Tag Archives: Hampsfell

North of the Fateful Sands

A Cartmel Peninsula Round & The Perilous Past of Morecambe Bay

The Cartmel Peninsula with its ring of outlying Wainwrights boasts a landscape rich in contrast, but ever close are the perilous sands of Morecambe Bay. In the mid 19th century, they claimed 23 lives in just 11 years . I mark the summer solstice with a 24 mile round and recount the victims’ stories.

In 2020, lockdown did me an immense favour. It woke me up to where I live. With the mountains out of bounds, I grew to appreciate what was right on my doorstep, and when restrictions were sufficiently slackened, I began to explore the Cartmel Peninsula with a new-found fervour. I found a landscape rich in contrast: open fell, woodland, grazing pasture, salt marsh, limestone pavements, and of course, the expansive watery desert of Morecambe Bay. Even after Mountain Rescue had given the green light, I was slow to return to the high fells—too eager to keep exploring my home turf. The Cartmel Valley, with its ring of outlying Wainwrights, quickly laid claim to my heart. I developed favourite routes and favourite haunts: Dixon Heights, Hampsfell, Humphrey Head, How Barrow, Bigland Tarn, Bigland Barrow, and slowly I kindled a desire to join them all up—a grand 24-mile Cartmel Valley round. What better time to embark on such a long local ramble but the Summer Solstice—the longest day of the year.

I book the day off work and spend the preceding week cursing the weather forecast for predicting thunderstorms. At the eleventh hour, it relents and announces an outlook of dry, settled weather with sunny spells and gentle summer breezes. Ideal.

I leave the house at 6am and follow the road to Low Newton. Opposite Yew Tree Barn Architectural Antiques, a track skirts a farm and follows a right-of-way into a wood. Just past a gate, the path divides, and I take the left fork that climbs through bracken, under hawthorn and crab apple, to open fell. Newton Fell forms a long low spine, which runs from Lindale all the way to Gummer’s How above Windermere. In his book, The Outlying Fells of Lakeland, Wainwright splits it into two, Newton Fell North, Saskills—its true summit—and Newton Fell South, Dixon Heights—its southern tip. He gives short shrift to the part in between. In his day, it was private ground with no rights of way, but this section, Bishop’s Tithe Allotment is now access land, and Wainwright was remiss to dismiss its rugged charm.

Bishop’s Tithe Allotment, Newton Fell
Bishop’s Tithe Allotment, Newton Fell

Jagged outcrops of lichen-clad rock rise from a green sea of bracken, stippled purple with peals of foxglove bells. From the top, I look northwest to the grey silhouettes of the Coniston Fells, and north to Red Screes, Caudale Moor and the Kentmere Fells. Closer to hand, to the northeast, Whitbarrow Scar rises across the Winster valley, and to the southwest lies Hampsfell. They form part of a ring of low limestone hills into which Newton Fell intrudes, an older imposter, formed of Silurian mudstone. This prominence of sedimentary rock, risen over millennia from the seabed, now overlooks the tidal waters of Morecambe Bay.

The Ruined Tower on Dixon Heights from Bishop’s Tithe Allotment
The Ruined Tower on Dixon Heights from Bishop’s Tithe Allotment
Fell Pony in Tom Tarn
Fell Pony in Tom Tarn
Fell Ponies in Tom Tarn
Fell Ponies in Tom Tarn

The ground drops away abruptly to the col with Dixon Heights. In the hollow nestles Tom Tarn, a watering hole for the goats and fell ponies which graze the grassy slopes beyond. The drystone wall that divides the two enclosures runs right through the middle of the water. Beyond, a grassy ramp affords a passage to the top of Dixon Heights, up slopes stoutly defended on either side by craggy outcrops and dense thickets of hawthorn. The summit is crowned by the ruin of an old tower, known to locals of certain age as The Colour Pole. Old pictures show a tall turret with a flag flying from the top. Its purpose has been lost in the mists of time. Some speculate it was an observatory, though whether for the stars or smugglers in the bay remains open to debate.

Ruined tower known as the Colour Pole on Dixon Heights
Ruined tower known as the Colour Pole on Dixon Heights

I return on the lower path through the wood, fragrant with dog rose and oxeye daisy, follow the road under the dual carriageway and do battle with bramble and nettle down an overgrown bridleway, lined with meadowsweet, then I cross farmland to the foot of Hampsfield Allotment, the lightly wooded slope that leads to the top of Hampsfell. Hampsfell’s crowning glories are its magnificent limestone pavements and its panoramic views of the Lakeland fells, the high Dales fells, and of course the vast expanse of Morecambe Bay. When the tide is out, the silver sands stretch as far as the eye can see in a hypnotic dance of spiralling patterns and glistening reflections.

