I’M GOING TO AWARD A GONG, and the tension is mounting as the
envelope is finally opened. Amidst much anticipation, the winner of this year’s
Best Motorway Junction for Hillwalkers is on the M6 – it’s junction 38! There
are cheers from the good folk in Tebay, but disappointed murmurs from the
runners-up at junction 2 on the M50, where hidden hills at the south end of
the Malverns are only a short distance from the slip roads.
Tebay certainly ticks all the right boxes, being hemmed in by the Howgill
Fells, and an obvious gateway to the extended Yorkshire Dales National Park.
It’s literally a minute from the spiralling roundabout to the foot of steeply
rising hills and, to cap it all, the petrol-station-cum-restaurant, with its top-
notch locally sourced food, is well worth a visit.
Look out from Tebay – in any direction – and you will always be tempted to
lace up your boots. The limestone pavements of Orton Scar lie north across the
Lune Valley; west, beyond the motorway, is the Borrowdale not many people
know about; and immediately south – tumbling into Tebay – are the Howgills.
Wainwright famously described these empty rolling hills as a huddle of squatting
elephants and, in a nod to the old master, there is now an outdoor shop in nearby
Sedbergh called Sleepy Elephant. They also reminded him of velvet curtains,
whilst William Wordsworth had simply described them as ‘the naked heights’.
AMONG THE ELEPHANTS
Dark clouds were piling up over the fells but pockets of indigo hinted at better
things to come and a band of sunshine had already flooded into the Eden
Valley. The empty hills towards Shap were soon basking in watery mid-
morning brightness and every track glistened with the remnants of yesterday’s
heavy rain. Some formed silvery lines that wriggled and snaked over the open
moors; others seemed to nervously creep around the back of time-worn barns
and isolated outbuildings
Tiny tree shelters by Tebay Gill resembled a forest of matchsticks but their
contents will mature into valuable broadleaf woodland. The swathes of pastry-
coloured grass that rippled above the valley looked as if they had just come
out of the oven, whilst the clumps of reeds seemed to be decoration on top of
the pie. Little-known Borrowdale now opened up across the gulf of the Lune
Gorge and, like the kestrel hovering over Blease Fell, I peered into the dark oak
woods, which hem a hidden rocky beck. This view would have changed forever
if proposals for a reservoir had been approved in the 1960s and then again in
the 1970s. More recently, a plan for holiday lodges has also been rejected. We
must remain vigilant.
Traffic rumbled on the M6, a thousand feet below, but only the sharp eyes
of that kestrel would have been able to spot the names on Eddie Stobart’s
trucks. The first sight of the higher tops was sufficient distraction and, in any
case, it didn’t take long before the motorway began to sound like the distant
cascade from a crashing waterfall. Trains also run through the gorge and their
intermittent clatter could have been heavy boulders reverberating in the river.
A skein of geese headed west towards Morecambe Bay, where the whale-
like silhouettes of Arnside Knott and Humphrey Head stood guard over a
network of treacherous silky-grey channels. The birds dissipated in the wind
and four arrow-shaped wedges were soon battling to reassemble themselves
into one larger formation. A solitary honk seemed to be a call to stick together
as a lonesome painted lady butterfly, bunkered up in the purple moor grass,
defiantly battled against the wind.
A large black shower hung over the south end of Windermere: boiling,
bubbling and steadfastly refusing to move as wisps of fine drizzle blew across
Archer Moss and the steep slopes below Uldale Head. Strobes of light punched
through the billowing cumulus and lit the dissected tributaries of Carlin Gill.
This is one of the few places in the Howgills where underlying rock comes to
the surface; here, large blobs of scree and slabs of murky weathered sandstone
lead the eye towards a deep ravine. The slopes were cut by sharp gullies that
resembled folds of cardboard and, just out of sight, a waterfall known as
The Spout crashed southwards to meet another torrent called Black Force.
Blakethwaite Bottom would make a perfect wild camp. The broad grassy
col forms a hub from which a number of ridges radiate in all directions but
HOWGILL FELLS
The Great Outdoors July 2019 55