Mar, Hawes making Highs at me - Photo Gallery
I’m heading to Mardale Head today, I’ve haven’t started a walk from there before so I’m not sure how it will be, especially with the damp weather and thick mist covering the fells.
From the car park I headed straight across the flat head of the valley, I should have taken the signposted path because Mardale Beck was a bit too deep to cross so I ended up following the stream up to the footbridge on the path that I should have taken. I followed the lakeshore path northwards to the promontory of The Rigg and tuned left for the ridge walk to High Street. The level of water in Haweswater seemed to be lower than usual and as I gained height I could see the remains of the walls that formed the infrastructure of the old Mardale community.
The cloud base was very low and this took the edge of what is an exhilarating ridge, the map contours promise a rugged walk with fine views, but today I couldn’t even see how close to the edge I was. This is an excellent way up to High Street, there are no navigation problems even in the thick mist, no dangerous places even on the scrambles where even the shortest legs would be able to cope.
Having arrived at the cairn on Rough Crag the path becomes less distinct for a while but there is only one way to go. The weather took a turn for the worse, the mist turned to rain in the strengthening breeze - autumn has well and truly arrived on the fells. After the final, steeper scramble up Long Stile there is no gradual easing of the gradient – all of a sudden you arrive at the flat expanse of High Street. Just as suddenly the rain stopped leaving me in thick mist on an almost featureless plateau.
The cairns on the plateau are unnecessary for navigation, just keep going west and you will arrive at the wall that divides the two halves of High Street. I had to check the map to see which way to go to the summit, turn left and within a couple of hundred yards is the triangulation column marking the summit. This particular column has recently been painted white and it looks tacky like something you might find in a Public Lavatory just the sort of graffiti magnet that you don’t want to see on the fells.
Now for some real navigating – find Mardale Ill Bell without any clues. I found one clue, a cairn alongside the wall indicating the start of a path that I began to follow but I got confused when it went east and I was expecting to go west. I retraced my steps back to the wall and followed it to the left the to the wall corner in order to get my bearings. Check the map properly this time and realise that I do in fact need to go eastwards, there is another path going in the right direction.
An easy walk over grass, again I think this would be quite exhilarating in good weather conditions, the ground seemed to fall away steeply. I reached a cairn on Mardale Ill Bell marking the way down to Nan Bield Pass and realised that I had missed the summit. I climbed upwards and found a small cairn but I really couldn’t tell if it was the summit or not. I hadn’t seen anybody for three and a half hours but when I got back down to the marker cairn, there was a party of twelve walkers, three other walkers also passed by in the five minutes that I was there, I didn’t see anybody else for another three hours.
The mist was still thick as I made way down to the substantial bield at Nan Bield Pass with its unnecessary signpost marking the ways down to Mardale and Kentmere. On the climb up Harter Fell there were fleeting glimpses of Small Water on one side and Kentmere Reservoir on the other. Ten minutes later, as I walked along the flat top of Harter Fell the mist had disappeared completely. The decoration of iron fence posts makes the summit cairn on Harter Fell one of the strangest objects in the Lake District.
I had originally intended to continue walking over to Branstree and Selside Pike but with the bad weather I had decided to finish after Harter Fell and take the path down to Haweswater from Gatescarth Pass. Having reached the pass I pondered the wisdom of completing the five miles of my original route at three o’clock in the afternoon. There wasn’t really any chance of me not continuing although I did have half a second thought when it started raining again as I was half way up Branstree.
The flat summit of Branstree bears a minimal cairn close to the junction of a fence and a wall, the short walk over to Artlecrag revealed its eight-foot high cairn and an equally impressive cairn a few feet lower. The walk over to Selside Pike was easy and fast and by the time I reached the substantial shelter cairn at its summit the weather was glorious. Apart from its cairn, the summit of Selside Pike itself has nothing to commend it but the views of the fells on the opposite side of Mardale were magnificent.
It was whilst descending Selside Pike towards the Old Corpse Road from Swindale that I met another group of walkers. Turn left at the corpse road towards Mardale and as the gradient became steeper the views of Haweswater were superb in the setting sun. The ponies carrying corpses down to Mardale would have a hard time on the steep path, undertaking was a real man’s job in those days.
Finally there was a wonderful sunny walk back along the road to Mardale Head, arriving back at the same time as the party that I had met on Mardale Ill Bell. I will go back to Mardale, there are many intriguing looking paths to be walked.
Andy Wallace 12th October 2002