Oxeye daisy
Oxeye daisy
Dog rose in the wood at the foot of Newton Fell
Dog rose in the wood at the foot of Newton Fell
Meadow Sweet
Meadow Sweet on the bridleway to Hampsfell

On the summit stands the Hospice, a squat stone tower, built by Thomas Remington, the vicar of Cartmel in 1834 as a gesture of thanks for the beauty he beheld here daily. Stone steps lead up to the roof and a viewfinder with a key listing the names of all the visible fells. Hampsfell is another Wainwright outlier. Indeed, Wainwright suggests its magnificent views of the mountains make it an ideal destination for the ageing hill walker whose legs can no longer negotiate the higher summits. A place to come and relive past glories. To the south lies a third Wainwright outlier, Humphrey Head, the jutting promontory that forms the southerly tip of the Cartmel Peninsula.

Limestone pavements on Hampsfell
Limestone pavements on Hampsfell
Limestone pavements on Hampsfell
Limestone pavements on Hampsfell
Hampsfell Hospice
Hampsfell Hospice

The most direct route is via Allithwaite and a section of the Cumbria Coastal Way, but I shall return along that section before striking westward, so I opt instead to descend beside Eggerslack Wood into Grange-over-Sands, not only because, in Higginsons, the town boasts the finest pie shop known to humanity, but in a walk of contrasts, I want to experience the period charm of its Victorian promenade. In 1857, the coming of the railway saw Grange prosper as popular seaside resort. However, its name dates back to twelfth century and the founding of the priory in neighbouring Cartmel. The monks crushed and burned limestone from the fell for use as a fertiliser and built a grain store for their harvests at Grange. Its name derives from the French for granary.

In Victorian times, the River Kent flowed past the the mile-long Prom, providing a stately contrast to the ornamental gardens that line the civic side, but over the years, it has changed its course, leaving the Promenade bordered by a sprawling expanse of salt marsh, and turning it into the frontline between ordered Edwardian elegance and the encroaching wild. Where the Prom ends, a footpath leads below gardens to Kent’s Bank. En route, formal planting gives way to bindweed and thistle, and a railing and the railway become the dividing line between civilisation and coastal wilderness.

Grange-over-Sands Promenade
Grange-over-Sands Promenade
Ornamental Gardens Grange-over-Sands Promenade
Ornamental Gardens Grange-over-Sands Promenade

Kent’s Bank Railway Station is the start for Wainwright’s favoured approach to Humphrey Head. He talks of evading the eye of the station master to shin the wall. These days, no such shenanigans are necessary, a gate leads out on to the marsh and wilder terrain. At Kirkhead End, I leave the concrete parapet at the foot of the railway embankment, and step out on to the mudflats, jumping streams and keeping an eye out for the abundant bird life. On this side, Humphrey Head presents wooded gentle slopes, but on the other, an impressive limestone cliff drops abruptly to the beach, the jutting rocks striped yellow with maritime sunburst lichen and blooming with little crops of foliage and wildflowers.

The Salt Marsh Kent’s Bank
The Salt Marsh Kent’s Bank
Humphrey Head over the Salt Marsh
Humphrey Head over the Salt Marsh

By the outdoor centre, I take a path that leads up over the gentle grassland above the escarpment to the trig point at the summit. Then I descend to the pointy fingers of low rock that run down to the beach. Humphrey Head is famous for being the spot where the last wolf in England was slain (or so local legend maintains). It has also been prized for centuries for its natural spring waters that have long been held to have healing powers and have attracted everyone from Roman legionaries to lead miners from the Northeast. The sun warms the rocks as I sit and gaze across the spawling sands of the Bay.

Humphrey Head, north of the fateful sands of Morecambe Bay
Humphrey Head, north of the fateful sands of Morecambe Bay

Until 1974, when they were absorbed into the newly created county of Cumbria, the Cartmel and Barrow Peninsulas were an enclave of Lancashire, known as Lancashire North of the Sands. A county cleft by the tide was reconciled whenever it ebbed, but the exposed sands provided an uncertain passage, imperilled by quicksands and the speed of the incoming tide. Nevertheless, for centuries the Sands were the principal thoroughfare, and a guide was appointed initially by the monks of Cartmel Priory, and later by the Duchy of Lancaster to try and ensure safe crossings.

Humphrey Head

In 1857, the guide was James Carter. He was on duty from sunrise to sunset and in the habit of remaining later should he be asked. Not that George Ashburner had any intention of troubling Carter on the evening of Friday 30th May. Why should he? He knew the Sands as well as the Guide and was in the habit of crossing at least three times a week. He even knew of his own ford across the channel. Ashburner was a badger or cadger in local parlance, a cart driver and seller of wares, in Ashburner’s case, these were most likely fish, being as he was in the employ of Mr Benson of Flookburgh, a cart owner and fisherman. Ashburner appeared to be in good spirits when he stopped for a drink in Wilcock’s Kents’ Bank Hotel.  The manager, Thomas Ball would later tell the Coroner that he had observed Ashburner standing with his back to the fireplace, singing a song. He also recalled serving a glass of porter to one of Ashburner’s companion’s, John Bell. The tap room was packed, it being the start of the Whitsun weekend, which was traditionally a time for fairs and hirings in Lancashire towns. Ashburner had arrived from Flookburgh with a party of 12 or 13 young men, many of them labourers in the employ of farms on the Holker estates, like Old Park or Winder Hall. They had engaged Ashburner to drive them to Lancaster to spend Whitsuntide with family or look for new work. The party might have been one more. Mr Cowperthwaite, an iron-founder from Lancaster expressed a wish to join them, but Ball dissuaded him—not that Ball envisioned any danger, but he thought the company unfitting for a gentleman of Cowperthwaite’s years. When asked whether Ashburner was intoxicated, Ball could not say, but another witness, John Pedder described him as not drunk but “sharp fresh”.

Ashburner’s cart left at about 10pm by railway time. This should have given them adequate time to cross to Hest Bank before the tide swept in, but Ashburner made a fatal misjudgement. He appears to have attempted a short cut, which took the cart about three-quarters of a mile below the normal coach route, splashing through the shallows in the direct line of Priest Skear, a notorious blackspot on the Sands, about a mile and half from the coast at Hest Bank.  Here a projecting rock causes an eddy in the water to form a deep hole.

Humphrey Head
Humphrey Head

When hats, and boxes and other belongings washed ashore at Morecambe on the Saturday, John Matthias Maudsley, landlord of the Morecambe Hotel, went out in a boat with James Carter and Robert Cockin.  At Priest Skear, they found the overturned cart, the drowned horse, and the bodies of seven of the young men lying in close proximity. An eighth lay 400 or 500 yards away. Others were later discovered further up the coast. In the absence of more specific evidence, the Coroner returned a verdict of “Found drowned”.

Humphrey Head
Humphrey Head

Some papers suggested Asburner set off too late, but this appears to have been a confusion of railway time with local farmhouse time. Until the mid-1800’s, British towns kept their own time based on local sunrise and sunset times, but the advent of the railways necessitated standardisation, and by 1857 most public clocks were set to railway time (although this would not become law for another 23 years). The stopped watches of the victims were set to local farm-house time, however, which was about half an hour or so later. Ironically, the coming of the railway to Grange and Ulverston in 1857 made crossing the Sands by coach largely redundant, but the trains came just too late to avert what was, until then, the Bay’s biggest tragedy.

Humphrey Head
Humphrey Head

After a paddle in the shallows beneath the colourful cliffs, I follow a section of the Cumbria Coastal Way to Allithwaite and pick it up again beyond Templand and Birkby Hall. This section boasts a leafy canopy bathing the wide track in dappled sunlight. It cuts through the Holker Estate, beside fields that would have been worked by some of the victims of the 1857 drowning. Young men like Thomas Hardman, Thomas Robinson, Henry Parkinson, Richard Houghton, and John Williams. I leave the track and take a faint path that climbs to the summit of How Barrow and rest awhile, looking back over the valley and the Bay.

Leafy avenue Cumbria Coastal Way approaching How Barrow
Leafy avenue Cumbria Coastal Way approaching How Barrow
Summit of How Barrow
Summit of How Barrow

From here, the view of the Sands is of the western stretch than separates the Cartmel Peninsula from the Barrow Peninsula. Prior to the railways, travellers from Lancaster to Ulverston would have to make a second perilous crossing over this section. Just eleven years before Ashburner’s fatal journey, this stretch of the Bay claimed its own tragedy, which is remarkably similar in detail.

On 13th June, 1846, the Westmorland published this solemn report:

“It’s our painful duty this week to have to record the loss of the greatest number of lives ever remembered upon Ulverston Sands. It appears that the unfortunate persons, nine in number, were returning from Ulverstone fair on Thursday, the 4th instant, in a cart belonging to Thomas Moore, fishmonger and badger, of Flookburgh, and it is reported that he was at the time worse for liquor, and had entrusted the reins to one of the persons in the cart not so well acquainted with the Sands; they, however, got safe over the channel, during the crossing of which they were observed by others following in the same direction, who on a sudden lost sight of them, when it appears they had got into a hole called Black Scarr, and without any alarm whatever having been made, all, as also the horse, had perished. Had the least cry for assistance been made they might have been heard from a great distance, the night being calm but no doubt in a moment all were swamped by the upsetting of the horse and cart.”

Across the sands to Ulverston
Across the sands to Ulverston

Unlike the 1857 tragedy, where the victims were itinerant labourers, hailing from a variety of Lancashire and Westmorland towns, all nine victims of the earlier disaster were from the neighbouring villages Flookburgh and Cartmel. Their joint funeral and burial in Cartmel churchyard drew a crowd of 1200 to 1500, on what must have been a bitterly sad day for the parish.

