August 15, 1994: Milnthorpe to Crosthwaite
Levens Hall
I had a peek through the bathroom window when I got up on Monday morning for the second day of our Furness Way walk, but all I could tell for sure was that there was no sun –and it was not raining. Mrs. Dale had offered two kinds of breakfast: Gavan had chosen the fry-up (or the “fry” as he insisted on calling it in the throes of his occasional Irish nationalism) and I the muesli and fresh fruit. The grapes were rather sour, but I had a good time making my own cereal from a number of cartons placed on the breakfast table: oats, bran, coconut, nuts, brown sugar and so forth. We didn’t have that far to go on this day and it with with some regret that I ran out of excuses for delaying our departure – which took place at 9:15.
We headed north on the busy A6, using pavements as far as the turn off to the village of Heversham – which the highway bypassed. This proved to be quite a charming place and we made slow progress along its lane – Gavan entering the store in search of a candy bar and I the churchyard in search of a photo vantage point. Soon thereafter we sat down on a wall and had a brief rest – though hardly deserved.
The lane passed through the hamlet of Leasgill before joining the A6 just south of the wall of Levens Hall. I could see some interesting topiary on the other side but when we crossed over and walked around the house to the entrance I disdained paying a steep admissions price and so we returned to the highway and crossed a bridge over the River Kent, using our first gate to enter the riverside grounds of Levens Park. This proved to be another refuge for deer and we walked softly, hoping to get a closer view, though these animals always seemed to know when it was time to slope off in another direction.
Eventually we climbed to the top of the park and crossed a fence, which then kept us company as we headed across fields to the farm buildings of Park Head. Here we were back on tarmac and we moved west on a quiet lane, crossed the A6 (here a dual carriageway), and headed uphill past the entrance to the indelicately named Heaves Hall. At a triangular junction I met a little old lady out with her dog and we had quite an extended chat on our rambling plans while Gavan made adjustments to his pack. Then we continued forward, still on tarmac, encountering a line of cottages just above the Strickland Arms, where I had planned for us to have lunch.
It was only 11:15 and we were trying to figure out whether the pub would be open. “If it is not open,” I said, “the next best thing is that it will be open at 11:30, and the next best, at 12:00. Worse than that, however, would be if the pub were closed today. Even worse would be if it were closed forever. And the worst case scenario of all would be if it were closed because bacteria in its beer had infected all the other hostelries in the Lake District.” It was open.
Gavan at the Strickland Arms, Sizergh
The Strick proved to be quite a congenial place; I congratulated the barman on playing “American Pie” as we Yanks walked in the door. We had beer for the first forty-five minutes, then ordered lunch from a very extensive menu. I had my first scampi and chips and Gavan had cream of broccoli soup and poached salmon. I had an additional half lager to finish things off; Gavan usually managed to down at least three pints – usually some Guinness. His nose was out of joint because, after insisting that every bar in Britain carried Guinness, the Strick had neither it nor Murphy’s – and was planning to install a Scottish rival. The golden oldies tape rolled around to the beginning and I proposed that we try to make a second pub in Brigsteer. So at 12:30 we were able to pull on our packs again and climb back up to the cottages.
The pub is opposite the entrance gates to Sizergh Castle and, in retrospect, it would have been much simpler to have taken to the castle road. But Hannon, more than once, had devised an off-the-road alternative that caused its own frustrations. We climbed up an open and rough field with no sigh of path while a fine mist began to fall. Gavan asked if we should don rain gear but I wasn’t ready to admit this necessity, and the mist soon lifted. At the top of the field we crossed a fence and edged our way along a cornfield which slashed at us as we slowly approached the castle parking lot. Here there was a pause while I searched, unsuccessfully, for a spot to take a photo.
While I was doing this Gavan was studying out the next section of the route and when I returned he lead us along a lane heading west. Our turn-off was a bend in this road; we were required to climb rather steeply up a field with a small copse on our left, search out a ridge top track near the crest, and turn right. The cows hereabouts had white numbers on their black bums and, curiously, Cow Number 10 was standing just at the ten-mile mark of the Furness Way.
The route forward was easy and never steep, though it was hard to figure out the precise continuations northwards on several occasions. Eventually we came out on a lane on which a girl (with a Nuclear Disarmament pendant) was herding cows. Off to our left were wonderful views of the Lyth Valley and ahead of us, hiding in the trees, was the remote Helsington Church. There were a number of tourists about, most of them seated stolidly in their cars.
On the descent to Brigsteer – I reach my mile 2400 on British footpaths.
We headed down steeply in a northwesterly direction – just as I reached my mile 2400 – and began searching for a stile into the woods at the bottom. Here we had a nice woodland path that kept pretty level through the forest until it reached a tarmaced lane that lead us into Brigsteer. We found the pub we had been aiming for at 2:15, but it had closed at 2:00. So we continued forward to join a second road and here, opposite a junction, we sat down on some rocks and ivy for a rest. I ate a toffee eclair and had some water.
We now had over three miles of road walking, some of which even had hills in it. Gavan was full of complaints about these and, indeed, he did not seem in the best of moods. His knee was giving him trouble and he kept borrowing my Deep Heat – though he seemed to have survived a recent ascent of Fujiyama and the whole Boston Marathon in the spring without too much trouble. He was also sneezing his head off, though his claim that it was my dog Toby he was allergic to made less and less sense the farther we got from my living room. I kept encountering him sitting on the roadside with his head in his hands and thus I knew that there was more on the poor boy’s mind than entering the priesthood.
We passed Tullythwaite Hall, Greenriggs and Low Greenriggs (where peacocks piped us around the corner) before heading west past High Gregg Hall and Low Gregg Hall. We could see Crosthwaite church and the white speck of the Punchbowl Inn for some distance. The sun was finally coming out as we finished our ten-mile stint at 3:45. Because of all the road walking there hadn’t been many gates or stiles but Stiles had again emerged the victor, 9-8.
We were shown to our rooms in the Inn (no twin rooms here) and each of us had a nice bath before meeting at the bar at 6:00. My room was very odd, with a landing that lead nowhere and a TV set at right angles to the four-poster bed. I watched some TV, thereby hearing the prediction that we were in for four days of rain, and read some more of the New Yorker articles I had brought with me.
When I went down to the bar Gavan was already in conversation with the proprietors. She was a short muscular gypsy-like woman and he was drinking a lager at one of his own tables and telling Gavan how much he admired Stephen King. I pretended to be interested but when they started to scare one another with ghost stories (this, and every other inn the pair had managed had been haunted) I got up to have a look at the church and the graveyard. Gavan was reluctant to leave; he too had been converted to ghost lore by one of his brothers. I found it all a bit boring – beyond belief. The proprietors had been at the Punchbowl only eight weeks but they were already seeking a new assignment; it was too quiet for them in the summer and they couldn’t bear to imagine what it would be like up here in winter. I didn’t think it was quiet at all; there was a lively crowd of diners and pub-goers as far as I could see – but everything is relative.
I had a chicken curry and Gavan had trout. It was obvious that he wanted to stay up and drink, or to talk more about his troubled romantic life, but I excused myself rather early from this scene and went to my room. I watched some TV, but fell asleep during Northern Exposure and soon I had to get up to turn off the set.
To continue with the next stage our walk you need: