Walk 42: Penrith to Howtown

Martindale, viewed from Steel Knotts. The Nab and, behind it, Rest Dodd are the prominent fells in the centre of the valley.

Date completed: 18th August 2011.

Weather conditions: A chill, autumnal start turned into a very pleasant mid-morning. It clouded over after 1pm, but I had mostly finished walking by then.

Fell ponies on Moor Divock. Loadpot Hill rises gently behind.

Fells climbed: Arthur’s Pike (1747 feet above sea level, no. 129), Bonscale Pike (1718’, no. 130), Loadpot Hill (2201’, no. 131), Wether Hill (2210’, no. 132), Steel Knotts (1414’, no. 133).

Distance: 13.8 miles approximately.

Total ascent: 2700 feet approx.

Start and end points: Started at Penrith rail station. Finished at the Howtown pier on Ullswater.

There are various public transport options to and from these points. The pier is served by boats to Glenridding and (rather nearer) Pooley Bridge; the latter by #108 buses to and from Penrith. These buses also pass through Sockbridge, which I walked through about an hour after leaving Penrith station, so that gives you an option for shortening the walk.

Looking along the middle reach of Ullswater from Bonscale Pike. Raise is the fell in the background.

Pub at end: I had enough time in Howtown to sink a very rapid pint and appreciate just how genuinely quaint the Howtown Hotel is. I had enough time in Pooley Bridge to sink another, more leisurely but less tasty, pint and appreciate just how naff “olde-worlde” the Pooley Bridge Hotel is.

Route card: Click here to download a route card which includes an elevation profile (how hilly the walk is), waypoints with grid references, and a summary map. Route card for Walk 42: Penrith to Howtown

Route: This is a relatively long walk, but with the exception of the final section around Steel Knotts, the gradients are always easy, the paths pretty easy to follow, and the ground neither too rocky nor too boggy. Fast progress can be made (see my timetable below). However, Wainwright warns against doing it in mist and I concur – the ease of routefinding is largely because objectives are always clearly in view; there are in fact a profusion of paths and few landmarks close to hand so this would be a difficult route to follow in bad weather. And two more observations: having done it, I think it might be better left for a lovely, crisp winter’s morning (it just feels like that kind of walk); and it would also be quite a good walk in the reverse direction.

Double tunnel under the main West Coast railway line, just outside Penrith.

Turn right out of Penrith station and follow the road down to the roundabout over the M6 motorway (one of the noisier places you’ll ever be). Head round to the A66 to Keswick and a few yards down that busy road (there are pavements), escape left, by the path signposted to Sockbridge: note that you do not actually have to go through the gates of Skirsgill to reach this path.

This takes you under the railway (see the picture). This path is well signposted, but I did nearly go wrong after crossing the footbridge: don’t follow the path by the riverbank, which takes you out of the way, to Yanwath, instead bear right across the field to Sockbridge (the sort of village that you imagine probably didn’t return a Labour councillor).

On the main road, turn right, then after a few hundred yards, left, signposted ‘Celleron/Askham’, and stay on this lane until it ends, at which point carry straight on across the road to the path signposted ‘Winder Hall’. At this farm, bear right up the lane rather than entering the farm yard, and at that point you start to walk on the moors. Beyond this point, rather than trying to describe an exact route, it is easier to advise you to keep an eye on the map and on the objective ahead – there is a profusion of paths. I did not find routefinding difficult except at one point where I feared I was about to miss Arthur’s Pike summit by being too low down.

Scene at Winder Hall farm.

Don’t take a straight line route from Arthur’s Pike to Bonscale Pike – Swarthbeck Gill cannot be crossed. Bear more to the left to cross the gill higher up.

From Bonscale Pike to Loadpot Hill just head in what looks like the right general direction and you will get there – the slopes are all easy and there do not seem to be any major bogs to stumble into.  There is no need to loop round to the south of Loadpot Hill in order to reach the summit, as Wainwright advises – a fair path now ascends the north ‘slope’ of the dome. This path – the Roman High Street – then continues on quite obviously across Wether Hill, which is reached before you are really looking for it, and which is the summit of the day, though it doesn’t feel like it.

The path down to Steel Knotts bears right off the High Street at the point at which it meets a wall, the second depression after the cairn on Wether Hill. This path is quite clear, and stick to it until it reaches the ruined cottage, at which point make sure you bear left, back across the stream – you don’t want to be taken down Fusedale, at least not if you want to add Steel Knotts to the day’s summits.

Lone walker on the north slope of Loadpot Hill. Little Mell Fell is in the centre of the picture; Great Mell Fell in shadow behind it; and Carrock Fell in the far distance.

