BLACK COMBE, the lonely seaward bastion of the Lakeland
fells, west of the estuary of the Duddon, first intruded on my
consciousness one evening 30 years ago when I was sitting,
malt whisky in hand, by old Harry Griffin’s hearth in Cunswick
End outside Kendal. Harry had been going through his
entertainment routine. On his grand piano he’d played, with
practised passion and skill, a movement of Rachmaninov’s
Piano Concerto No. 2. He’d handed me a glass of Edradour,
proclaiming it his new favourite malt. He’d seated us
in armchairs either side of his fire
with the bottle to hand and began
to reminisce.
Harry told me he’d been born in
Barrow-in-Furness – then a busy
shipbuilding town – at the
south-west corner of the Lake
District. His father ran a
decorating firm. Harry was
educated at the local grammar
school. By the age of 17 he was a
cub reporter on the Barrow
Guardian. Inevitably, he soon
gravitated to the hills – a progress he describes in his last book,
The Coniston Tigers, which appeared in 2000, four years before
his death.
Black Combe, dominating the view from his home town,
looming down the end of each terraced street, was the lure and
magnet that led him on into a career in which he became the
finest observer and celebrant of the Lakeland fells in all their
moods. Understandably! From the summit of Black Combe you
look deep into Lakeland’s valleys, across their ridges and crags,
their allure a tangible, irresistible presence. I wish I could tell
you that Harry and I climbed Black Combe together the day
after that whisky session by his fire, but it wouldn’t be true.
The next day was so dismal, the rain so unrelenting, the
best we could manage was a walk along Cunswick Scar and
down to the pub in Underbarrow for lunch. But Black Combe
had lodged in my mind. I went back on a sparkling February
day with dark clouds massing to the north-east, wound my
way through the South Lakes, detoured down to Millom to
pay my respects to the muse-landscapes of Cumbria’s finest
20th-Century poet, Norman Nicholson, and parked up
around mid-day in the hamlet of Whicham.
The route to the summit from here has the virtue of
simplicity, though it’s wise not to underestimate it. Black
Combe may only be 600m (1,970ft) high, but Whicham is
at sea-level more or less. The southern spur followed by the
route from Whicham, throughout its length to the O.S. pillar
in a cairn-shelter on the summit plateau, is a good, sharp
cardiovascular workout. When you’re at the top, you feel
well rewarded for your exertions. I don’t know of a better
viewpoint in the Lakeland fells.
Those few miles of distance, of apartness, give such clearperspectives on to the larger, grander neighbours. Coniston
Old Man hulks and lurks behind the endearingly named
hummock of Caw, with Dow Crag – Harry Griffin’s favourite
climbing ground, and one of mine too – a shadowy glimpse to
the west of the Old Man’s bulk. They are not shapely, these
Cumbrian fells, but they have such presence, such texture of
human story. To the north, beyond the sprawl of Ulpha Fell,
the Scafells loom massively (from Black Combe, weather
permitting, you can see all four of Cumbria’s 3,000ft summits).
Follow Eskdale down westwards
from their summits and another
misshapen mass adorns the coastal
plain beyond the estuary of the
Esk at Ravenglass. You see the
sinister industrial minarets of
Sellafield, and maybe breathe a
momentary sigh of relief that you’re
upwind of their polluting threat.
Fifty miles away, north-west across
the Solway, the esoteric gem of
Criffel in the Rough Bounds of
Galloway dominates the skyline
(I have a particular fondness for this hill for two random
reasons: it cropped up on my O-level geography paper back
in 1962, and it was a favourite of Derek Ratcliffe’s – one of our
very finest nature writers).
As you scan round, against a westering sun you’ll see the
Mountains of Mourne in Ulster etched across the horizon.
Turn your face to the south and the Pennines are smudged
across the extremity of sight. Bowland merges into them and
the needle of Blackpool Tower spikes up from the Fylde Coast.
The Isle of Man floats 40 miles offshore. Far away in a blue
southerly distance are more hills – those of Eryri, and through
my glass on that bright February morning I could scan round
and identify familiar friends of my home ground. There was
Yr Wyddfa, more than 80 miles away, showing her lumpen side
from this perspective as though in sympathy with and not
wishing to outshine her dowdy northern cousins.
On that long-gone day I’d dawdled too long on the slabby
rocks strewn around the summit. The wind was rising, and
those ominous dark clouds were rolling down from the higher
fells on its chill north-easterly blast. Already the first white flakes
were whirling through the air. Black Combe’s a black-and-white
sort of hill. It has a close neighbour, White Combe, and linguistic
experts among you will know that neither name denotes a hill.
Wary of the slatey Ordovician crags beneath, I navigated
north-east into an encroaching, bitter white-out, until with relief
I came across the path that traverses in from Stoupdale Crags,
plunges down the flank of the Horse Back and in no time at all
delivers you into the meadows of the Whicham Valley.Maps: Ordnance Survey 1:25,000 Explorer sheet OL6, the English Lakes:
South-western Area“The completest range of
unobstructed prospect
may be seen that British
ground commands.”
William Wordsworth
MOUNTAIN PORTRAITAn inspiration to legendary Lakeland writer A. Harry Griffin, this
Lake District outlier is a superb vantage point, says Jim Perrin
BLACK COMBE
34 The Great OutdoorsAugust 2019