June 15, 2005: Appleby to Great Ormside
A bridge over the River Eden in Appleby
The annual week-long summer walking expedition began as the Lees, Marge Rogers and I set off to complete the first half of the Westmorland Way on June 15, 2005. This route is the third part of Paul Hannon’s circuit of the Lake District, and, for me, the last – for the previous parts, the Furness Way and the Cumberland Way, had been completed in earlier ventures with Gavan as my walking partner. Gavan, now in law school, was unavailable for such an expedition this year and Tosh had expressed an interest in returning to the Lakes – so I decided to divide the lengthy final section into two parts, and to undertake the first part now.
A great deal of time had been expended in making up a plausible schedule – with the search for accommodation in sparsely tenanted areas taking precedence. I believe I once heard that there are 41,000 people living permanently in the Lake District and 15 million visitors annually – this will explain why so much searching on the Internet and not a few phone calls were necessary even to secure accommodation.
To begin the expedition Harold and I had visited Paddington Station some two weeks earlier, renewing our senior rail passes, and buying tickets and seat reservations. Our rail cards were not valid until after 9:30 – which is why I was speeding toward Kings Cross at 9:00 on this Wednesday morning, using a mini cab to put me in position for a 9:45 rendezvous with my walking partners. They were on time and we each visited the local mini-mart in order to stock up on lunchtime provisions. Tosh also waited out the coffee line and so we were soon making our way toward track 5, where a new GNR train was waiting. The station was an odd jumble of passengers this morning, grotty hikers like ourselves, traveling salesmen, and a large contingent of toffs and toffettes in top hats and outrageous chapeaus on their way to the Ascot race meeting – which had been shifted to York this year. The trackside brass band was there for them, not us.
Tosh took a nosedive into her newspapers and surfaced only when some tasty tidbit was discovered. The rest of us chatted but since this trio had been our dinner guests only a few nights earlier there wasn’t much new in the way of gossip. Outside it was gray and soon it was drizzly too, not unexpected, but dispiriting to passengers who expected to spend a good deal of time outdoors today. My plan called for us to arrive in Leeds at about 12:30 and to leave for Appleby some twelve minutes later, arriving at the market town (one that had once served as the capital of the long-disappeared county of Westmorland) at 2:44. We would drop our bags off at our hotel and, at about 3:30, begin a seven-mile jaunt to Great Asby before taking a cab back to our hotel. You can imagine my anxiety when, just as last year, our train ploughed to a stop long before reaching Leeds, joining other trains that were likewise queuing while an overhead power line was investigated. In consequence, we arrived at our station over half an hour late – our connecting train having departed long before this moment.
I did have a backup plan involving less walking today and more tomorrow and this would work because there was a second Appleby train some two hours after the first. To kill time, we disdained our recently purchased lunches and sat down for drinks and food in the station pub. I had a bacon cheeseburger and a diet coke, rising every now and then to see if our new train had been announced on the nearby monitor. There were lots of people making pit stops in the pub and it was fun to watch them go about their business.
At last we had a track number to head for – but we spent a good deal of time waiting around here because the Arriva train from Carlisle was late. Aboard, we found adjacent seats (our seat reservations now redundant) though Margie and Tosh kept moving about for better views as the spectacular vistas opened up as we neared the Pennines. There were school kids mixed up in the passenger list as well and a jolly conductor. Naturally I was worried about the weather, which showed patches of brightness breaking through the clouds, and I was gratified to note that the last of the moisture had lifted by the time we detrained at 4:41 – some two hours late. The air was fresh and fragrant and the gardens were in full bloom as we lofted our backpacks (I was carrying my day pack as well) and headed down back lanes and stairs and across the River Eden into Appleby. We were all quite excited to be here.