This final section, up and over the lowest but most awkward summit of the day, is the only passage which really feels like walking in the Lakes: and is not necessarily welcome, at least not to those of us with fragile knees. But it is a short traverse, and the descent to Howtown is never quite as bad or steep as it looks as if it might get. Have a pint in the Howtown Hotel (the Public Bar is round the back), and then it’s just a couple of minutes from there to the pier, for boats to Pooley Bridge or Glenridding.

The knee bone’s connected to the thigh bone (and various other tendons and nerves) commentary: I’m still feeling the hike up Pandokrator. The blisters healed pretty quickly (after both popped simultaneously while running to catch a boat in Corfu Town not long afterwards), but its main legacy has been something like a trapped nerve in my left leg. It’s weird though. I have done my 5-mile round-trip walk to the office twice this week so far without problems, but cough without lifting my leg off the ground and I’m in some pain. Should I risk a Lakes hike on such unreliable limbs?

Rural scene just outside Sockbridge.

For some reason I settled firmly on this walk weeks ago as the one I was going to do this week, and worked last Sunday on our return from Corfu to leave space for it. However, I then changed its format literally as I arrived in Penrith station at ten past eight this morning. It was a chilly but beautiful morning, with big skies daubed with dashes of light grey and white clouds. I just didn’t feel like hanging around Penrith station’s McDonalds for an hour drinking tea, when I could be walking. Seeing as I foresaw the need to walk most of the way back to Penrith anyway had I run with my original plan – the walk as described above but in reverse, basically – I decided just to get on with it. The departure from Penrith at 8.10am thus became my earliest start yet on any of these walks; even surpassing what I’ve managed while actually staying in the Lakes.

Good move too. The morning stayed a beautiful one and it made a change to be walking through gently-graded agricultural landscapes, where the major hazards were cowpats, at least as far as Celleron where the moorland began to kick in. Even that was more Pennine than Lakeland, but it didn’t matter: the views over Ullswater to Hevellyn provided that fix (as did Steel Knotts at the end of the day – of which more below).

View towards Helvellyn, across Ullswater, from Arthur’s Pike

Actually, so easy were the gradients for most of the way round, and with an added bonus of paths which could actually be followed (cf. walk 40) and terrain that was neither rocky nor particularly boggy (there were odd exceptions), I set quite an impressive pace today. Here’s my timetable:
08.10 leave Penrith station
10.55 Arthur’s Pike summit (7.3 miles in)
11.15 Bonscale Pike
11.50 Loadpot Hill
12.10 Wether Hill
1.00 Steel Knotts
1.29 order pint in bar of Howtown Hotel
1.30 return empty pint glass to bar of Howtown Hotel
1.35 Howtown Pier.

On the ‘Lady of the Lake’ steamboat, coming into Pooley Bridge.

This enabled me then to plug into the public transport network via the ‘Lady of the Lake’ steamboat – first launched 1877, which makes it an impressive 134 years old this year – the first time I’ve been waterborne on this project (not the last though – I’ve one more walk to do from Howtown yet). So, 1.40 leave Howtown, then 2.36 bus out of Pooley Bridge and trains from Penrith. I’ll be home – well, in a pub in Hebden Bridge – by 6pm. Clare and Joe are sat beside me as well, having been to Blackpool today – we ended up on the same train back. No offence guys, but swapping our days out was never really an option.

My knees are bloody feeling it though – the descent to, and then from, Steel Knotts were real killers at the end of an already-long and rapid walk. I attribute this only to having drunk too much Corfiot wine last week and only having been to the gym once in the last month. The trapped nerve only bothered me a couple of times but it’s time to work on the general fitness. I’m getting on a bit you know.

Another view north from Steel Knotts – The Knott, Rest Dodd and the Nab, with the valley of Bannerdale below.

Hey, I got through all of that without mentioning anything to do with the government. It’s probably for the best. I did lose my Wainwright volume 2 on the train home, however. Although I’m surprised all 7 volumes, which do always come with me on the walks, have made it this far unscathed, it’s still a bummer (minor, anyway: not enough to spoil the day). I was distracted by being sat between The World’s Most Boring Man and the World’s Most Complainy Man (you thought I was in with a shout of those titles? You should have heard these two) and it just never made it off the train at Preston.

Next hike will be my second two-day adventure: I’m already booked into the Wasdale Head Inn again on the 2nd September so across 2-3 Sept I hope to pick up six more fells. Come back then for the details…. unless you’ve had enough hearing about my knees. However if anything’s going to stop me doing this it’ll be an injury of some kind or sheer decreptitude on my part, so it does matter.