The Mallerstang Triangle

To the east of the Howgill Fells lies a large expanse of moorland which is known by some as the Mallerstang Triangle.  It is made up of the combined high ground of Wild Boar Fell and Swarth Fell which is separated from the larger plateau of Baugh Fell by Holmes Moss.  On the map it looks like a long day and in reality it turned out to be longer.

Heading up to Sand Tarn from Uldale I realised that the ground would normally be wet underfoot but the lack of rain over the past few weeks made the going quite pleasant and was all the better with the good views over to the Howgills with only a slight breeze to lessen the warmth of the sun. 

Sand Tarn

The water level at Sand Tarn was low and after wandering to its north end I discovered that the tarn was actually two bodies of water, separated by a narrow beach that contained a few completely redundant stepping stones.  From the tarn a takes a rising traverse from the beach up to the escarpment.  It looks steep but the view is foreshortened and the path is easy to follow.  The summit of Wild Boar Fell sits back from the edge and a short stroll over very easy ground gains the top.

Two Sand Tarns

Howgill Fells and Sand Tarn

Wild Boar Fell summit

 A rebuilt trig point within a three-quarter circular shelter would appear to be the summit but the true highpoint is an embedded rock about one hundred feet away and I had to use my GPS to find it.  The views, although hazy, were panoramic.  I could see the Yorkshire Three Peaks, Calf Top, the Howgill Fells, the northern Lake District summits and Morecambe Bay.

Wild Boar Fell summit trig & shelter

distant Ingleborough & Whernside

Swarth Fell from the north

Swarth Fell was the next summit and it took a counterintuitive dog-leg route to get there.  The ground was good, passing the tarn at the col and then rising up to some rocky terrain at the top; unusual for a moorland summit.  Walking over to Swarth Fell Pike was easy and the true summit was an unremarkable mound of heather some way short of the cairn.  I turned back and aimed for the descending wall that took me over some boggier ground as I approached Holmes Moss.  This descent would have been a nightmare if there had been any recent rain!

Rawthey Gill Foot is an idyll under blue skies with its attractive pools that might tempt a dip on warmer days.  I crossed the beck on some submerged mossy slabs and after a short rest started to make my way uphill again, looking to climb 200 metres quickly to complete the bulk of the ascent of Baugh Fell and reach the east of the plateau.  I roughly contoured to some cairns below Knoutberry Haw and headed straight for Tarn Rigg Hill.

The high point of Tarn Rigg Hill is another typically vague Pennine summit.  According to my GPS I got to within 1 metre of it where there is a tiny outcrop.  There might be higher ground on the other side of the wall but I’m claiming the tick.

Looking back from whence I came it was immediately apparent that I’d walked a long way from Wild Boar Fell.  And there was still quite a way to go.  The views were extensive and the lowering sun was glinting off the windows of Sedbergh. 

Knoutberry Haw looked higher than Tarn Rigg Hill but it is 2 metres lower.  I followed the walls to that summit, marked by a mossy trig point, and was glad to have ticked the day’s targets.  The clear visibility made it obvious how much more walking I still had left to do.

Knoutberry Haw trig point

I kept on the trackless plateau to West Baugh Fell Tarn which, although quite open, looked to be a reasonable wild camping spot.  From the tarn I carried on northwards and crossed Slate Gill before crossing a fence into a new plantation in the hope of descending to Rawthey Gill.  This wasn’t the best idea as the gill was protected by a vertical cliff!  So I covered the rougher ground until I could descend easily and then followed the attractive river and its falls to the footbridge that led to the private road that took me back to the car.

West Baugh Fell Tarn, Wild Boar Fell & Swarth Fell

My own variation of Naismith’s Rule said that this route would take just over eight hours; in the end in took ten!

The Lowest Mountain

For a long time it was suspected that Calf Top in the Yorkshire Dales may reach the height threshold for mountain status – 2,000 feet.  A GPS survey in 2010 concluded that the summit was short by 2 centimetres but the adoption by the Ordnance Survey of a new geoid model in 2016 updated the height to exceed 2,000 feet by just 6 millimetres!

Starting from Barbon Village Hall car park – make sure that you a donation to the honesty box – and looking up I saw that Calf Top was in cloud but otherwise the weather was pretty benign and I hoped for a good track to the summit.  The lower meadows through Barbon Park looked very nice but were a bit of a quagmire although the squelching was easily escaped by gaining just a little altitude.

It was a fairly steep pull up to Eskholme Pike Cairn but after reaching this waypoint in less than an hour the gradient eased as I neared the cloud base but the breeze started to pick up.  Most of the steep walking was now behind me even though less than half of the ascent had been done.  The walk to the summit was easy despite a small boggy area to cross and being in cloud from the 400 metre contour.  The final yards used the fence and ruined wall to handrail unerringly to the trig point as the wind blew from the west with the cloud clear to see as it travelled across my path.

Just below the summit I met two fellrunners coming down.  These were the first people I had seen on the hill on any of my three post-lockdown days out this year.

I reached the star-adorned trig point and then crossed the fence to the true summit marked by a small cairn.  With summit photos taken I soon departed after putting my gloves on in the cooling wind.

Calf Top summit trig point

I dropped out of the cloud below Castle Knott only to re-enter it near the top of that minor summit before quickly dropping out again.  Descending to Eskholme Pike Cairn afforded good views of Barbon and obvious rain in the direction of Lancaster.

Although the walk lasted just over 4 hours I still felt justified to treat myself on the way home.  Greggs have a magnificent jam doughnut called the “Pink Jammie”; I heartily recommended it!

Calf Top was my final southern Dales summit and it felt like a milestone had been reached.  For the rest of the year I’ll be concentrating on the remaining Pennine summits and ticking the Cheviot summits would be a welcome bonus.  I’m just hoping that the forthcoming summer weather is accommodating!

From Hartside

The summit of Hartside used to have a popular café but following a devastating fire in 2018 demolition was the result.  Just beyond is an abandoned quarry and it was from there that I started up the partly squelchy Hartside Height to the top; a minor summit at the start of a ridge leading to three Nuttalls.

Black Fell from Hartside Height

I carried on uphill on the west of the wall to be in the lee of the wind and could clearly see Thack Moor.  I was leaving this as the last summit of the day as it is such an outlier from the main ridge and depending on how I felt later in the day, I could leave it for another walk safe in the knowledge that my three target summits will have been ticked.  From the summit trig point of Black Fell the day’s route lay clearly in sight before me but the wall had been replaced by a fence and as there was now no protection from the wind I decided that the east side looked more favourable to walk on; I soon met some less than ideal ground and crossed back over.

Tom Smith's Stone is at a junction of 3 fences but to get there required the negotiation of a significant area of peat hags and groughs.  There must not have a been a significant amount of rainfall recently as most of the exposed peat was firm and without its usual suction that would otherwise try its best to keep hold of your boots.  Because of the clear visibility and my knowledge of the fence handrailing to the stone, I felt confident that taking a meandering route to make progress would not force me off course in the long run.  There were many micro routefinding decisions to be made but the challenge soon passed and I arrived at the waypoint.

At the stone I could clearly see Thack Moor and the corner-cutting route to its summit.  It would avoid the poor ground I had just covered but it wasn’t clear whether the ground would be problematic or not; I delayed my decision to when I returned here on the way back.

Tom Smith's Stone - "C"

The stone is about waist height with four sides and a tetrahedral top.  Each face has a letter carved into it:

A          Alston               on the side facing Black Fell;

C          Croglin              on the side face facing Croglin Fell;

K          Knarsdale         on the side opposite A and facing nowhere in particular;

W         Whitley             on the side facing Tom Smith's Stone Top.

From the stone to the summit of the prosaically named Tom Smith’s Stone Top is an easy incline with a few hags and groughs to overcome but they are not as bad as those navigated earlier.  The highpoint is not obvious but a small cairn supporting an old fencepost marks a point as valid as any other.  Grey Nag is the obvious summit ahead, just follow the fence and avoid a few more hags and groughs.

Grey Nag was the most impressive summit of the day with a stature not usually found in the Pennines but worthy of some of the finest Lakeland fells.  It is a rocky top with its trig pillar cemented into a plinth with a large domed cairn sitting astride the sturdy wall.

Grey Nag summit

Grey Nag summit

I descended to Tom Smith’s Stone and considered that time would be a major factor in heading for Thack Moor as it is quite a big out and back adding quite a few miles to the walk.  If I left it I could come back and walk up from Renwick, or I could tick it on the same day as Fiend's Fell and Melmerby Fell as I had to come back again to Hartside for these two anyway.  I had a good look at the 1:25,000 Explorer map and decided to leave it for another day.

For a lot of the walk I followed a faint quadbike track, leading to trays of medicated grit marked by short white sticks.  There were plenty of grouse about as they flew away from my oncoming footsteps, some leaving their escape to the closest of approaches.  Tussocks were a feature on the moor and I christened them “Boris heads” because they are domed, unkempt, unruly, dishevelled, blond straw lumps but they were useful because they marked firmer ground.

Walking back over Black Fell the distant heights became a bit clearer although the haze persisted.  Cross Fell with its snow patches dominated the view to the south.  In the Lake District, Blencathra, Skiddaw and the back o' Skiddaw could be made out as well as Ullswater and the Dodds range.  The visual challenge was Criffel but I could just make it out over the Solway.

Cross Fell from below Black Fell summit

a distant Lake District

Once again the Pennines proved their worth for solitude; I saw no other walkers all day.

Mallerstang

This was the day, the day when the third COVID-19 lockdown ended and travel beyond our local area, although officially discouraged, was allowed.  And after five months since my last day on the hills I decided to head to the Pennines which would likely be quiet of other walkers and social distancing guidelines could easily be followed.

The high ground to the east of Mallerstang Edge has four Nuttalls and the broad ridge didn’t look to have any technical ground but the weather made up for the apparent easy nature of the terrain.  The MWIS forecasted gales, low cloud and persistent rain; they weren’t wrong!

I parked the car at Cotegill Bridge and conditions were awful.  The cloud base wasn’t far above me and the wind was blowing heavily from the west, pushing sheets of fine rain towards the hills.  I don’t usually plan to start walking in the rain and I briefly considered heading straight home but I knew that I would rue the missed opportunity.  I put my gaiters and waterproofs on and was soon heading uphill towards Hell Gill Bridge.

I walked uphill roughly parallel to Jingling Sike before crossing the stream and aiming for Ure Head.  The ground was boggy for most of the way to the summit of Sails where a circular triangulation station marking the top was submerged in water.  Little Fell was a short and simple walk away and was the first Nuttall summit of the route, but the way to the next Nuttall, Hugh Seat, was a bog trot.

There was a shelter at the depression between Hugh Seat and Archy Styrigg and I settled down for some lunch.  Once on the move again navigation was quite straightforward – with the wind coming from the west and my route heading north, as long as my left elbow was cold then I was going the right way!  There were no walls to afford any shelter and a tall slim cairn below Archy Styrigg gave me some respite from the ceaseless wind for a couple of minutes.  I reckon that the wind was a constant 30 miles per hour so far but it got worse from here – probably up to 40 mph – with a constant roar in my ears from the flapping fabric of my hood.

After Archy Styrigg the ground to High Seat had some areas that, in the continuing murk, looked like tarns.  It was an illusion; they were patches of grey grit and stones that looked like tarn beds but not like the usual black peat dried up tarns occasionally found in the Pennines.  They looked quite firm but they contained enough moisture to leave footprints almost an inch deep.

At High Seat I decided to descend to Outhgill and finish the walk along the road, just to get out of the wind as soon as I could.  I had contemplated walking down the top of the Mallerstang edge itself, above Hangingstone Scar, but that would add a couple of miles more in the wind and I was fed up of it.

I took aim for the gap leading to Slow Brae Gill and had to take care on the steep slope that allowed me to lose height quickly.  Marshy ground led to the ford after which the way to the hamlet was easy.

The day had been characterised by wind and bog and this was not a walk for rubbish footwear.  If your boots weren’t waterproof, they would have soon been found out.  Luckily, my new Altberg Tethera boots were only on their second outing and kept my feet completely dry despite the conditions.  However, the incessant wind-driven rain prevented me from taking any photos, for fear of ruining a perfectly good camera but despite the rubbish weather, it was better to be out than sat at home working.