Tongue Stiled and Bog Less on Yoke 24^th February 2007

It was a damp morning and a very damp forecast, so it was something of a surprise when it wasn't raining when I parked the car at Troutbeck Bridge. At the road I turned left and walked uphill for about a third of a mile until I reached a Public Bridleway signpost where I turned right. The bridleway has seen better days; the track is rough and stony, the walls are thickly covered in moss and the layered hedges have grown into trees with vertical branches rising from a horizontal trunk. The cloud base was very low even though it wasn't raining but it was warm enough for me to take my jacket off.

The bridleway leads to Ing Lane, a tarmacced road to Troutbeck Farm; the small road was curiously busy, I was passed by several cars going up towards the farm and I guessed what was going on. Just past the point where the cars were parked I reached a signpost; did I want to go to Threshthwaite or High Street? I decided to take the High Street path; I wanted to try to find a “proper” way to climb The Tongue having waded through bracken and climbed over walls on previous visits.

The path is not at all obvious as you walk across a field towards a gate in the wall that you can see ahead. Hall Hill is the only obvious thing in the field; more of a hummock than a hill and at about twenty feet high it looks more like a man-made barrow than a natural hummock. I was intrigued enough to climb to the top of it; there was no evidence of any activity except the presence of small fenced enclosures, the kind you see around old mine shafts but there was no sign of any holes in the ground.

Whilst I was there I heard some familiar sounds and I knew I was right about why the cars had passed me on the lane; it was the sounds of a fox-hunting horn and dogs barking. The spectators were gathering to watch; isn't this the twenty-first century, haven't we got past hunting and killing other animals for fun?

I returned to the path and made my way up to the gate and turned right once I got through it; I was sure I could see signs of a path on the hillside above the intake wall but there was no obvious way to get access to it. I followed the track until it was parallel to Hagg Gill; I reached a wall just after the juntion with a path coming up from a footbridge across the gill. I passed through the gate in the wall and walked a bit further along the track; as I had hoped I was now able to double back and get above the intake wall.

In fact, I was following a small path that became more obvious when I reached the wall and headed directly uphill. The steep path would not have been very obvious if the bracken had been alive; the ground was very soft and slippery with being sodden and I had to walk on the brown bracken stalks in order to keep my footing. After the initial climb upwards I came to a fence; I was certain I would have to climb over it but there was a step-stile for me to use. Once I got across the stile the ground became much more rugged; an unexpected ridge in some ways but I'm never surprised when smaller hills give me a hard time.

It wasn't a hard time really; it was a good clamber over rocks, much better than the steep green slope lower down. After the clambering I got to the summit plateau, the summit cairn wasn't far away and neither was the mist; it was also cool enough to put my jacket back on. From the summit cairn a faint path seemed to be heading in the right direction for Troutbeck Park; I did check my map and compass before setting off. Troutbeck Park could be described as the hinterland of The Tongue; a wild, uncultivated area where sheep live but I have seen deer there and it seems to be more suited to them than farm animals.

It is an easy descent in contrast to the frontal assault on The Tongue; I was expecting to have to climb over another fence but there was a step-stile in that one too! After crossing the fence the ground gets wetter and all signs of a path disappear; if you are observant, or lucky, you will pass the ancient cairns whose positions are marked in “Olde English” font on the map. In any event you will reach a sheepfold that provides the only way through a stone wall; beyond the wall is the wilderness and wetness of Troutbeck.

You have the option of turning right to join the route of the old Roman Road on Scot Rake or walking through swamp and tussock grass for half a mile before crossing Trout Beck at the next wall. Your third and most unlikely option is to cross Trout Beck immediately and find a route by the side of Sad Gill up to Caudale Moor; having already used the first two routes I was going to try the third. Crossing Trout Beck is easier said than done; there was plenty of water in the beck, it was flowing quickly and about six feet wide at its narrowest point. There are boulders that could be used as stepping stones in dry weather but they were wet and it started raining.

I walked upstream for a while but the beck didn't get any easier to cross until I came to a bend; there was a bed of shingle that split the stream in two where I could probably step across the two halves. I put my waterproof trousers on in case I didn't make a long enough step and it had started to rain any way; I stood in the stream up to my ankles in water before making the two jumps that got me across. I walked backed through the long wet grass to where I had seen the signs of a footpath and started to climb up the wet hillside. The rain had subsided so I took off the waterproof trousers because they were making it hard and hot work for me.

I was walking up a steep, wet slope following a faint footpath that would be very difficult to find if the bracken was growing; I think a compass would be required there whatever the conditions. I came across a ruined wall but I wasn't convinced it was the wall marked on the map that I was looking for; I crossed a stream and continued to follow the vague footpath uphill. The footpath petered out, as they always seem to do, so I just kept going north; I heard the roar of another mountain torrent and followed the dry ground above the sound of it.

Almost to my surprise, I came to a substantial wall running east to west with a watergate allowing Sad Gill to pour through before thundering down over rocks; at least I knew where I was, probably. I crossed over the gill and followed a faint path parallel to the wall; after a couple of minutes I came across the wall junction I had been looking for. There is no obvious place to cross the wall so it has to be climbed; it is easy enough if you find the right place. On the map it looks like a steady climb up a reasonable gradient for about a mile; on the ground it felt like an unrelenting slog for forty minutes.

There are three or four places where the gradient eases and I hoped I was near the summit; in my heart I knew it was going to take forty minutes anyway so I just had to grit my teeth and slog. Eventually the gradient eases and I knew I was nearly there; suddenly I reached a wall junction where it's not much further to Stony Cove Pike, the summit of Caudale Moor. A good navigational challenge so far, of course it had to get worse; it started to rain and I knew it wasn't going to stop. My camera was put away, my waterproof trousers went on again and my gloves were going to get properly waterproof tested.

Caudale Moor has a big featureless summit plateau and no paths; in the heavy drizzle I had no visibility so my friends Mr. Map and Mr. Compass had to get me out of another mess. After looking for a path for a couple of minutes and not finding any I decided that I had better just go with the compass; eastwards it said. It wasn't too long before I found signs of a path and the ground fell away where I expected it to. I was relieved to find the jagged remains of a wall, I should have more confidence in my own navigation ability by now; I knew it was all downhill from here.

A pleasant scramble over rocks in dry weather is a challenge in the wet; you can trust the rock when it is dry but I prefer a fifth point of contact otherwise. I didn't really have any trouble getting down but you never know what might happen when it's wet and you can't see anything around you; not having seen anybody else for nearly five hours just adds to the feeling of insecurity. I eventually got down to Threshthwaite Mouth and started the climb up to Thornthwaite Crag; this is different to the scramble down from Caudale Moor, it is a steep climb on a rocky path eroded to gravel. I actually saw half a dozen people on the way up or down the path but they were the only people I saw all day.

When I got to the tall cairn at the summit of Thornthwaite Crag there was nobody around except for the two people I had followed up the path. It was still raining, the wind felt cold on my face and I still had at least two hours walk to get back to Troutbeck; I did consider taking the short cut, following the path of the Roman Road directly down to Troutbeck. It had been a harder walk than I had anticipated, especially the long haul up to Caudale Moor; I wasn't sure my legs would cope with the ups and downs, especially the ups, of the Ill Bell ridge. In the end I told myself not to be so soft and just get on with it.

The descent from Thornthwaite Crag towards Froswick is quite straightforward, an easy gradient on soft, grassy ground if you stay out of the rutted footpath. When I reached the col I had to decide whether to carry on and walk the ridge or descend to Trout Beck; once I set off along the ridge there would be no more short cuts. I decided to carry on; the footpath from here had been reconstructed in the soil-inversion style, making a good, dry gravel-like surface across what previously was boggy ground, especially in wet weather. The gradient wasn't too steep and my legs were coping with it but I kept expecting the last steep section; all of a sudden I was at the summit of Froswick, that wasn't too bad at all.

The good path disappeared on the summit, a barely visible muddy line across the grass was the only clue about which direction to go; I checked map and compass before setting off in the direction of Ill Bell. The good path reappeared shortly afterwards and I seemed to lose very little height before I started climbing another fairly easy slope; I was wondering if I hadn't reached the summit of Froswick yet, maybe that cairn was just a way marker? Then I got a brief glimpse through the mist of a bulky outline ahead; it had to be Ill Bell, I wasn't doing too bad at all.

The gradient did get steeper and the reconstructed path melted into the eroded stony slope that was always the final climb to the summit of Ill Bell. Suddenly, after all of the grassiness, I was amongst boulders and slabs; I made my way across the greasy rocks to the first of Ill Bell's summit cairns. The most northerly cairn is square-shaped and I'm sure it had a pitched roof on it at one stage; it wasn't far along the ridge before I reach the summit cairn which is the traditional large, round, fell-topping style. A little further along and slightly lower than the summit is the round cairn; the bottom third making a wide base for a narrower column on top making up the other two-thirds of its height.

All that was left now was to find my may across the muddiness of Yoke; unless of course the new path extends all the way to the Garburn Road. After descending from Ill Bell's rugged summit I soon picked up the path again; the consistently constructed surface hardly seemed to lose any height or gain any before I passed a small tarn and almost immediately I was at the cairn on the summit of Yoke. I continued to walk along the path until it finished abruptly and I wondered if it had brought me away from the original ridge route; although the path I was on was obvious enough I couldn't work out where I was.

The uneasy feeling about not being sure of my position didn't last for long, I soon reached a place I recognised; the path on this descent has been untidily reconstructed with slate laid end-up rather than flat, but all the better for walking on. Sure enough, as I expected, I came to a wall with a substantial ladder stile; the wall still has a JCB-sized gap in it to allow a mechanical digger to get access to the ridge. On the other side of the wall is what used to be a muddy mess of a path across a wide boggy plateau; the final mile to the Garburn Road.

I was pleased to find that the reconstruction of the path had been extended almost all of the way to Garburn Pass; only the very last ten minutes was spent squelching through water and mud. The Garburn Road is a good track on an easy gradient for the most part, although the rough, stony surface can be hard on the feet at the end of the day. It had stopped raining somewhere between Ill Bell and Yoke although it had remained misty; by this stage it looked like the sun was belatedly trying to break through the cloud at valley level.

I walked along the track until I reached the point where a ladder-stile gives access to Sour Howes on the left and there is a small step-stile in the fence on the opposite side of the track. I have seen the stile before and wondered where it led to, maybe it would mean I didn't have to follow the track all the way to the road. There was no path but it wasn't too steep a descent to reach the Longmire Road, another track heading towards Trout Beck. I reached the track and turned right to pass above Limefitt Park; at a junction with another track I was able to turn left and walk through the holiday homes and caravans back to the road for the short walk back to Troutbeck Bridge.

It actually took three hours to get down from Thornthwaite Crag summit but it didn't feel as thought it had taken so long.

Andy Wallace 24^th February 2007

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