Westmorland Way

WW04: Maulds Meaburn to Hardendale

Monday 31st May 2010

This will go down in history as the year of disrupted travel.

First it was the snow and ice that stopped us coming home from Nice in January.

Then it was the volcanic ash that delayed Margaret going out to Munich by six days then prevented the pair of us coming back for two more days.

Just when we thought it was safe to get back in the air, a new problem arose.

Margaret is not a happy flier but she faced down her fears in order to travel by herself to Munich to help Emma with Luca whilst Scott is away.

There she sat bravely on the plane, which had taxied to the runway, when the pilot announced that German air space was now closed, as their radar was not working. Flight cancelled, she caught the last train back to Kendal with seconds to spare and poor old Emma is having to look after Luca alone.

No bathtime fun for Margaret, alas!

Bathtime for Luca

However, as she now had a bonus day at home, it gave us the opportunity to continue on the Westmorland Way.

Maulds Meaburn Village Institute

We parked at Maulds Meaburn opposite the Village Institute. What a sad sight this is. It is a potentially smart modern building with some very fine stonework but all work seems to have stopped years ago so it stands three quarters finished. Allegedly, water is getting in and there has been a dispute between the architect and the builder as to who was responsible. Fortunately for the village, heads must have been banged together and planning permission has been sort to excavate part of the site. Let's hope this sorts it out.

Let's also hope that United Utilities quickly sorts out the mess it is currently making of this beautiful village whilst it installs a new drainage system. The main road through the village is a building site closed to traffic. A resident told us that it would be ten years before they would be finished. Obviously an optimistic lot round here!

Maulds Meaburn is closed.......

... a gated community!

We headed west across bone dry fields and through woods, stopping for lunch where we found two convenient abandoned drainpipes on which to sit.

I was reflecting on the stone circles that we would later be visiting and it made me wonder what people (or other intelligent lifeforms) a thousand years from now would make of discovering these structures in the ground.

One theory might be that their east west alignment suggested that they were clearly a religious artefact- possibly burial chambers for local civic leaders.

Or perhaps they were simple, hand-pushed rollers for crushing small stones in the field and flattening the ground?

No ordinary picnic bench!

Or maybe they were the remnants of the barrels of a supergun aimed at Appleby?

Or even, a picnic bench?

Reagill Grange

Our next objective was the supposedly haunted Reagill Grange.

We saw no ladies in white but we did meet the tenants of this fine old building (they told us the landlord is Lord Lonsdale).

They were very friendly and related the saga of the Village Institute. They were a little perplexed to discover that the Westmorland Way went past their door. Well maybe it doesn't normally but our Wway does.

We are the Wway.

I asked, and was given, permission to photograph their house. I thought it more likely to be successful than to ask if I could photograph their washing!

On the way to Castlehowe Scar we crossed the watershed and noted one immediate change in the scenery- a reception committee of cows whereas before there had only been sheep!

Behind, the Pennine hills.....

..... Ahead, the Lakeland Fells

The reception committee

As for the Castlehowe Stone Circle. Hmm. Bit of a disappointment. As Margaret said, we could have one of those in our garden!

Navigating our way around Hardendale was tricky because it fell between the cracks in the 1:25k maps that I have so we were having to make do with the crude 1:50k, which is fine for roads but not much use in this sort of situation. Sadly, apart from a rather fine cockerel, this area seems quite run down, with a lovely old house screaming to be renovated.

Castlehowe Stone Circle

The rather fine cockerel.....

..... and the lovely old house

We began our return by bodging our way across the fields to Hardendale Nab quarry which is huge and, to be fair, well hidden from normal roads.

Hardendale Nab Quarry

Then we found two more stone circles, although described on the map as Cairn and Cairn circle. The latter made a good afternoon tea resting place.

Cairn and.....

..... Cairn Circle

Having seen one very run down farm earlier, Harberwain was quite the opposite- pristinely clean and in excellent order.

Thereafter we crossed more fields, passing the spooky and long derelict Crake Trees, before reaching the road just outside Maulds Meaburn where there was a very apt warning about sheep which had been wandering wonderfully free all round the very rural village.

Approaching Maulds Meaburn

On the way back to Shap, we passed, at Trainriggs, an Alpaca farm. I have never seen so many of these unusual creatures but it turns out there are loads of Alpaca farms and this is by no means the largest in Cumbria.