is something magical and mysterious about the place.
It’s always hard to tear oneself away from here, but it was time we were headed back down the pony track that brought the Victorian ladies up here in their bonnets and crinolines. The rushing torrent that I often have to splash through on a winter’s day was just a thin trickle on this baking hot afternoon. But I still eked out a drink it from my collapsible cup and poured a little over my head.
I had one last little pilgrimage to make before heading back down to Mungrisdale. Fifty feet or so up the eastern flank that rises above the tarn’s stony shoreline, there’s a little rock. I made my way up there some eight years ago to lay Muffin the Westie’s ashes there, and I always make the trip to see her whenever I’m here. If that sounds sad, it really isn’t. I like to think of her here, where we both had such good fun and scrapes together, resting down the long years in a place she – and I – loved and still love today.