Date walked:18th September 2014

Distance walked: 14.5 miles

Map used: OS Explorer 19 – Howgill Fells and the Upper Eden Valley

Guide book: A Dales High Way Companion by Tony and Chris Grogan

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Although I slept well, I was feeling a bit fragile after last nights indulgences (I know, don’t go on about it) so I kept to poached eggs on toast and coffee for breakfast.

To get back to the Dales High Way I needed to make my way to Newbiggin-on-Lune (what a great place-name). It was an easy enough mile-and-a-half along a lane and then through a field belonging to some grazing horses.

Who were most uninterested in me

A right turn just after a sweet barn….

Maybe “handsome” might be better

…. led me to the side of Dry Beck, but only for a few hundred yards, as somehow I went wrong on the edge of the village and ended up climbing over a locked gate to get to the lane.

Dry Beck was not so dry after all

The A685 bypasses the (quiet) village and having crossed it I followed the lane that heads for Ravenstonedale Moor (why isn’t it Newbiggin Moor?).

I must return to those Howgill Fells for a better explore sometime

On the map just one path is shown heading off towards Sunbiggin Tarn. On the ground there were several tracks but as they say, all roads lead to Rome.They don’t.

I managed to lose all paths and ended up in quite boggy ground somewhere near the tarn, but I never saw it. I got my bearings again at a finger-post for the Dales High Way by the little lane near the tarn.

Always reassuring to see these once in a while

That directed me north, crossing The Coast to Coast Path, (yep, done that, but before I started blogging so you missed out there). Climbing steadily, ahead were the exposed limestone outcrops of Great Kinmond.

Another fine limestone pavement

As I am writing this for once I feel very stupid that I did not refer more often to Tony and Chris’s guide to the path as I managed to get well off the route again and their description of where I should have gone seems so clear. I found myself faced with closed gates and “Do not Enter” signs  of a farm and had to deviate sharp left, crossing several fields and climbing several walls before I came across a group of women who seemed to  know where they were going. It wasn’t where I was going but they did get me to Sayle Lane, which goes to Great Asby, and I was supposed to go there! Please excuse the lack of pics; I tend to stop taking them when I am lost!

Great Asby was a sleepy little place with a rather grand  and very pink Victorian  St Peter’s Church.

The geology around here become Red Sandstone

It also boasts  St Helen’s Well (the map appears to record this as St Thomas’s well)……

Not a well, but a spring and unmentioned, too, by wikipedia

…. some alms houses….

Also sponsored by the good St Helen

…..and a pub (The Three Greyhounds).

Nice inside, too

I fancied a break. The landlady was alone in the bar with her laptop. I  swelled the lunchtime sessions’ takings to the tune of a packet of crisps and a coke.

The lane out of Great Asby passes through a little wood that claimed to house red squirrels. And I saw one! But it was too quick for me to grab a pic, sorry (not doing too well on the picture front).

Under instruction of the Grogans, I turned left at the next crossroads on a lane to Drybeck but turned off  to the right to follow Scale Beck to Rutter Mill.

Very pretty but not Picturesque?

As you can see there were a lot of ducks milling around (teh-heh). Nothing unusual about that.

Do Mallards have colonies?

But what was unusual was that for the next couple of miles alongside Hoff Beck I kept coming across gangs of ducks. They were massing on the banks,…..

Why there, why then?

……they were patrolling the river….

…..and they were making a heck of a racket. Their commotion of cackling came and went like waves and you know that I am not fond of fanciful similes or of anthropomorphosising  animals but it sounded exactly like they were laughing at me.

And it seemed to me that they were unhappy at my presence

Apart from the fact that I had never come across such a phenomenon before, it was all ever so slightly intimidating.

Can you see any hostility in their eyes?

At Hoff, the Grogans guide offered a more rural two-and-a-half-mile  walk to Appleby but for some reason which now escapes me I chose the slightly more direct route of following the busy B4260 into town. Silly really.

Brigantes Walking Holidays were delivering my bags to a Bed and Breakfast for me to collect but it occurred to me that I could ask the owner if he would meet me at the station with the bags, allowing me an unencumbered visit to the town. He  was happy to oblige (I offered the taxi fare, of course).

Appleby-in-Westmorland is a very agreeable town. At the top of its tree – lined main street called Boroughgate is a white-painted column carrying a clock and weather-vane. This stands opposite the entrance to Appleby Castle,which had belonged to Lady Anne Clifford.

It’s called High Cross

I walked down Boroughgate and stuck my nose in the courtyard of St Anne’s Hospital which is a little way down the hill.

Very jolly with its red-painted doors and pink drainpipes to match the stone

At the bottom of the town is matching column.

This one’s called, rather imaginatively, Low Cross.

I popped into the church, and popped out again.

Not very exciting inside

…….but what I was really looking for was a cafe and a cup of tea. There were several possibilities but I chose a place just over the bridge crossing the River Eden. This shop-cum-cafe had some seating outside and the really quite funny/irritating guy there promised that he would deliver my cream tea (quite passable) in time for me to catch my train.

And from there everything worked according to plan. My Bed and Breakfast chap met me at 3.30 as arranged. I had time to change out of my walking clothes and into my still clean clothes in the Gents. The train came on time and the journey back to Skipton was as scenic as I expected, passing by or through several places I had visited over the last week. The kind staff at Skipton station allowed me to leave my bags with them whilst I went to get my car. I was home by 9.30. Exhausted, as usual. You don’t go on walking holidays to put your feet up, after all.