The Cumbria Cycle Way
The Cumbria Cycle Way
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Stage 3: Kirkby Lonsdale to Ulverston
Things are different when you leave Kirkby Lonsdale. For one thing, the route veers westward away from the Lune valley and heads for the coast at Arnside. For another, the bedrock is now limestone. This light grey stone has been used in buildings and dry-stone walls, which contrast with green grass fields to make a mellow and distinctive landscape. From here to Arnside, the Lancashire Cycle Way follows the same route as its Cumbria counterpart, although it is only waymarked near Arnside.
The pleasant group of old buildings at High Biggins includes the original Elizabethan or Stuart Biggins Hall. With its mullioned windows blocked up, it’s now used as a barn. The present house was built in 1895. High hedges block the view somewhat in this land of well-drained loamy soils overlying limestone. One mile beyond High Biggins, through a gate on the north side of the road beside a sign announcing “Bridleway to Hollin Hall and Sealford”, is a roughly oval Romano-British enclosure bounded by a low embankment with some stones upstanding. Go through two gates set close together and look half left. An ash tree stands in the centre. The rocky areas round it are natural exposures of the limestone bedrock.
Hutton Roof (“farmstead near the end of a hill” - Roof a personal name, Rufus originally?) is a quiet little village overshadowed by impressive limestone crags. Once famous for building stone, long-abandoned quarried land is visible through gaps in the hedge on the left just before the village. (There’s another village of the same name a few miles north of Penrith.) If you turn left instead of right on entering the village, you will find a little way down the road the village name proclaimed upon a yellow metal AA disc, similar to the one at Nateby and just as precise: “London 2521/4”. On returning to the Cycle Way proper, there’s a post office on the left offering “drinks, sweets and crisps” as well as a telephone box. Make the most of these facilities, it will be Arnside before you find another shop.
The Cycle Way goes via a deep, narrow lane, between tall hedges and with a grass strip in the middle, to another Newbiggin. The quiet lane is then more open, looking like an old drovers’ way, and eventually runs unfenced through bracken and gorse at the foot of Farleton Fell. Then it plunges between honeysuckle-festooned hedges again as a sunken lane reminiscent of Devon. These lanes between High Biggins and Farleton are the most hedged-in sections of the entire route.
Farleton Fell (“the fell by Faerela’s farmstead”) stands impressively to the east of the village of that name. There are no facilities here, even the phone box marked on the Ordnance Survey map has disappeared. To the west is a trough-like depression from which, if the wind is in the right quarter, you may hear the Niagara-like roar of motorway traffic. All the great routes to Scotland via the west side of England are bunched together here: the old coach road, now the A6070, the M6 motorway, the London-Glasgow railway, and the A6 trunk road. North Sea gas ducts run underground, electricity above, and there are also remnants of the Lancaster-Kendal canal. This you cross via the elegant Duke’s Bridge, just beyond the A6070. Severed by the motorway and thus ruined, this ex-waterway is now cynically signposted on the M6 as a tourist attraction! Between here and the A6, a mild and sheltered climate, together with mostly well-drained undulating land, make cereal-growing worth the effort - the first you’ve seen since Langwathby. Another thing you haven’t yet seen is a road as filthy, in wet weather, as that between the railway and the A6.
The A6 is crossed at Hale (“nook of land”) and the route then goes into more limestone country with well-wooded hillocks interspersed with rough pasture bounded by the inevitable limestone walls. The winding lanes are popular with horse riders so take care to avoid confrontations with the local cavalry. (You will start to notice blue Lancashire Cycle Way signs about here.) On the only straight stretch you will be lucky enough, if the weather is clear, to gain a surprise view of the Langdale Pikes. (Widdershins riders are advised to stop and look back rather than attempting to peer over their shoulders while still moving forward. The road’s too bendy!)
Finally, after more curves and undulations, you break out of wooded country to a view of Arnside across Black Dyke Moss. (There are two possible derivations of the name: some maintain that it is Arnulf’s headland or hill, others Arne’s saeter, summer sheiling.) Before long you will be crossing the railway and entering the village. Up Briery Bank, down Silverdale Road - and it’s the sea! Or, more correctly, the Kent estuary with spectacular views of the Cartmel peninsula and Coniston Old Man and Wetherlam in the background. The estuary supports many bird species throughout the year.
Until quite recently, the village must have been virtually an island, particularly in winter. Arnside and Black Dyke Mosses, and more distantly Hale Moss, would have formed barriers difficult to cross. Gradually, however, it must have become more accessible and many centuries ago it was a departure point for crossing the sands and still is today. Fishing developed later and then salt-making, a vital industry because salting was the only way of preserving meat in pre-refrigeration times. There was not enough fodder to keep livestock through the winter, so autumn was the time for slaughtering and “salting away”. There were numerous salt pans for the evaporation of sea water. We shall come upon traces of the salt-making industry all along the Cumbrian coast, usually given away by place names - in Arnside’s case by the name Saltcoates Farm.
Eventually, Arnside became a little port, shipping “marble” from the nearby limestone quarries, but even in the last century there were only a few houses and a coastguard station. It was the completion of the Furness railway in 1857, including the 50-arch, 522 yard viaduct that started the growth of the village as a holiday, retirement and commuting settlement. One remaining link with the past is the 1660 Fighting Cocks Inn; and the old cockpit still exists in the building but, unfortunately, is not open to the public.
The village is left by the Milnthorpe Road, which passes under the railway almost opposite Saltcoates Farm. Between Arnside and Carr Bank you will see trees and an embankment on the left. This carried the Arnside to Kendal railway and also served as an extra sea-dyke. Originally the road went about three-quarters of a mile inland to avoid Arnside Moss. Then the first dyke (visible in the field on the right) was built, which enabled the land to be drained and converted into these flat grass fields.
Past Carr Bank, the road crosses the former railway line and runs beside the River Kent, with good views of the Langdale Pikes. Before the creation of Cumbria in 1974, this part of the estuary used to be known as “Westmorland by the Sea”, the only part of that county at the coast. At the Ship Inn, Sandside, the road turns left at what was another of the small River Kent “ports”, really no more than a wharf or jetty, and the site of a “cross-channel ferry”. At the other end of the straight was another port and the former pub, The Dixies, which still stands as a private house near to the Cottage Restaurant. The importance of this port was emphasised in the eighteenth century when the Milnthorpe-Dixies road became one of the first toll roads in the area. However, the building of the viaduct at Arnside stopped all that.
About half a mile past the Dixies corner the route crosses the River Bela. If you are in no hurry, you might turn right into the grounds of Dallam Tower. This early eighteenth-century house is not open to the public but there is a public road through the gardens from which a herd of roe deer can often be seen. Otherwise turn left just after the bridge, on to the marsh road. The old railway to Kendal veered inland here after crossing the salt marshes at the mouth of the Bela by a viaduct which, together with a bridge over the road, has long since been removed. However, the embankment which led to them still stands high above the roadway. Northward from here, the embankment along the coast is a straightforward sea dyke. The rounded hill near it is a drumlin, as are the higher ones inland towards Heversham. The flat land hereabouts used to be sea bed or salt marsh before the dyke was built and the land drained.
The peace of the marsh road is broken as the route approaches the busy A6. There are asphalt footpaths little used by pedestrians, along which cyclists might prefer to wheel their bikes for the next few hundred yards to Levens Hall. This is open to the public, as is the garden which is famous for having the finest topiary work in Britain. It was laid out in 1692 by James II’s French gardener, Beaumont, who also laid out Hampton Court gardens. It was he who planted the half mile avenue of oaks in Levens Park (across the main road). The hall is easily the largest Elizabethan (late sixteenth-century) house in Cumbria, although actually built round a pele tower put up in the days of the Scottish raids some two centuries before. So the raids were a reality even as far south as this. (There are two more peles in the Arnside area but you can’t see them from the route.) As optional extras the hall has the odd ghost or two but the owners will not encourage you to hang around until midnight in the hope of seeing one.
Continue along the A6 from Levens Hall, crossing the River Kent. The route underpasses the A590 at a point where the A6 leaves you rather than you leave it. Once under the bridge the main road miraculously transforms itself into a relatively quiet country lane leading into the village of Levens (“Leofa’s headland” - between the Kent and the Gilpin rivers). This is limestone country, as you’ll see from the field walls and older buildings. Keep straight forward through the village, ignoring side turnings until the next Cycle Way sign. Here, go left past the church down to Causeway Lane on the right. The village pub is just past the junction.
The causeway is part of an ancient pack-horse way across the flat land of Levens Moss in the Lyth valley. This was once covered by the sea and later, as the sea level retreated, the clay of the salt marshes became covered with peat bog. In fact the Furness and Cartmel peninsulas were virtually islands, most easily accessible by the tricky route across the sands of Morecambe Bay. It wasn’t until drainage, under the land enclosures towards the end of the eighteenth century, that the water table fell. This enabled the Ulverston-Carnforth Turnpike road to be built in 1818 across this and Haverthwaite Moss further west.
Bundles of chats in thousands laid
deep in Haverthwaite Moss
then pinnel and stane, pinnel and stane
to build a way for the hoss.
Irvine Hunt
So a local poet has it in words that give a good picture of road building over the mosses. “Chats” were small branches or twigs on top of which the stones were placed. Then pinnel, coarse gravel, was used to fill in the spaces. As you ride across the Moss you will see the opposite “shore”, otherwise the great limestone cliff of Whitbarrow (“white hill”) Scar. About a mile along the road, ignoring a side road branching off to the north, you will come to Sampool Bridge which crosses the River Gilpin and will note with some surprise in this relatively unpopulated area a fish and chip shop. Just beyond this is the Gilpin Bridge Hotel.
Past the hotel, it is necessary to cross the main road, the A590. Take care, for the traffic is fast and many drivers are apparently unable to see two-wheeled vehicles. Luckily, it won’t be necessary to take your life into your hands and try another swift dash further on to recross the A590. Instead, like the White Rabbit in “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”, you “pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge”, since the Cycle Way here neatly follows an underpass made for farm animals. This tunnel leads to the old main road, now a peaceful lane beneath the limestone cliffs, but imagine what it was like when it carried the traffic to and from Sellafield, Barrow, and the rest of southwest Cumbria. No wonder the Navy in Barrow used to call it the Ho Chi Minh Trail, after the notorious supply route in Vietnam. In a couple of miles you will come to the Derby Arms, so named because the manor of Witherslack (“wooded valley”) was given to the Earl of Derby by Henry VII. After this hostelry, the Cycle Way leads back via another tunnel to the south side of the A590.
The route heads across more reclaimed land, namely Meathop Moss. Again, as happens so often round the flat head of Morecambe Bay (and the tall reeds in the roadside ditches give you a clue), you are riding across the former sea bed. To your left front is Ulpha Fell, previously an island but with a different geology from the limestone you have seen ever since Kirkby Lonsdale and to which you will return shortly.
Ulpha Fell is made of older, darker, slaty and non-limy rock, called mudstone because it came originally from the sea bed millions of years ago and hardened by compression. Massive contortions in the earth’s crust in distant times, involving whole blocks of land slipping along fault lines, brought it to the surface here, where it is almost surrounded by the younger limestone. You were on mudstone for the last mile before the Derby Arms, but on Ulpha Fell the bedrock can actually be seen across the fields. Tilted up sharply in rows like the ridges on a dinosaur’s back, they make very frustrating country for farming.
The road here is not well drained and you are liable in wet weather to be wheeling a tortuous route between puddles and dodging the muddy patches near field gates. After a mile the road turns right and heads for another “island”. The embankment of limestone blocks along the west side of this stretch of road is a sea dyke, at least 200 years old. Long superseded by the bank alongside the present shoreline of the Kent estuary, it now has reclaimed land on both sides. But there have still been floods under exceptional circumstances since the latest embankment was built. Further strengthening is going on as this Guide is going to press. The next “island” sticking up above the old sea bed, limestone again, contains the hamlet of Meathop (“middle plot of enclosed marshland”). Coming ashore here at a T-junction you turn right and cycle up to a farm. Take the left fork which scrapes the gable end of Meathop Hall (late seventeenth century) and heads south down the western side of the hill.
After about a mile, you come to the embankment of the west coast railway. This embankment doubled up as a new sea dyke which allowed large areas of salt marsh to be drained and converted into farmland. The route crosses the River Winster here, near a sluice gate that lets it out beneath the railway to the estuary, except at high tides. This river used to divide the now-defunct county of Westmorland from the detached part of old Lancashire, until it was straightened into its present course during the land reclamation. From that time until the counties became Cumbria in 1974, the boundary kept its original meandering course over the plain, crossing and recrossing the altered river. This must have been frustrating for surveyors, land owners, farmers and others when they found that little bits of one county were on the “wrong” side of the river. The building of the railway led to other changes too. The construction of Arnside viaduct caused the River Kent to move its channel eastward. This led to silting along the western shore which had previously been regularly scoured by river and tides. As a result, Holm Island became linked to the mainland except at high tides. So let’s not have any romancing about the unchanging English countryside. The land itself is new along this stretch of the Cycle Way.
The route now follows the railway, past the golf course to the main road at the edge of Grange. One of its fleshpots is the Victorian pile that forms the Cumbria Grand Hotel. Grange was a small village until the Ulverston-Carnforth section of the railway - the last and most difficult bit - was completed in 1857. This made it easy to reach by the growing population of northwest England and the town developed as a quiet, rather genteel resort. Nowadays it is a tourist-cum-commuter-cum-retirement town, a sort of small Harrogate by the sea.
Soon after entering Grange, you pass the railway station on the left and a terrace of shops on the right. In case you think that this is all there is, be of good heart: the main shopping area is a little further on and contains a good mixture of facilities, including a cycle shop on the right as you approach the town centre. However, a word of warning to the thirsty: so genteel is Grange that it has very few pubs. In compensation, when the weather is fine, there are good views across Morecambe Bay from the promenade, including the prominent great blocks of Heysham nuclear power station. The balmy climate of the town is here reflected in the type of shrubs and plants in the gardens and by the senior citizens stepping briskly along. A facility here for the hardy, some might say the foolhardy, is an open-air swimming bath.
The route leaves the town centre via Grange Fell Road up a steep hill. This may be all very well for fanatically fit and experienced cyclists but we weaker brethren, as well as those in search of accommodation, might think of continuing southward, parallel to the sea past the main area of small hotels and guest houses. In three-quarters of a mile a road signposted “Cartmel 2 miles” gives easier gradients, less height to climb, less motor traffic, and also camp sites.
There is further camping at High Fell Gate, on the left just after rejoining the proper route, with a fine view into the broad vale of Cartmel, a continuation of the Windermere valley. Both were once occupied by the same Ice Age glacier. During the later melting, the lower part remained blocked with stagnant ice which dammed the water pouring from the fells, making it overflow into the Backbarrow valley. The lake has drained that way ever since, leaving the Vale of Cartmel with only a little beck. This suited the Augustinian monks, however, who founded Cartmel Priory there in 1188, although it can be a frost hollow in winter. As usual, the cloister was on the sunny side of the main building, but this proved to be a disaster as the ground was too wet and part of it eventually collapsed. There was no alternative but to rebuild it on the cold northern side, so Cartmel was unusual in having its cloister on the side away from the sun, although nothing now remains. The priory church was spared at the Dissolution of the Monasteries because it was also the parish church. No other buildings remain except the gatehouse in the village square.
Several of the gravestones in the churchyard record deaths by drowning while crossing the sands and, in the registers of Cartmel Parish Church alone, 141 people were recorded drowned between 1580 and 1880. An old signpost in the village states that it is fifteen miles to Lancaster and seven miles to Ulverston “OVERSAND”, which shows how folk used to risk crossing the estuaries. This is understandable, remembering that the only other way was by causeways at Levens, for Lancaster, or Bouth, for Ulverston. The overland route to Lancaster was originally thirty-six miles, on a packhorse way via Kendal. Even when the Levens Bridge turnpike road was opened in 1818 it was twenty-five miles. From Ulverston to Lancaster the respective distances were forty-one and thirty-five miles, compared with twenty-two miles via the two estuary crossings. It was Cartmel Priory that provided the guides who led travellers across, at least from 1501 to the Dissolution, when the Duchy of Lancaster took over and paid for a guide or “carter”, as he is officially called.
There are attractive houses in The Square and Cavendish Street and Cartmel is picturesque enough for the most discerning tourist, despite the strictures of Richard Ayton, writing in 1813: “The town is mean, and laid out with an awkwardness most complete, that despises both appearance and convenience...” (Innes Macleod, ed., Sailing on Horseback).
The racecourse, one of the only two in Cumbria (the other is at Carlisle), has two meetings a year and Cartmel is best avoided at that time (spring and summer bank holidays), as it gets extremely busy and accommodation is likely to be unobtainable. An even better reason for being somewhere else is that the Cycle Way actually crosses the racecourse! It then leaves by a gate at the end of the village car park and follows a bridleway through fields and woods to Holker. You’ll get one of the best views of the Priory from here, looking back.
We’ve now passed from limestone to the dark slates and mudstones again. The bedrock pokes out of the ground in places. This is an old road from Cartmel to Holker and on to Ulverston (“oversand” of course). The surface is rough, but only for one field, and at least there is no motor traffic. The field walls alongside the road are made of the local stone and they continue through a plantation at quite a distance apart, showing that it was originally a wide roadway. Bracken and foxgloves indicate that the soil is more acid than that found on the limestone. Not far beyond the wood, those in search of accommodation can divert to the left down a tarred lane to Cark, otherwise there is nothing until Greenodd, eight miles further. At Cark the beck, the Eea (pronounced Ay), which accelerates and shoots down to the sea, powered a cotton mill near The Engine Inn in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The terrace houses on both sides of the beck, plus the two-storey row higher on the south side, were built in the 1780s for mill workers. So Cark was more an industrial village than an agricultural one, although it had a corn mill. There are also traces of a coal wharf where the beck enters the salt marsh and a little port which was used by “flats” - coal vessels in the pre-railway period, before 1857.
For those not wishing to rest their weary heads, the Cycle Way proper continues up the tarred road to the right and over a ridge. On the way down, you come to two mysteries, neither of which the authors have so far solved, plus a surprise. The first mystery is the purpose of a walled rectangular enclosure lacking an entrance, which stands to the right of the road. Immediately following comes the surprise, some signs warning of the presence of adders, but if you’ve survived to read them you shouldn’t have anything to worry about. The second mystery a little further on is a handsome house to the left which bears the apparently insulting name of the Hole of Ellel. Why? Past this point a steep descent brings us to the road at Holker Hall, where the night sleepers of Cark will rejoin the route. Holker Hall, owned by the Duke of Devonshire’s family, the Cavendishes, dates from the sixteenth century. The present building is largely Victorian, although in Elizabethan style. It was built in red sandstone, made available via the new railway, and no doubt a status symbol in contrast with the local limestone and slate. Holker Hall has a motor museum and formal and woodland gardens, all open to the public. Beyond Holker the route runs north for almost four miles between the slate Bigland Hills and the flat reclaimed land of the Leven estuary, which soon gives way to birch woods on peat mossland. Where the fields start, glance at the trees beside a lane that branches off to the west. The first ten or so on both sides of this road, with their light coloured foliage, must be a rare sight anywhere in northern Europe, let alone Cumbria: an avenue of walnut trees.
For those interested in industrial archaeology, a diversion at Low Wood to the Backbarrow area is worthwhile. The lowlands fringing the Lake District have always attracted industries which used large quantities of water, because of the many rivers pouring off the rain-soaked fells. In the past, this enormous energy was also useful for driving mill-wheels. Backbarrow had one of the oldest iron furnaces in Britain that was continuously worked. A weir to harness the powerful River Leven was built, together with a bloomery forge, in 1685; and a blast furnace and a refinery operated here from 1711. Charcoal was the main fuel right up to 1926 when coke was used. Upstream, a fulling mill, for cleansing and thickening cloth, pre-dated the ironworks and there were also two cotton mills. One of these began life as a corn mill, was then a paper mill before going over to cotton, and was finally used for producing ultramarine or blue for industrial purposes, including “Reckitt’s Blue” for laundering. It closed in 1981 and eventually became part of a time-share complex. The three-storeyed terrace houses at Brow Edge were build to attract cotton spinners in the late eighteenth century, at a time when their skill was in great demand. The charcoal was produced in large quantities in the woodlands of the southern Lake District and kept many people in work. The availability of charcoal also led to the establishment in 1799 of a gunpowder works further downstream at Low Wood.
