Eagle Crag

Its north-west face is a daunting rampart of rock, its eastern flank, a sheer wall. From the confluence of streams where Greenup meets Langstrath, Eagle Crag looks unassailable, but Wainwright isn’t fibbing when he says there’s a single line of weakness in its defences. Just over a year ago, I made the exhilarating ascent to reach a summit that was, once, the territory of a wolfman.

It is harder for a rich man to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a camel to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Something like that—I may have all the right words not necessarily in the right order, but you get the gist—the biblical lesson about excessive wealth being a bit of a disadvantage in gaining entry to the Pearly Gates. Even us atheists might recognise a metaphorical truth in that, but in 1195, the warning was taken very literally. Especially, if your name was Alice de Rumeli, and you were heiress to the Barony of Allerdale. Alice was a deeply pious woman, but she was also a very wealthy one—hence her anxiety about needles and camels.

When her only son died in a tragic hunting accident, Alice vowed to make many a poor man’s son her heir. She decided that the surest way to avoid eternal damnation was to donate her land to the Cistercian monastery at Fountains Abbey. Well some of it anyway. Not the fertile farmland around Cockermouth, obviously. That was highly productive and supplied her with a good revenue in feudal taxes. No, she would donate her Borrowdale estates at Crosthwaite, Wanderlath and Stonethwaite. The land had been forest until about three hundred years earlier when Norse settlers made clearings to provide summer grazing for their cattle. In agricultural terms, it was still very poor, yielding just enough to feed the villagers but with precious little left for their feudal overlord. It would make a fine gift for the Abbey, and it would guarantee salvation for Alice’s soul (so long as The Almighty was too busy being all-knowing and all-seeing to bother with a survey).

The monks were not afraid of a bit of hard graft, and they were canny enough to realise the land would support sheep better than cattle. Despite a statute from 1380, which described Borrowdale’s wool as the ‘the worst wool in the realm’, the monks turned Alice’s gift into profitable farmland along the lines that it is still worked today. In fact, they made such a decent fist of it that their rivals at Furness Abbey took exception. This may have had something to do with the fact that in 1209, Alice sold her Cockermouth estate to Furness Abbey for £156 13s 4d—a princely sum back then. Being charitable Christians, their hearts full of humility and healthy disdain for material wealth, the monks of Furness complained to the King about the terms of ownership. The King settled the dispute by claiming the Borrowdale land as his own; then he sold it back to Fountains Abbey for £2. Quite how that all left everyone in regard to the camel, I couldn’t tell you, but it does at least explain how the valley as we know it now took shape.

From over the fence, a Herdwick hogg eyes me with indifference. A National Trust information board proclaims the charity’s commitment to protecting these indigenous Lakeland sheep against agricultural shifts in favour of more commercial breeds. That this Stonethwaite meadow is about 90% full of Texels makes it look like a losing battle; but hardy fell sheep lamb a little later than the lowland breeds. Over the coming weeks, the new-borns and their mothers will be moved into these in-bye pastures for the richer grass, and Herdies will again predominate.

As I’m counting sheep, a teenage girl in a pink top skips past me. She doesn’t look kitted out for a long walk, but as I cross the bridge over Greenup Gill and turn right beside the drystone wall that tracks its course, I catch the odd fleeting glimpse of pink through the trees. A little further on, I find her sitting on a small wooden footbridge, staring wistfully down the valley. Perhaps this her favourite spot, but something in the look of wonder on her face suggests she’s here on holiday, escaping the town for the Easter weekend and already transfixed by this novel environment. In the hazy sunlight of early morning, it does seem the stuff of magic.