Cumbria Coastal Way entering High Stribers Wood
Cumbria Coastal Way entering High Stribers Wood
Bigland Tarn
Bigland Tarn

I follow the spine to Spiel Bank, where I again pick up a section of the Cumbria Coastal Way. It takes me up through High Stribers Wood to Bigland Heights and the tranquil elegance of Bigland Tarn. From here, I make my way to the final Wainwright outlier—the panoramic viewpoint of Bigland Barrow. It has been a journey rich in visual contrast: pastoral valley, wild salt marsh, open fell, period seaside elegance, and distant mountain drama; but the one constant has been the expansive view over the shimmering, spiralling sands of the Bay, a beguiling but deadly muddy bronze desert.

Bigland Barrow
Bigland Barrow

Further Reading

Many thanks to Raymond Greenhow for pointing me in the direction of the two Bay tragedy stories. Raymond’s own Scafell Hike website is a rich source of local history and well worth a visit:

https://scafellhike.blogspot.com/

Sadly, in 2004 the Sands were to claim twenty three more victims in another very dark day for the area. I’ve written about that here:


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    Fire and Water

    Sunset Over Morecambe Bay, In Snow

    Snow covered Coniston Fells beckon, but a computer glitch and an ill-fated Christmas shopping trip, worthy of Father Ted, rob me of a day on their slopes. As a consolation, I climb Hampsfell to watch the sun set over Morecambe Bay. It turns into one of the most magical fell walks I’ve ever experienced.

    December 9th, 2017 and the snow was falling, clothing the peaks in an alluring blanket of white. From my kitchen window, I can see Dow Crag, and in winter, when the trees are stripped of leaves, I can also make out a little of the Old Man of Coniston’s shoulder. By mid-afternoon they were looking positively Alpine, promising all kinds of winter adventure. It was too late to get out today, but Tuesday would be my birthday, and with uncharacteristic foresight, I’d booked the day off work. I checked the Met Office mountain forecast: sunshine and excellent visibility; and with only two days to go, there was just a chance it might be right.

    Sheep at the foot of Hampsfell
    Across the fields

    I was buoyant. Borderline ecstatic. And then it happened. Or at least it didn’t. Sandy switched on her laptop, and nothing responded. Zilch, nada, not a flicker. I’m unusual in being a software developer who hates computers. It’s nothing personal, I just spend so much of my day immersed in them, I try to avoid them in my spare time. I fumbled for an excuse, but it wasn’t forthcoming, and Sandy was panicking, so I felt compelled to help.

    My wife is a freelance journalist and animal photographer. She had two important photoshoots to process in the coming week, and her laptop is a vital tool. Luckily it was still under guarantee, so I got out my phone and looked up the nearest Apple Dealer (I know nothing about hardware).

    “There’s one in Lancaster”, I announced triumphantly. “They can book you in on Tuesday.” 

    “But I’m at the Westmorland Gazette on Tuesday”, she said, far from consoled. “We’re on a deadline. I’m busy all this week”. Then she added, “Don’t you have the day off on Tuesday?”

    My heart sank faster than a Sunderland supporter’s on the first day of the season; or Sue Lawley’s when Wainwright told her he didn’t much like music, at the start of half an hour of air time she was supposed to fill with his choice of Desert Island Discs.

    “There are some nice shops in Lancaster”, Sandy offered brightly. “You could do some Christmas shopping”.

    It was supposed to be a positive suggestion, but the very thought filled me with dread. I have form, you see. Once in Newcastle, with a few hours to kill, I tried a spot of seasonal gift hunting, unsupervised, but it turns out I’m terrible at it. I just wondered around John Lewis like an automaton, unable to find the way out. When I finally did, it led straight into Fenwicks and the nightmare started again. It was like an episode of Father Ted, except there wasn’t a party of priests in the lingerie department that I could follow. (I know this because I looked). When eventually I escaped into fresh air outside the Grainger Market, I seriously considered buying everyone sausages.

    Tuesday arrives, and The Apple Dealer can’t see me until 11:30, so with that and the drive, and the fruitless Christmas shopping, and wandering around Sainsbury’s like an automaton, I don’t get home until 2:30pm. The sky is an unbroken expanse of blue, and the snow-capped Coniston Fells in the distance look magnificent. But they’re half an hour away—by the time I get there, there’ll only be about an hour of daylight left.

    Determined to salvage something from the remains of the day, I wonder about Hampsfell. Hampsfell is a small hill that separates Cartmel and Grange. A tiddler compared to the Coniston Fells, but it punches above its weight with its rare limestone pavements and panoramic views of both the Lakeland fells and Morecambe Bay. Wainwright suggests it might appeal to the semi-retired fellwalker: “It is a hill small and unpretentious yet endowed with an air of freedom and space that will recall happy days on greater heights. It is a place for looking northwest, indulging memories, and dreaming.”

