goin’ up the country

Since we came back to Penrith at the beginning of June, Paula and I have been going for long walks in the countryside around town. These walks have taken us north, south, east and west, but the most interesting have been through the area north of the town, which is covered by the following map:

This account is specifically about an extended walk that we did last week, which started through the Thacka Beck Nature Reserve (not marked on what is quite an old map). Thacka Beck is an artificial watercourse constructed in the fourteenth century to provide the town’s first water supply. It starts from the River Petteril, about 6km to the north (see below).

After passing through the nature reserve, we reached Thacka Lane, where we turned left. Within a short distance, we spotted several horses in a field on the right. Naturally, we stopped to take a few photos:

We often see horse-drawn vehicles on this quiet country lane, which leads eventually to Newton Rigg, including carriages pulled by four animals. Where the road passes under the motorway, indicated by the red circle on the map, the plan was to continue straight ahead along a rough track parallel to the motorway. We came across another group of horses, all of which in this case watched us intently, where the track turned abruptly to the right, away from the motorway:

The plan had been to use what appeared to be an official crossing point over the railway, but just before we reached the line, we encountered a padlocked gate. With a lone pig on guard duty!

At least we assumed that it was meant to deter casual intruders, although it was fast asleep.

We decided to backtrack to the underpass and follow the original road. However, on the far side, an extremely rough track signposted to Catterlen seemed a much better option:

I took photos at regular intervals along this track, starting with this ewe and her offspring:

I took the next photo to illustrate the rose bay willow herb, which is just beginning to flower, on both sides of the track:

More sheep:

Notice too the dry-stone wall in the foreground. As the name implies, this method of construction, which is the standard throughout the north of England, does not use any mortar. Apart from one sandstone block on the top of the wall, the rest of the stones in the wall are irregular pieces of Carboniferous limestone.

A little further on, we came across an open gate on the left:

I took the photo because the open gate effectively frames the mountain in the distance, which is Blencathra (‘Saddleback’). I conjectured that although there was no evidence of a path, if we had turned left here we would probably have ended up in Newton Reigny, which we didn’t want to do. So we continued straight on.

The problem with dry-stone walls is that they tend to collapse if people try to climb over them:

The next photo shows our first encounter with cows. As you can see, they are curious animals that want to take a closer look at any humans who pass by:

Luckily, there is a fence in the way!

I took this photo of a barn on the right because of the round arch over the entrance. Such an architectural feature is surprisingly common in such structures, even though it would be more difficult to construct:

The track had become very overgrown after passing the open gate (more evidence that we should have turned left there?), but it quickly came to an end shortly after passing the barn. The path ahead lies across an open field:

You can make out the course of the River Petteril at the bottom of the slope. And this is a closer view of the river, looking upstream:

There is a convenient footbridge across the river:

…with a splendid view of the river, looking downstream:

The continuation of the route lies up the hill on the far side of the river, but it isn’t clearly marked, and when we reached a fence, we turned right instead of left. This brought us back to the river, where we spotted a second footbridge a short distance upstream:

Let’s go that way instead, we both agreed:

And it is also a designated public footpath, as indicated by the yellow arrow alongside the stile in the next photo, which looks back towards the footbridge:

The river passes under the motorway hereabouts, and the path runs alongside the river as it does so, after which it emerges into a very large field. The exact direction to walk when crossing the field isn’t at all obvious.

Oh! Oh! A large number of cows were making their way towards us from our right. I sensed danger.

I did manage to chase them off, although Paula failed to capture this on video. She did shoot this video though, which shows the route we eventually took towards a group of trees, while the cows, which I’d chased off to the left, made their way back to the part of the field on the right from where they’d come originally:

We did encounter another herd of cows as we crossed the next field, but they were in an adjoining field and thus not directly threatening:

Thankfully!

From this point, we made our way to the A6 and thus back into Penrith by the easiest possible route, but we’ve since been back to locate the route to Catterlen, in the course of which we encountered yet more trouble with cows, which will be the subject of my next post.