Wanderung 25

Fall Follies

August - September 2011


 

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Friday, August 12th, 2011: Tarn Hows

Bob:

In the middle of the night I awakened with that horrible "you've forgotten to do something important" feeling. In this case, the "something important" was submitting the menu choices for the breakfast meal that was included will our "Bed and Breakfast" room. We were supposed to leave it downstairs before retiring for the night, but we had both been so wet, tired, and sore that we had forgotten all about it. I had visions of being forced to the expedient of just consuming cold cereal for breakfast, which would have left me awfully hungry in the middle of the day, but as it turned out my fears were unjustified as our hostess simply decided that we would want the same breakfast and went ahead and prepared that. Bless her heart!

Although my fears for a diminished breakfast were unfounded, my hope for a clear, sunny day was also doomed to disappointment as the morning dawned overcast with a light rain. We thought it over during breakfast and decided that since the rain wasn't pouring down and I had my new "crushable, packable" rain hat (my new best friend!), we could do one of the most acclaimed walks in the Lake District, the short circuit hike around Tarn Hows. A "tarn" in this case means a small lake, and Tarn Hows was reputed to be one of the most scenically situated ones in the Lake District.

So we drove off (slowly!) following the GPS's suggested route to the parking space inside the National Trust park. I had hoped that the parking would be free as it would be in most if not all U.S. National Parks, but I espied the dratted parking fee machine as we entered the lot and just knew we would take a shellacking to park for our walk. It turned out to cost £ 4 for exactly two hours, which we thought would be about right for the walk.

It was raining steadily by then and we were only the second car in a fairly large carpark (American: parking lot), so I just pulled into a space, ponied up the parking fee, and set off for our walk. For that walk we followed the route suggested by Frank Duerden in his book, "Best Walks In The Lake District" (2006 Revision by Tom Holman: Walk # 3, Tarn Hows). The route started off simply enough by circling clockwise down through some old farm pasturelands and then back up along the stream that is the outflow from Tarn Hows.

Monika:

The rain was back this morning, and we decided to do the shorter loop around Tarn Hows. This is supposed to be a particularly beautiful tarn (or little lake). However, it was a lake created in the 19th century by daming the little stream and turning a really small tarn into a rather scenic lake that had been given to the National Trust. They built a rather nice 2.5 mile walk around the lake and added a couple of car parks. I marked a spot on our GPS where we thought the car park might be and let it guide us along Bob's favorite one lane roads. Since we were early, before 10, we did not have much traffic coming against us and got to the parking lot unscathed.

Tarn Hows is one of the obvious family outings, since it is a relatively short and easy walk. That is why we had thought of doing it today, on Friday, before the weekend might bring a lot more people. The parking lot was empty and we payed the rather steep parking fee of £ 4 for only two hours.

Bob:

It was, of course, raining steadily by the time we set off, and since the ground was super-saturated due to the torrential rains a couple days back, the water was all just running off into the path. The downside of all that extra water was that sections of the trail were big puddles and we had to watch our footing. But it didn't seem to bother the sheep we passed who were grazing in a pasture next to the ruins of an old, stone-sided barn!

The upside of all that extra water was the unexpectedly copious amounts of water pouring over the waterfalls we saw on the return part of our first loop. There was both a 20-foot tall but relatively skinny waterfall, plus a much broader but maybe only 10 foot high waterfall above that, and the water was cascading in huge frothy white plumes down both of them. What a sight!

The second waterfall apparently had the name "Tom Gill", whoever he was, but I never saw any name for the skinny one. Curious, that. I'm not sure what those waterfalls look like in relatively "dry" seasons, but when we saw them they were surprisingly impressive given that they were fed by what was essentially a large brook or rill.

Monika:

Our book of walks had indicated a nice extension of 1.5 miles to the basic circuit that would take us down to a bridge and then back up passing a waterfall. This seemed to be just the ticket and we set out down the slope. Unfortunately, the first part went through grass, wet grass, of course, so my nicely dry socks and shoes immediately reverted to the wet stage, oh well, I should be used to walking in wet shoes by now. Walking down the slope on wet grass and stones meant, of course, that we walked slowly and carefully. We passed, as per instructions, an abandoned barn, stopping, of course, for pictures.

When we got all the way down to the road by a bridge, we walked across a foot bridge and started climbing up along a gurgling creek. Pretty soon the gurgles turned into a roar and we saw the first of two waterfalls. With all the rains this area had had it was quite impressive and worthy of several pictures. Climbing up higher among rocks that were slippery from the rain we reached tha main waterfall, Tom Gill waterfall. It was truly impressive and I was gald we had added this extension to our walk.


 

Bob:

Carefully working our way up the wet rocks back to Tarn Hows, we started the second loop of the walk, which was a clockwise loop around the tarn. Unlike the rough and rugged path upstream beside those waterfalls, the loop trail around Tarn Hows was a broad, even, and nicely-groomed trail about three persons wide. Since we didn't have to worry about our footing on that section, we could just relax, amble along, and enjoy the scenery, which was nice despite the rain.

The tarn was a beautiful little lake, complete with tiny wooded islets in the center. A fog or mist was rising off the water due to all the rain, I expect, and that gave the scene a decidedly moody aspect. I am sure it would look quite different on a bright, sunny day, but we enjoyed seeing it in a different mood, so to speak.

Monika:

Pretty soon after the Tom Gill waterfall we passed a gate that led to the main trail around the lake. No wet feet on this trail since it was nicely groomed with small stones. The tarn was really beautiful and I was sorry that it was still raining so picture taking was at a minimum. But the ones we did take gave some indication of the beauty of the tarn and the mistyness of the morning.

On our walk we passed a rather interesting phenomenon, a "money tree": this was a dead tree stump where people had left coins, pence, twopence, etc wedged into the bark or crevices in the trunk. I was wondering wether it was something like the Trevi fountain in Rome, leave a coin and you will come back? Bob later found a short newspaper clip that stated the coins were pounded into the trunk and left there for good luck, which seems a more probable, explanation. Curious, we started pounding coins into a tree trunk on the path we walked around Burke Lake each time we passed to see if we would also get some good luck, or, failing that, would at least entice other superstitious people to follow our example!

But all that folderol was in the future. When we finally reached the tarn, I noticed that our side trip had taken 1:15 with the longer part of our hike still to go, and I started wondering about our parking. However, we then walked the 2.5 miles around the lake in under 40 minutes and so got back to our car in plenty of time.


 

Bob:

But by the end of the second loop we had been out in the rain for two hours and although my new hat was still working perfectly, my rain jacket was letting enough water seep through that I was finally getting soaked. Thus, I was happy to get back to the car, strip off my jacket, and turn on the heater to dry off a bit as we drove back toward Coniston.

In Coniston we returned to the Cafe Meadowdore for lunch and I had a tuna salad baguette while Monika had a cheeseburger and fries. We took off our wet gear and thus had a nice, comfortable lunch on a table-for-two just beside the front window, which let us watch the folks go by. After lunch we mailed our postcards and bought some bread for our evening snack before returning to our car and retreating back to our nice, warm, comfortable B&B for the rest of the day.

Monika:

By now it was lunch time and we had to decide where to go. We could go back to Hawkshead, but that involved a one lane road, and we had noticed that people were coming out to do the walk since the parking lot was filling up. Looking at the map, I saw that we could continue on the road down to the road to Coniston, and that town we knew and knew it had a good luncheon spot and a grocery store. When we started out I even saw a sign that indicated that from the parking lot on it was a one-way road. That alliviated the danger of a head-on collision and we easily drove into Coniston. There we parked on the street like every one else, had a nice lunch at the Meadowdore Cafe, and bought some rolls for our evening meal.

But after that, with the rain still coming down even if only as a light mist, we decided to just get back to our cozy home away from home, put up our feet, have a cup of coffee or chocolate, and read.



Copyright 2012 by R. W. Holt and E. M. Holt


 

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