A Walk to Shap Abbey

The church bells were chiming nine as we walked through Bampton Grange, on our short ramble from Bampton to Shap Abbey – a walk we had been meaning to do for a long while. There’s something of the nature of a pilgrimage in walking to some ancient holy ruin – whether you are religious or

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Return to Murton Pike

Murton Pike is magnificent. No matter how many times I climb this, the highest of the three pikes that seem to guard the Eden valley from the long ridge of the Pennines, I never fail to be impressed. We hadn’t been up the Pike since before lockdown and Sunday was a good clear day, with

Corpse Road from Chapel Stile

One of the loveliest and easiest routes in the Lakes is along the old corpse route from Chapel Stile to Grasmere. Some beautiful scenery and a wonderful paved path some of the way. Until the church at Chapel Stile was built, the dead of the Langdale Valley would have been carried to Grasmere for burial.

A Kinder Sort Of Landowner – the Keswick Trespasses

In my last walking blog I related how the Spencer-Bell family tried to deny public access to the woodlands of Fawe Park, on the western shores of Derwent Water. Although the Keswick protestors of 1887 achieved a victory in tearing down the Spencer- Bell barricades, there is little public access even today, either to the

No Trespassing in the Lake District

The Holiday Fellowship (HF) has always been a mainstay of the rambling movement. As I recall, its founder, T. Arthur Leonard, was the first president of the Ramblers Association. He set up the HF on the grounds that his previous creation, the CHA, had become too middle-class and was ignoring the holiday needs of working