    I’d be on the summit in time to watch the sun set. Sunset over the bay, on a beautiful snowy day, from a summit made for dreaming—that has to be something special.

    I layer up, pull on my boots, grab gloves, hat, headtorch and microspikes and set off. The magic starts almost immediately I step outside the front door. The snow is little more than a dusting of icing sugar on the surrounding fields, but it’s enough to turn the landscape into a Christmas card. A robin hops about the hedgerow and the spire of Field Broughton church rises from a hollow across the meadows to complete the scene.

    I wander up narrow country lanes and on to a bridleway, then a follow a path across a field to a stand of trees above. Sheep graze on scattered patches of exposed grass, their shaggy fleeces like mounds of driven snow. As I climb higher through Hampsfield allotment, the low orange sun blazes like a fireball through a lattice of branch and twig, a giant bonfire amid the deepening white blanket. Galloways roam the open fell side, their coats a swatch of seasonal colour: black, red, yellow, and cream, matching the silhouettes of the naked trees, the autumn bracken and the winter grass. As I approach the summit, something is happening across the valley…

    Galloways on Hampsfell
    Galloways on Hampsfell

    On top of Hampsfell stands the Hospice, a squat stone tower with an open door and an open fireplace; a gift to travellers from the pastor of Cartmel in 1846, and a testament of thanks to beauty here experienced here daily. As Wainwright astutely observes, “Outside, over the doorway, is an inscription that will be Greek to most visitors.”  Translated from the Greek (for Greek it is), the inscription, “rhododactylos eos”, means “the rosy fingered dawn”. Her cousin, the rosy fingered dusk, is at play now.

    Hampsfell Hospice at sunset
    Hampsfell Hospice at sunset

    North-west over Cartmel valley, beyond a brown swathe of winter woodland, the Coniston Fells rise like a frozen tundra, artic blue in the dimming light; but they are transforming before my eyes—awaking, warming as if softly stage-lit in anticipation of an imminent first act—their chiselled contours now reflect a warm pink glow. Behind them, the sky is a wan, ethereal yellow, sparsely streaked with wisps of mauve.

    Old Man of Coniston
    Old Man of Coniston
    Dow Crag & Old Man of Coniston
    Dow Crag & Old Man of Coniston

    As I turn south and climb between snow softened escarpments to the limestone-paved plateau, black skeletal branches of stunted, windblown hawthorn trees bow in unison toward the Hospice, a dark tower before a horizon of deepening orange.

    Hampsfell Hospice at sunset
    Hampsfell Hospice at sunset

    In the short distance to the tower, the colours shift and blend again as the sky overhead darkens. To the east, over the Kent Estuary, Arnside Knott is little more than a soft Prussian blue suggestion below a strip of sky, pink as oyster shells. The reflective snow bestows a strange ambience. The stone fence posts that guard the Hospice are black shadowy sentinels, chained together to repel the shaggy cows that roam like ancient bison.

    Hampsfell Hospice at sunset
    Hampsfell Hospice at sunset

    This is a landscape so familiar yet altogether new. It’s as if I’ve crossed into a parallel universe—somewhere I may have glimpsed on the cover of a 1970’s prog rock album. Folk tales of a faery kingdom that the unwary traveler may pass into and return a haunted, altered man seem suddenly less fantastical.

    Kent Estuary from Hampsfell at sunset
    Kent Estuary from Hampsfell at sunset
    Sunset in snow on Hampsfell
    Sunset in snow on Hampsfell

    Yet, the real drama is happening to the west, where the orange sky intensifies over Bardsea and Barrow. In the sea beyond the dark peninsula, I can just make out tall thin poles, little more than fine grey pencil lines. Using the zoom on my camera, I discern the blades of the wind turbines. This is the offshore wind farm, Britain’s largest. Or at least it is in the parallel world I’m used to. Here, with imagination uninhibited, they are an encroaching army of Martian fighting machines from H G Wells’ War of the Worlds. And they must have opened fire, because all of a sudden the sky and water alike burst into flame.

    Sunset over Morecambe Bay
    Sunset over Morecambe Bay
    Sunset over Morecambe Bay
    Sunset over Morecambe Bay

    In between, a low bank of cloud, the thick smoke of the conflagration, engulfs the peninsula, forming a soft grey barrier between the incandescent sky and its mirror image in the waters. All that’s left of the land beyond the Leven estuary is a thin black strip of shoreline. And before my eyes, a new civilisation emerges. The formless cloud bank resolves into an acropolis of colossal towers, slate grey but licked with yellow, still fresh from the furnace that rages above and below.

    Morecambe Bay sunset
    Morecambe Bay sunset
    Cloud towers of Bardsea
    Cloud towers of Bardsea

    Beyond the Hospice, the snow covered limestone gives way to snow covered scrub. I climb a stile over a dry stone wall and follow a white path lined with a Mexican wave of wind-bowed hawthorns. The south eastern horizon is salmon pink, below quilted cloud the colour of Herdwick shearlings. Copper rivulets snake across dark sands to reach the silver sea beyond.

    Stunted Hawthorn on Hampsfell
    Stunted Hawthorn on Hampsfell
    Salmon Pink sky over the Kent Estuary
    Salmon Pink sky over the Kent Estuary
    Toward Fell End, Hampsfell
    Toward Fell End, Hampsfell
    Toward Fell End, Hampsfell
    Toward Fell End, Hampsfell

    Slowly, the blaze in the west softens to amber afterglow and becomes a slender strip of pale gold beneath a charcoal sky. The cloud city levitates and starts to disperse, and beneath are pin pricks of light, like tiny candles, from the miniature human conurbations of Barrow, Bardsea, Dalton and Ulverston.

    Sunset over the Leven Estuary
    Sunset over the Leven Estuary

    Sunset over Barrow from Hampsfell
    Sunset over Barrow from Hampsfell

    I’ve been reading the memoirs of Flookburgh fisherman, Jack Manning. He knew these patterns of lights like the back of his hand. They were crucial landmarks when out on the sands, on horse or tractor, scooping shrimp or cockle in the dead of night before the tide’s return.

    As I watch the ever changing light show from the subsidiary summit of Fell End, I’m aware of little puffs of steam rising in the dark. I hear a soft footfall and a snort, and I realise I’m not alone. As my eyes adjust, I discern the shapes of sheep grazing quietly on the slope below.

    Sheep at sundown on Hampsfell
    Sheep at sundown on Hampsfell

    The snow is so reflective I leave my head torch in my rucksack. I return to the wall and find the stile has vanished. I’m momentarily perplexed, but when I retrieve the torch and switch it on, the stile materialises right in front of me. It must be darker than I thought.

    Path to Fell End
    Path to Fell End

    And it’s growing darker by the minute; the torch beam accentuates the gloom, but I can no longer see without it. I pass the Hospice and begin the descent back to Hampsfield Allotment.

    Suddenly, I notice something strange in the darkness up ahead. Two little points of light hover above the path. I can’t think what they could be. I’m not given to superstition but with my imagination so stoked it would be easy to start believing in the supernatural. They look like disembodied eyes and they hold their position at around head height. Try as I might to find a terrestrial explanation, none presents itself.

    When I’m no more than a few yards away, I hear the breathing and see the vapour from the invisible nostrils. Slowly her outline materialises. A big Galloway cow, black as the night. She’s staring intently at me, probably wondering what the approaching ball of light might be. When she realises it’s only me, she loses interest, but doesn’t relinquish the path. I give her wide berth, more from respect than fear. Somehow, I sense no tension here. Nothing threatens the peace of this enchanted landscape on this frozen winter evening.

    Just over half an hour later, I turn they key in my front door. I’m back where I started three hours earlier, yet in some intangible sense, I’m still half a world away.


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      This Is The Sea

      Morecambe Bay, Hampsfell and Cartmel

      Morecambe Bay is place of desolate beauty and treacherous tides. Its rich cockle and shrimp beds provide a living for local fishermen but have proved lethal for some.  One of finest views of the Bay is from Hampsfell, a hill bedecked with rare limestone pavements.  Below Hampsfell lies Cartmel, a medieval village still illuminated by its inspiring history.

      Muddy bronze sands stretch all the way out to the sky, snaked with silver rivulets of residual water, stranded when the tide beat its retreat; the horizon a distant band of yellow in an otherwise monochrome landscape. Above, leaden clouds are fringed with pink and pierced with shafts of golden light, spearing the earth like the fingers of God in a William Blake painting.

      Morecambe Bay
      Morecambe Bay

      Morecambe Bay
      Morecambe Bay- photo by Leonard Osborne

      For all its wilderness, there is industry here. A tractor rides a sandbank pulling a trailer on 200ft of rope through a channel of water. The trailer drags two large funnel nets to scoop shrimps from the shallows. These will be riddled (sieved) to remove the crabs and flukes (flounder). They will be shelled, cooked and potted in a spicy butter before being shipped to the far flung deli counters of London or the hotels of Hong Kong. Swap a horse for the tractor and this scene has changed little in a hundred years.

      But the stark beauty of Morecambe Bay hides perilous hazards. Its tides sweep in twice a day, faster than a horse can gallop and with a force that can roll a tractor one and a half miles up the shore. When they retreat, they leave a lethal maze of ever-shifting quicksands. Inevitably, the bay has claimed its share of victims.

      Indeed, in 1853 Grange-Over-Sands was nearly robbed of its first vicar. Historically, the sands provided a convenient shortcut linking the two parts of Lancashire (Lancashire North O’ The Sands is now part of Cumbria). The Reverend Rigg was en route from Manchester to take up his post when his coach was swallowed by the unstable ground. A delicate soul, Rigg had steeled himself for the journey by shutting the windows and shrouding himself in so many blankets he was utterly oblivious to the fact his carriage was sinking. It was with some effort that the coachman eventually got him out through the window, as the doors were already too submerged to open.

      Many others were less fortunate; in fact so alarming was the death toll that in 1501 the monks at Cartmel Priory appointed an official guide. That responsibility now rests with the Crown and the current Queen’s Guide to the Sands took up the post in 1963. A Bay fisherman since his teens, Cedric Robinson reads these sands like a book and has been instrumental in developing the Cross Bay walks that attract many thousands each year and raise princely sums for charity.

      Cross Bay Walk
      Cross Bay Walk

      Before each walk, Cedric marks a safe route with laurel twigs. At the appointed hour, he leads the assembled party out across the watery desert. It is a strange and exhilarating experience, light dancing off scattered pools; the exposed sea-bed running as far as the eye can see – so flat that a solitary laurel branch can look like a tree (until a dog invariably runs ahead to pee against it).

      Cross Bay Walk
      Cross Bay Walk

      It would be wrong to imagine the bay benign however, its fatalities somehow confined to former centuries. The band of volunteers who staff Bay Search and Rescue are kept busy and their amphibious Haaglund all-terrain vehicle is regularly deployed. But in 2004, a tragedy occurred that neither guide nor rescue service could avert.

      An abundance of cockles in Morecambe Bay coincided with a dearth elsewhere and their value rocketed. Soon the area saw a large influx of migrant workers, deployed by unscrupulous gang masters with scant regard for their charges’ safety. In his book, Between the Tides, Cedric recalls how ill equipped these parties were: knowledge of the tide tables seemed to consist of watching the local fisherman; some had little or no transport and were forced to walk the six or seven miles to the cockle beds.

      It was an accident waiting to happen and tragically, on Feb 5th 2004, it did. A party of Chinese cocklers was cut off by the tide and twenty three drowned before the rescue boats and helicopters could reach them. Only Li Hua survived because he got so cold he left early and was picked up by a lifeboat on a sand bar after a brave but futile attempt to swim back to save his friends.

      Morecambe Bay from Hampsfell
      Morecambe Bay from Hampsfell

      The incident had lasting ramifications, triggering changes in law and the creation of a Gang Masters Licensing Authority. Li’s evidence helped convict gang master Lin Liang Ren of manslaughter, but a wider picture of organised crime, human trafficking and enslavement of the desperately poor emerged. Li Hua now lives under the witness protection scheme.

      The cockle beds were eventually closed and remained so until last year when limited access was granted on a strict permit-controlled basis.

      Morecambe Bay from Hampsfell
      Morecambe Bay from Hampsfell

      A Nick Bloomfield film, Ghosts, upset the local fishing fraternity by portraying them as racists whose bullying forced the Chinese to work at night, an accusation vehemently denied by the fishermen who insist no such confrontation ever took place. Indeed, on the night of Feb 5th, locals tried to warn the cocklers of the impending tide and some even risked their own lives to assist in the rescue efforts.

      Such a tragedy casts a long shadow and thirteen years on I am loathe to dwell on it, but that the story is so well known, its omission would seem oddly remiss.

      For all their inherent danger, the sands possess a desolate beauty and while I have followed Cedric across these flats on more than one occasion, my favourite way to view the bay is from the top of Hampsfell.

      Hampsfell
      Hampsfell

      From High Newton, I take the road past the post box, up the hill and over the road bridge. Here I turn left and then right, following the Cartmel signs, to descend Head House Hill.

      A little way past the farm, a bridleway leads off to the left, becoming an intermittent tree-lined avenue dissecting pastures full of grazing sheep and curious cows. The path crosses a road and continues through a gate on the other side. After about quarter of a mile, a footpath sign points the way left into a meadow and the gentle climb begins, quickly affording impressive views of the Coniston fells.

      At the top of the field, the path follows the line of the trees into the lightly wooded Hampsfield Allotment, then climbs on to open fell. A little further up, through a gate in a dry stone wall, the magnificent limestone pavements that adorn the summit come into view, jutting defiantly out of the hillside like ancient fortifications.

      Limestone Pavements on Hampsfell
      Limestone Pavements on Hampsfell

      Formed under the sea some 350 million years ago from the remains of millions of small shelled creatures, the large upstanding blocks are known as clints and were scoured by glaciers during the ice ages, leaving them riven with gutter-like channels called runnels. These pavements harbour rare species of butterfly and moth and are a haven for badgers, stoats, weasels and even polecats. Only 26km2 of limestone pavement exists in the U.K. and in 1981, Hampsfell’s striking examples became the first in the country to be protected by a Limestone Pavement order under the Wildlife and Countryside Act.

      Morecambe Bay from Hampsfell
      Morecambe Bay from Hampsfell

      As I reach the top, the vast expanse of Morecambe Bay stretches out before me. The tide is out and sand ridges spiral into elaborate patterns. The newly risen sun is starting to break through the cloud, turning patches of sky an ethereal yellow and gilding stranded pools beneath. Elsewhere clouds cast blue tinged shadows turning sky and sand into mirror images, blending into one continuous other-worldly landscape.

      Morecambe Bay from Hampsfell
      Morecambe Bay from Hampsfell

      It’s hard to imagine a finer backdrop for an exotic limestone paved hill top; but Hampsfield Fell has further riches. At the summit lies the Hospice, a squat stone tower with an open door and an oft used fireplace; built in 1834 by Thomas Remington, vicar of Cartmel as a gift to weary wanderers and a testament of thanks for the beauty he encountered here on a daily basis. Inside are boards inscribed with verses bidding travellers welcome and eulogising the landscape; and one rather more pithy plea against vandalism with a delicious quote from Solomon: “though thou shouldest bray a fool in a mortar among wheat with a pestle yet will not his foolishness depart him”.

      Outside, steep stone steps lead to the roof where a viewfinder helps interpret the uninhibited 360 degree panorama. Swing north-west from the bay, across the lush green of Cartmel valley, and you encounter a fine parade of mountains: the Coniston Fells, the Langdale Pikes, Helvellyn, the Fairfield group, the Kentmere Pikes, the Howgills and finally, before you meet the shore again, the distinctive profile of Yorkshire’s Ingleborough. At a little over 700ft, Hampsfell is small-fry compared with such lofty neighbours, but its views punch far above its height.

      Hampsfell and Coniston Fells
      Hampsfell and Coniston Fells

      I continue south over grass paths to the subsidiary summit of Fell End, marked with a large cairn, then descend past Grange Fell Golf Club to Grange Fell Road. Here I turn right then right again on to Haggs Lane to follow the hill down into Cartmel.

      Hamspfell sheep with the Bay behind
      Hamspfell sheep with the Bay behind

      Chris Evans described Cartmel as “a thimble full of diamonds”. The Village Shop is a mini Fortnum and Masons, chock full of delectable goodies and famous for its Sticky Toffee Pudding. Unsworth’s Yard is home to a micro-brewery, wine shop, bakers and a very fine cheese emporium. The village boasts no less than four pubs and for the high end gastronome, it is home to Simon Rogan’s l’Enclume, winner of the Good Food Guide’s best restaurant for the last four years.

      Cartmel Village Shop
      Cartmel Village Shop

      In muddy walking boots with a mere pocketful of change, I don’t rate my chances there, but the lovely people at Cartmel Coffee don’t seem to mind me traipsing across their stone floor to buy a coffee and a deliciously sticky chocolate brownie.

      Outside in the square I sit on the steps of the old market cross and look across at the fine medieval arch of the Priory gatehouse. Built in 1190 and colonised by Augustine monks, the Priory lasted four hundred years until the dissolution of the monasteries in 1536, when several of its brethren were hanged along with the villagers who supported them. Unusually, the church was not razed because its founder, William Marshall, had granted the villagers the right to use it as their parish church and they successfully petitioned to keep it.

      Cartmel Gatehouse, Market Cross and Fish Slabs
      Cartmel Gatehouse, Market Cross and Fish Slabs

      As the second son of a baron, William was not in line to inherit but won fame and fortune through his prowess on the tournament circuit and on the battlefield where he fought beside Richard I. His loyalty to the crown was tested, however, when John assumed the throne. Marshall was one of barons who held the errant king to account and forced him to sign the Magna Carta, the closest thing we have ever had to a constitution enshrining justice and liberty from oppression.

      Cartmel Priory Church
      Cartmel Priory Church

      In September 2015, to mark the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta, Cartmel hosted a magical Son et Lumière. Projected on to the wall of the Priory church at dusk, the spectacle celebrated William Marshall’s legacy. At the climax of the show, a knight in shining armour galloped into the churchyard on a magnificent black charger; reared up, holding sword aloft, then galloped back into the darkness.

      Under the steel helmet was Tracey Venter of Black Horses Friesians astride her fine Friesian stallion, Droomwalls. Tracey later told me her field of vision was so restricted by the visor she couldn’t see the assembled crowd. She said if she’d realised just how many people had turned out to watch, she might have been a tad nervous (words to that effect anyway).

      Tracey Venter as William Marshall
      Tracey Venter as William Marshall at the day-time pageant, photo by Sandy Kitching

      From the square, I walk out past Cartmel’s intimate racecourse (another diamond) and follow the country lanes to Field Broughton; then back, via Barber Green, to High Newton and The Crown Inn, where a roaring fire and fine selection of local beers await. On offer is William Marshall Crusader Ale from the Cartmel Brewery, but there’s also award winning Loweswater Gold and beautifully balanced Hawkshead Bitter. Oh the agony of choice! Then again, this is my local – I don’t have to drive anywhere. I think I might just see a solution.


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