The Tarns of Lakeland Vol 2 East
The Tarns of Lakeland Vol 2 East
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Walk 6.2: Scandale Tarn and Red Screes
Tarns: Scandale Tarn; Red Screes Tarn
Distance: 8 miles
Ascent: 2550ft
Summary: A quiet fell walk to a little visited tarn and a mountain summit.
Starting Point: GR 377046) Ambleside, by the Salutation Inn. Long stay car park on the Grasmere road.
Leaving Ambleside behind we began the gentle climb to Scandale Tarn. Up the road past the Charlotte Mason College, where our niece trained as a teacher; up through the woods where the path is like a tunnel through the trees; on past Low Sweden Bridge, which has nothing to do with Scandinavia, but is a corruption of St Swithen; and up into the long valley of Scandale Beck. Surprisingly the name means the short valley, but it seems long, and on either hand stone walls rise straight, unerringly up the fellsides towards the ridges high above.
The wall walks the fell -
Grey millipede on slow
Stone hooves;
Its slack back hollowed
At gulleys and grooves...
Norman Nicholson captures the spirit, but these walls are remarkably straight. Unlike the wriggling boundaries that separate the tiny valley fields, with never a straight line where three curving ones will do, the fellside walls above the Scandale Beck deviate not an inch from the mathematically direct line. They date, of course, from the Enclosure Acts.
Before the beginning of the nineteenth century, land was often owned in common. All the local families had the right to pasture their cattle and sheep, each eking out a simple, self-sufficient existence. But there was no incentive to improve and gradually the soil became increasingly poor and unproductive. What was needed, said some of the go-ahead landowners, was enclosure.
Walls, of course, were nothing new to the Lakeland fells. The heavy, thick Wasdale boundaries date back to the tenth century, while in Eskdale they can be traced precisely to 1284, when the monks enclosed their sheep pastures. Even on the Fairfield Horseshoe the wall that follows the crest of the ridge was built in the year 1277, when the valley of Rydal Beck was enclosed to form a deer park. But until the beginning of the nineteenth century most of the high fells were still free open land.
Enclosure started gradually. Piecemeal applications from landowners were considered in isolation until, in 1801, an Act of Parliament was passed. The process was heavily weighted in favour of the larger landowners, for any objection had to be presented to Parliament either by a solicitor or in person. The poor man who pastured a few sheep or cattle on the common ground was thus unable to make himself heard, and when the enclosures took place, and the land was allocated, the rules which demanded each should pay his share of the costs effectively eliminated anyone without capital. Thus in a short period of time land passed from a common holding to the ownership of a small number of wealthy landowners, and the dispossessed had little choice but to work as labourers for their new masters.
It seems harsh, and indeed it was, but with enclosure came progress. Now with the possibility of segregating animals, tups from ewes, and one flock from another, controlled breeding developed, and new methods of agriculture. For centuries as winter approached, all but next year’s stock of breeding animals would be killed and their meat salted down. But now land could be used to cultivate fodder for the winter months, rotational cropping was introduced and manuring of the land improved the soil. It was the Agricultural Revolution and it was to change the face of the Lake District.
The walls were the key, and the enclosure acts were very precise in specifying how they were to be built:
34 inches broad in the bottom and 6 feet high, under a stone not exceeding 4 inches in thickness - there shall be laid in a workman-like manner 21 good throughs in every rood of fence, and the first 12 to be laid on at a height of 2 feet broad, and the second 9 to be laid on at the height of 4 feet from the ground.
Little wonder then that nearly 200 years later the “stone fences” still stand, mile after mile, traversing the fellside. But we have grown used to them, and if perhaps in places they are beginning to look a little tired and worn, maybe it is a sign that this is the end of an era and soon the mountains will once again be free to all.
ROUTE
High Sweden Bridge (St Swithen’s bridge or the land cleared by burning)
Starting at the Salutation Inn in the centre of Ambleside, walk up North Road, once an old packhorse route, and turn right up Kirkstone Road. The first turning on the left is Sweden Bridge Lane and this leads gently uphill past the houses. The tarmac comes to an end at a gate, and the rough track climbs on up the hillside. Views westwards are of Rydal Water and the slopes of Low Pike, the final summit of the Fairfield Horseshoe. This is the most direct route from Ambleside to Patterdale and in 1933 was described by Symonds as “admirably quiet and pastoral, with a touch in it of higher things”.
The trees are entered at a gate where the steep wooded slopes of Low Sweden Coppice drop to Scandale Beck and in the spring primroses bloom in places inaccessible to the sheep. High Sweden Bridge is everything a packhorse bridge should be. Built two, or even three, centuries ago, it has not been spoilt by the addition of a parapet which was often added as a safety measure when the era of the pack ponies, with their wide panniers, came to an end.
Scandale Tarn (Short valley tarn)
As we squeezed past a JCB laying concrete drains, we were reminded that this broad track is maintained by the National Park, and it makes for easy gentle walking beside the beck. The valley was smoothed to its wide U-shape in the Ice Age, and below a little waterfall are hummocks of glacial moraines which were dumped by the retreating ice. The end of the flat valley is reached at Scandale Bottom where a stream is forded, then passing a sheepfold the path climbs the rib between two streams beside a wall.
After a final gate the climb begins in earnest up the Scandale Pass. This ancient way was not used much after the alternative route was made over the Kirkstone Pass, for it climbs an extra 300ft. Crossing the ladder stile at the col, turn left and continue to climb beside the wall, which as it reaches Scandale Tarn bends away downhill. There is a long view down the valley of Scandale Beck to Windermere, to the north-east lie the twin rocky tops of Little Hart Crag, while on the skyline above the tarn is one of the surviving stone men of High Bakestones, where five of the eight cairns were destroyed in 1994. While many pass within yards of the tarn, few turn aside even for a moment to the quiet grassy bowl where a little stream hurries down to join Scandale Beck.
Red Screes Tarn
Retracing your steps to the col, keep straight on and follow the wall up the steep slopes of Red Screes. It is a stiff ascent of 900ft, and as you climb past the flat slabs of Broad Crag, Brothers Water with its square field of tents comes into view. When the wall turns away towards Middle Dodd, continue climbing in the same direction to join the ridge, where you turn left past a pool to the little mountain tarn.
Red Screes Tarn on the grassy summit, and only 20 yards from the stone OS trig point (2549ft), must be the nearest tarn to a mountain top in the Lakes. Yet it never seems to dry up in spite of the fact that it is replenished almost entirely by rain water. There are splendid views down the Kirkstone Pass, which De Quincy claimed in 1785 to have descended in about 6 minutes, a speed he calculated to be at least 18 miles per hour. The pass acquired its name from a rock near the road which resembles a church, and the steepest part of the pass was called ‘The Struggle’ where passengers in the horse-drawn carriages to Patterdale had to get out and walk.
Ambleside
The descent now lies to the south and walking back along the ridge there is a bird’s-eye view of the Kirkstone Inn, while rising above it, like rows of stage scenery, two ridges converge on Caudale Moor, beyond is the switchback of Froswick and Ill Bell while furthest, and on the skyline, is the Cross Fell Range.
It is a gentle way down, heading towards the end of Windermere, following the path past the top of Raven Crag and by a large cairn, then keeping beside a wall to Snarker Pike, Ambleside appears below, and on the far horizon is the sea.
The path continues down the broad ridge above Pet’s Quarry, which re-opened in 1950 and is one of the few quarries still working in the Lakes, then meeting a wall you turn right to a ladder stile and down between the walls of a wide green lane. This was an ‘occupation’ road along which cattle and sheep were herded up onto the fells. With a final steep descent the footpath reaches the Kirkstone Road, and this is followed for about ¼ mile before turning right at the bend opposite a hotel, on the footpath to Ellerigg.
The gated walled track leads by a memorial seat, with a good view over Ambleside, and passing a Christmas tree plantation, goes along the edge of the fields to a little gate onto Ellerigg Road. Sweden Bridge Lane then takes you down into the town, but you can vary the route back by exploring Old Ambleside where Rattle Gill recalls the noise once made by the mills and waterwheels of Stock Ghyll.
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