Across Greenup Gill, people are emerging from a parade of tents, yawning, stretching and looking equally awe-struck, for a few hundred metres further on is a sight of breathtaking magnificence. At the confluence of two streams the formidable face of Eagle Crag splits the valley into Greenup and Langstrath. In geographical terms, the fell is simply a northern buttress of High Raise, but anyone with a beating heart and the faintest spark of fire in their blood cannot help but agree with Wainwright that “it is, to the eye of the artist or the mountaineer, a far worthier object than the parent fell rising behind”. Its north western face is a daunting rampart of rock, rising defiantly skyward, impregnable. Its eastern flank is a sheer wall. In between, the initial slope is grassy if alarmingly steep, but it gives way to crags well below the summit. It would seem unassailable, but I’ve done this walk before, and I know Wainwright isn’t fibbing when he says there’s a single line of weakness in its defences.

When I reach the confluence of streams, Langstrath opens up to the west, stretching out to Bow Fell and Esk Pike. A footbridge affords a way across Greenup Gill, and a plaque reveals it was rebuilt to commemorate Gordon Hallworth, a member of the Manchester Mountaineering Club who died of exhaustion in the valley in 1939. I register quiet relief that Gordon didn’t die trying to scale Eagle Crag, then I realise that’s uncharitable and unlikely to aid my chances of passing through the eye of a needle, should the need ever arise.

Over the footbridge, I turn left, climb a stile, and cross two fields at the foot of Eagle Crag. Through a gap in a tumbledown wall, I reach the beginning of Wainwright’s ascent and start up the unforgiving incline, heading for the knoll of Bleak How above. A path emerges, swinging beneath the knoll then climbing to a fence and a rickety wooden stile. The valley already looks a long way down, and opposite, the slopes of Ullscarf are a calotype of umber shadow and sepia sun-bleached earth.

Beyond the stile, the narrow stony path climbs between a wall of crag and grass slopes that fall away alarmingly (but the cliffs above are peppered with spindly rowan trees, and rowan trees are the Celtic symbol of life and protection, so I watch my step and place my trust in an ancient belief).

I scramble up a small gully to a heathery knoll beneath a cliff. Here, the path turns right, but a short detour provides a magnificent view of Eagle Crag’s vertical face: a brutal wall rising indomitably from the valley below.

I cross a narrow ledge to a series of rock terraces above Heron Crag. The great stone bulwark of Sergeant’s Crag rises to a dome ahead, its steep side plunging to Langstrath Beck.  The long knotty ridge of Glaramara encloses the valley on the other bank, with the iconic profiles of Great Gable and Honister Crag (Black Star) standing proud beyond. At the valley’s head, the slopes rise abruptly toward England’s highest ground.

Above me, a series of small rock walls, white in the sunlight, separate the heather-clad terraces. They rise in a succession of narrowing tiers toward the summit.  The heather is turning olive with new growth, and it’s leavened by lighter shoots of bilberry.

The terrace tapers to almost nothing as it approaches Sergeant’s Crag, so the only way is up.  A faint path exists (for the eagle-eyed). It zigzags up through the levels, but it’s easily lost, and the real trick is to look for any breach in the rocks that allows access to the ground above.  Spotting the way becomes a game—a real-life Snakes and Ladders (without the snakes, hopefully). It’s exhilarating, and it’s almost too soon when I reach the sloping slab of rock and the modest cairn that mark the summit.

It was here, in 1975, that a woman got a nasty shock, for attached to this very slab was a plaque inscribed with the words, “You are now in Wolfman country”. Terrified, she fled the scene and complained to the National Trust. The Wolfman was, in fact, a Borrowdale resident by the name of John Jackson, so nicknamed for his red hair and extravagant beard. The plaque had been carved as an affectionate joke by a stonemason friend, but given the alarm it caused, The National Trust removed it, and it stood for many years by the door of the café at Knotts View in Stonethwaite.

Wolfman or no, this summit is an eyrie worthy of an eagle, and a peerless lookout over Alice’s gift.

For the full Wolfman story, visit Richard Jennings’ website:

The Wolfman of Eagle Crag

This article first appeared in the March/April 2020 edition of Lakeland Walker magazine:

http://www.lakeland-walker.com/