GO YOUR OWN WAY
Jon Sparks ambles from Grasmere to Ambleside on a pilgrimage to a TGO Readers’ Award favourite: the Golden Rule
The traffic is stationary, and we’ve seen multiple emergency vehicles racing past, so our snap decision is to jump off the bus and walk over White Moss Common to the planned start in Grasmere. White Moss Common is lovely and peaceful, Grasmere is heaving with people. But, hey, it’s a sunny day, everyone’s having a good time... and a cinnamon bun and a coffee are just the thing to set us up nicely for the ‘real’ walk.
Energised, we resume, gaining height on a shady old walled track, then weaving through a belt of junipers. Emerging onto broad, lumpy moorland, we swing around beneath the abrupt nose of Lang How; not craggy enough to attract climbers but quite enough to deter walkers. Even the easy side is steep; but it means the summit – our high point for the day – sits up nicely above the broad ridge.
At a modest 414 metres, Lang How perfectly demonstrates that intermediate heights can deliver some of the finest views. Above all it’s a grand perch for admiring the Langdale fells, framing the perfect
glacial trough of Oxendale.
Lang How isn’t a Wainwright summit; Silver How is. Reached across moorland strewn with exquisite reedy pools, it does have a nice view over the twin mini lakes of Grasmere and Rydal. Still, it doesn’t match the Lang How wow factor, and we don’t linger so long.
The next bit, over Spedding Crag and Dow Bank, is mostly good striding-out terrain; but there are several awkward little rocky descents. We meet the road just below High Close Youth Hostel and admire some awesome trees in the arboretum.
Then, a decision; we opt to skip the steep climb onto Loughrigg Fell to leave more time to deviate over Todd Crag. The ‘by-pass’ takes us past Loughrigg Tarn, always photogenic; but it’s Todd Crag’s set-piece view over the northern basin of Windermere that really gives Lang How a run for its money.
And now the Golden Rule is calling, so we clatter down steeply to Miller Bridge, through the outskirts of Ambleside, and up the last sharp little rise to the flowerbedecked pub.
The Golden Rule does things its own way. A pub that doesn’t serve food, in this day and age? No piped music? It’s like the best bits of an old-fashioned alehouse without the sexism, spit and sawdust. I first came here decades ago, and it hasn’t changed much – though there’s a Vermeer print where there used to be a Bill Birkett rock-climbing photo. Is that progress? A question to discuss as I savour a perfectly kept pint of Citra.
There are few better places to be than a great pub after a great walk.
The philosophers may have another
‘Golden Rule’ in mind, but that’s mine.