It hadn’t been that many years since I had been in Appleby with Gavan but that didn’t mean that I knew the exact location of the Tufton Arms – though I knew it to be located on the market place, not too far from the church. With these clues we were soon in the lobby of this quite upmarket establishment (well, upmarket for us) and the proprietress, sitting behind a desk, was checking us in. We each had en suite rooms and we repaired to these to get ready for the afternoon’s walk. My chief task was to find a cab which would pick us up in Great Ormside, at the three mile mark – but our hostess, while writing down some phone numbers for us, cast a pall on these proceedings by suggesting that none of these local firms was very reliable.
I used Dorothy’s new mobile phone, which proved very useful on this expedition, and began my quest. The first firm was busy with school runs, the second offered an answering machine, not a real person at the other end, and the third moved only passengers under contract. Somewhat downcast by this information I returned to the front desk where I was offered a number in Kirby Stephen. Here I had greater success, though I would have to pay a £5.00 call-out fee, and the cabby agreed to pick us up at the church in Great Ormside between 7:20 and 7:30. I was therefore able to pass the news on to my colleagues that we would now set forth at 5:40, a rather late start for a walking expedition, but, with only three miles possible today and the maximum amount of daylight available, not unthinkable.
We posed for pictures against the obelisk at the bottom of the market square and began a walk up to the castle gates of Appleby Castle –now serving as a private residence after the current owner had lost his battle with English Heritage over plans to “improve” the site for the benefit of tourists. The Westmorland Way uses roads to pass around the right side of the castle walls and around their high point as well, and in this fashion we were able to reach the banks of the Eden, which circumscribes Appleby itself.
Flowers reflected on the calm surface of the River Eden
I took some pictures here and at several points along the riverbank as we headed at a quite leisurely pace in a southerly direction. Tosh and Margie were certain that the flower we were seeing bankside was a form of phlox – it did look lovely reflected in the still waters. Our route crossed several stiles and eventually entered woodland where the path was a bit eroded – and one had to be careful not to slip off it into the water.
The Westmorland Way, like its two predecessors, is one of those walks dependent entirely on Hannon’s guidebook – it is not waymarked at all, though occasional public footpath signs and discs were discernible. It was an instruction in the text, “on crossing a stream and a fence head right up the short steep slope,” that put me onto an overgrown bluff now well above the river. There was very little evidence of human progress here but I persevered, the others following me, and at last we reached the wooded valley of Jeremy Gill, following one its feeders up to the top again.
The church in Great Ormside
A footpath sign signaled the crossing of a meadow here, probably a slight rerouting of the public right of way, but I persisted in following Hannon’s instructions to turn left along a hedgerow track, following this around to the right to emerge opposite a railway underpass (burrowing beneath the very line which we had sped over just two hours earlier). After a pause for clandestine pees we followed a lane into the hamlet of Great Ormside, our destination. Three miles made this the shortest walking day in my record book.
It was 7:00 and we now had a few minutes to wait and see if our cab would actually show up. In the intervening minutes each of us climbed the hill to visit the quite elderly church of St. James – poised above a substantial railway viaduct in the distance. Just as promised, our cab driver, Duncan, pulled up in Steady Eddie’s taxi and we were soon heading back to the Tufton Arms. We used the time to discuss the possibility of a return trip to Great Ormside in the morning, but Duncan only “thought” he would be free at 10:00, a rather late start for walkers who, thanks to the British rail system, now faced a fourteen-mile day.
When Tosh presented this problem to the management of our hotel they now suggested that one of their number would do the deed for us at 9:30, so I called Duncan, releasing him from a tentative booking and, in a much happier frame of mind, we went our separate ways for baths and evening wear – which in my case meant tan trousers and a maroon sweatshirt.
We met in the bar at 8:00 and I had a double Jack Daniels on the rocks. Then we went into the very nice dining room and had a lovely meal – I had melon and peppered steak and ice cream. Margie had her usual breast of chicken and the Lees concluded the festivities with coffee. Happy to have gotten the adventure started at last, we headed off for an early night at 10:00.
To continue with the next stage of our walk you need: