Walk: 11am to 5:30pm - 10.6 miles
We followed Fell Lane up to Muncaster Tarn where we stopped and had our first sandwich of the day, followed by a small Pork Pie and a drink. Now for the trudge over the top of the fell. The views were good, and we did plenty of wandering around the fell adding a few hundred yards to our walk. We were quite amazed as we traversed the top when we passed 3 people, one a woman who was walking in a long summer dress and barefoot! Not something you normally see when walking.
As it was our first walk of the week, we decided to ‘warm ourselves up’ with a walk over the top of Muncaster Fell. A short 3 mile drive from our cottage to Ravenglass, leave the car near the train station and see where the walk took us.
We didn’t leave the cottage until 10:30am as it was raining when we got up, it had been very heavy earlier in the morning but the weather forecasters had said that it would stop mid-morning, and that it did. In fact, the afternoon cleared up really nicely with plenty of sun. Just a pity that the clear skies were on our return journey and ‘off the fell’ so we missed the views that we could have had if we had done the walk the other way around.
The walk didn’t start too well, with a detour of around 1hr. We left Ravenglass heading out past the Roman Baths, following the Cumbria Coastal Way past Newtown Knott – and in theory down to the River Esk. However, after passing the Knott the path seemed to head around the top of it – but this wasn’t the path we were after.
We continued to look for the path to take us in the general direction we were heading, and in the end after some wandering around very poorly marked fields (obviously not well walked) we ended up at Muncaster Castle – so at least we now knew which direction we should be heading from there.
We followed Fell Lane up to Muncaster Tarn where we stopped and had our first sandwich of the day, followed by a small Pork Pie and a drink. Now for the trudge over the top of the fell. The views were good, and we did plenty of wandering around the fell adding a few hundred yards to our walk. We were quite amazed as we traversed the top when we passed 3 people, one a woman who was walking in a long summer dress and barefoot! Not something you normally see when walking.
We had another short stop for another small bite to eat just before dropping off the end of the fell (not literally) down to Muncaster Head. Nice easy walking from here for an hour or so as we picked up the bridleway taking us back towards High Eskholme. We met a middle-aged German couple on this section, and they asked us if they were near Muncaster. They were a few miles away, and neither of them had a bag, a drink, or walking shoes - infact anything other than a small camera. We showed them on the map where they were, and they wandered off requiring no further asssitance. After passing a golf-course, a wrong route choice took us on a longish slog back up the hill towards Muncaster Tarn – something we could have done without after walking for 5hrs or so – but, from then on it was all downhill back into Ravenglass.
We had 10 minutes sat on the sea-front, a nice breeze and lovely sunshine as our feet recovered. Then a short walk around the area – not much there to see, then headed back to the cottage. We did however add another hour or so onto the journey as we drove past Irton Hall when the cottage was, and headed towards Wast Water so we could get our first view of what was voted as the Best View in Britain 2007 – well worth it.
More photos can be found here
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