Silver How & Grasmere
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NY336075 From Emma’s Dell café in the centre of Grasmere village, take Langdale Road past Tweedies Bar to a T-junction at its end. Turn right onto Red Bank Road and take this past the driveway to Wray Cottage/St Oswald’s.
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NY333071 Fork right immediately before the driveway to ‘Kelbarrow’ (opposite the Faery Garden) and through a gate onto a steep stony track. The Faery Garden may not have much to offer the average Trail reader, but it’s worth knowing that it is one of the few places in Grasmere where you can access the lake shore – if the Garden is open!
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NY331071 As the right-hand wall eases out onto open fellside, stay beside the left-hand wall rising up to a path junction. Take the left-ish fork, heading more steeply uphill in a roughly south-westwards direction and still not far from the wall-line separating enclosed fields from open fellside.
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NY327064 At a crossing of paths, where the wall line begins to bear away in a more south-easterly direction, turn right and take a pitched path heading steeply uphill. This runs under a line of crags, then emerges on the ridgeline. Head briefly west to gain the tumbledown cairn atop the summit of Silver How.
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NY324066 From the summit, retrace your steps briefly back past the path junction, then continue to head in a roughly northerly direction, now on a fainter path marked with intermittent cairns. This descends fairly steeply across bracken covered open moorland until it crosses Wray Gill.
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NY324071 It’s worth a short detour both ways along the gill here – upstream leads to a quirky little mini-gorge – it’s visible from the stream crossing and if you scramble along it, you emerge in the middle of an intriguing flat bog (a 'lost tarn'); explore roughly a couple of hundred metres downstream and you may find a pretty and very off-the-beaten-track waterfall. Now retrace your steps back to the path near the stream crossing, rise up gently to join another path and continue downstream on this heading roughly north-easterly through juniper scrub. The path meets, then veers away from a wall line a couple of times before being funnelled into a gated wall-lined path.
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NY327075 Descend this, staying by the right-hand wall to join a driveway by a farm (Low Scorecrag). Continue down the driveway until it joins the NT Allen Bank driveway. NT members (or those willing to pay the entrance fee) may wish to extend the walk with a stroll round the gardens – there’s a pleasant woodland walk where the path goes through a tunnel. Otherwise, descend to the junction on the road by Emma’s Dell café where you started.