National Parks open up a new world of beauty

As the Lake District and the Yorkshire Dales extend their boundaries, Christopher Somerville reveals what has changed for the better, while Daniel Start suggests the best places to walk, swim and picnic

It’s good news for lovers of the English countryside: next Monday the boundaries of both the Lake District National Park (LDNP) and the Yorkshire Dales National Park (YDNP) are being extended. The LDNP extension will add around 27 square miles to the National Park, in two distinct chunks. The more northerly one butts up against the M6 near Junction 38, looking east across the Lune Valley to the northern Howgill Fells. The second section is a few miles to the south-west, at the southerly foot of Lakeland.

The new YDNP extension of 160 square miles comprises an area bigger than the county of Rutland. This new land, like the Lake District extensions, comes in two parts. The larger and more northerly section of the extension runs west through Cumbria towards the Lune Valley section of the M6. The more southerly portion takes in the littlevisited valleys and fells between Sedbergh and Kirkby Lonsdale. Driving north up the M6 and following its graceful curves through the narrows of the Lake District’s Lune Valley, the majestic folds of the Howgill Fells grab your attention as they rise on the east. But it’s the more modest fells to the west that form the larger of the two new LDNP extensions, the strikingly beautiful fringe region of Birkbeck Fells Common, Bretherdale Common and Whinfell Common. These three rough pieces of fell country are separated by the neighbouring river valleys of Bretherdale and Borrowdale – the latter a more modest namesake of the famous hikers’ valley in the northern Lakes. Bretherdale Beck and Borrow Beck come sparkling down their respective dales between wooded hill slopes with a velvety nap, a perfect place for family picnics. Bridleway tracks shadow the rivers, and footpaths run up and over the high commons which are open to all comers as Access Land. From the heights you catch a glimpse or two of the M6, but from up here it’s no more than a silently gliding snake.

The smaller of the extensions lies south-west, where the familiar mountain-like shapes of the Lake District fells diminish to a scatter of unfrequented limestone uplands running north and south. Here are the rough screes and crags of Scout Scar

Crossing Ulpha Bridge in the Duddon Valley, above