“Corn mill, did we hear you say? Corn? When the only crop here is grass?” True, but bread is the staff of life and without railways or good roads there used to be no cheap way of transporting flour from drier districts that were more suited to growing corn. So oats used to be grown in abundance, and some wheat, throughout the lowlands of Cumberland and the Furness district of Lancashire until at least the middle of the nineteenth century. This reached its peak during the Napoleonic Wars when the proportion of land under plough seems unbelievable by present-day standards. In wet autumns the harvested grain had to be heat-dried, using peat or wood for fuel, and many corn mills had kilns for this purpose.
At Haverthwaite (“oats clearing” - see what we mean?) Bridge the route slips off to the left along a bridleway on the south bank of the River Leven, passing through the Roudsea Wood National Nature Reserve. This is renowned for its variety of habitats, with former islands of slate and limestone surrounded by sea clays and peat mosses - and a consequent variety of plant and animal life. It was anything but a nature reserve at one time. There was pannage (foraging by pigs), cutting underwood (coppicing) for poles and many other uses, as well as cooperage (barrel-making), wood-turning, and making of coarse matting and swill baskets (from bark). There was also charcoal burning and the extraction, by wood-burning, of potash for soap-making, which supplied the textile industry, especially in Kendal. So what you are passing through is just the leftovers from this past multitude of activities. Wildlife wouldn’t get much of a chance here in the good-old-bad-old-days when labour was cheap. And that probably applied to most of the English countryside. You leave the reserve on reaching a former railway track. This ran from Windermere, where it still exists as the much-loved Lakeside and Haverthwaite steam railway, to the Carnforth-Barrow line at Ulverston. The pair of typical railway-company brick houses at Lady Syke are in marked contrast to the tradition of building in local stone. The Cycle Way now continues west to the river itself, which it crosses by a new footbridge at Greenodd (“green promontory”). For widdershins riders this is reached tortuously below the carriageways of the A590 (see inset map). Greenodd was once a busy little port, shipping copper, lead and slate from the Lake District and taking coal in, until the railway altered the river’s course, as it did at Grange. The quayside was in front of the Ship Inn (built 1772), which is right up against the former sea cliff behind. Incidentally, if you’re planning any two-night stops, Greenodd is well-placed for a trip to Coniston Water.
Now along the A590 for the busiest three miles of the Cycle Way, the road runs along the foot of steep slate hills which contrast sharply with the flat reclaimed estuary land opposite. There’s a picnic site overlooking the estuary half a mile to the south. At Newland there used to be a whole complex of industries powered by Newland Beck, including a blacking mill, a corn mill and the first iron blast furnace in the district - another mainly non-agricultural village. The monument on Hoad Hill, a half-scale reproduction of an early Eddystone Lighthouse, was built in 1850 to commemorate Sir John Barrow, geographer and Secretary to the Admiralty. Explorers seeking the Northwest Passage named after him Barrow Point, Alaska and Barrow Inlet in the Canadian North West Territories. Approaching Ulverston (“Ulfr’s farmstead”) there is a wide but little-used pavement on the west side of the road. Technically it’s not for cycles but if you should feel like walking and escaping the traffic for a spell...The chimneys ahead belong to the Glaxochem works, Ulverston’s biggest employer.
The town is also Cumbria’s main centre for electronics. An underwater technology industry building off-shore oil and gas installations has also been developed, mainly by former employees of Vickers at Barrow. There used to be a blast furnace until the 1930s and Ulverston was once the main port of the estuary. A canal was built when the estuary silted up, Canal Head being on the left as you enter the town. Another main industry used to be brewing, until Hartleys was taken over and the brewing transferred elsewhere. Ulverston is the first market town since Kirkby Lonsdale, and is the agricultural centre for the southern Lake District, Furness, the Millom district and some of the west coast too. The parish church lost its tower in a gale in 1540, so it was rebuilt with six-foot thick walls, using stones from nearby Conishead Priory which was dismantled at the Dissolution of the Monasteries. The northwest window is of painted glass which is resembled only by one other, in Salisbury Cathedral. George Fox, the founder of Quakerism, used to live at Swarthmoor Hall, on the outskirts of the town. Finally, no fans of early cinema comedy should fail to visit the endearing Laural and Hardy Museum (Stan was born at Ulverston), which is behind the fish and chip shop in King Street.
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