Chocolate-box Lake District in all its picturesque wonder
Last updated 10:01, Thursday, 08 May 2008
A family walk around Troutbeck with Vivienne Crow
MAP: OS Explorer map OL7; or Landranger 90, Penrith and Keswick.
START: The walk starts from a small parking area near Troutbeck village (GR NY412027). If driving along the A592 from the north, turn right 120 yards after passing the church on your right. The parking area is just on the left beside Trout Beck.
PUBLIC TRANSPORT: 517 Kirkstone Rambler runs weekends only and then daily during school summer holidays (telephone 0871 200 2233).
REFRESHMENTS: Queen’s Head Inn on the A592 on the edge of Troutbeck village and Mortal Man pub in the village itself.
DISTANCE: 5.5 miles
TOTAL ASCENT: 717ft
TIME: About 2.5 hours
GRADE: Easy
OVERVIEW: Walkers looking for the Lake District idyll need go no further than Troutbeck. Drystone walls snake up and down the western side of the verdant valley, dissecting the rolling farmland into small enclosures, and the area is dotted with pretty cottages worthy of many a chocolate-box top.
On the eastern side is a line of rugged fells, part of the Kentmere Horseshoe. Could there be anywhere more perfect on a sunny spring day when the sound of birdsong fills the trees?
This week’s walk starts from near the village church and then follows farm paths and a quiet lane along the valley bottom as far as Troutbeck Park. It then heads into wilder country alongside Hagg Gill before returning via an easy track on the valley’s eastern slopes.
THE WALK: From the parking area, turn right along the lane and then left at the main road. Immediately after passing the church, turn left along the public bridleway. As you draw level with a white gate in the churchyard wall on your left, cross the wooden stile beside the gate to your right. Do not go through the small gate to the right of this. The path follows the line of the fence on the right for a short while and then climbs a low embankment and goes through two kissing-gates in quick succession.
At a fingerpost at a crossing of tracks, turn right (signpost reads: “To A592”). The long ridge you see ahead of you belongs to the western arm of the Kentmere Horseshoe. Cross straight over the main road (0.6 miles from the start) and down the bridleway on the other side. Keep heading downhill until you reach a surfaced lane (one mile from the start), along which you turn right (signpost reads: “Public Footpath Kentmere Park”).
This lane winds its way along the valley bottom, crossing Ing Bridge and Hagg Bridge along the way, always in the general direction of The Tongue and Troutbeck Park. Immediately after Hagg Bridge (two miles from the start), turn right (signpost reads: “Public Footpath High Street”). The path isn’t obvious – it passes to the right of a small mound in the middle of the field and then uphill towards a gate in a drystone wall. Beyond the gate, turn right along the rough track.
Just before you reach the next gate (2.4 miles from the start), you can cut a corner by turning right, down the embankment and across a bridge over Hagg Gill. You then climb the embankment on the other side, go through the gate at the top and go through the gate just above and to your right to regain the main route.
Alternatively, for a better view up the valley towards Threshthwaite Mouth, go through the gate and continue upstream for about a third of a mile. Then, immediately after the next gate, turn sharp right to go through another gate and cross the beck via a plank bridge near a stone barn. Once across the beck, head uphill for a few strides and then bear right along a level, grassy track; don’t follow the track up into the disused quarry.
At the double gate above the bridge that you passed earlier in the walk, make sure you go through the higher of the gates (3.1 miles from the start). People who took the short-cut rejoin the main route here. If you’re ever in any doubt about the route of the bridleway, simply follow the wall on your right. The only time you lose the wall is at a wide ford near a large stone barn – and beyond this point, the track becomes obvious anyway.
Follow the track all the way to Long Green Head and then go through the gate just to the left of the farm buildings (4.1 miles from the start). Continue along the track, following the wall on your right.
You are again following Trout Beck, as you did on the route out, but now from a better vantage point, slightly higher up the valley side. From here, you get a better sense of the many enclosures that fill the western side of the dale. This area is marked on Ordnance Survey maps as The Hundreds.
Having walked three-quarters of a mile from Long Green Head Farm, you reach a fork in the track. Bear right to head downhill and into the Limefitt caravan site. When you reach the big, white house, follow the public bridleway signpost that directs you along the main driveway and off the site, crossing Trout Beck along the way.
Turn left along the main road (5.3 miles from the start). The parking area is down the first turning on the right after the church.
POINTS OF INTEREST: Beatrix Potter bought the 1,900-acre sheep farm Troutbeck Park in 1923. Three years later, she decided to run the farm herself, and enlisted the help of shepherd, Tom Storey. The pair established a celebrated flock of Herdwick sheep there, and in the 1930s Potter was made president of the Herdwick Sheepbreeders’ Association. She used Troutbeck Park as a setting in The Fairy Caravan and several other pieces. When she died in 1943, she left this and 13 other farms to the National Trust – a total of 4,000 acres of land.
