Cumbria: Bootle to Seascale 16/6/2005***

 

Ragged robin   Sea potatoes   Ravenglass

We left Stubb Place in drizzle along the straight road north by the military firing range run by Qnetiq (!), occasional loud booms startling us as they fired over the dunes, inaccessible while the red flag was flying.  Even the nature reserve at the far end beside the River Esk was closed.  We thought we would be able to ford the river where the path came to it, but despite being close to low tide, it was wide and we were suspicious of the sticky mud that looked dangerous. Even the gadwalls seemed wary.  The alternative was a long road walk for several miles inland.  Beside us was the railway line carried by the Eskmeals Viaduct and we watched a train cross from Ravenglass.  Consulting the timetable we could see no other train was expected for a good while.  We therefore followed a trail up the embankment left by other walkers before us, and walked quickly beside the track to the end of the viaduct over rotting planks that rocked ominously and were slick with rain.  We had a difficult descent and a slippery sea wall to regain the relative safety of the shore.  We continued north along here until we arrived in Ravenglass, but the wind got up and pelted us with rain, so that our legs were completely soaked and using the umbrella was a continual battle that we lost.  There were a few facilities in the village that in better weather would have looked inviting, but the advertised tea-room (we were already imagining the steaming coffee) turned out to be a genteel guest-house that we could not think of despoiling with our muddy boots and trousers.  So we just called in at a small crafts shop (in the Old Butchers Shop) for a brief respite.  A pity we could not enjoy it more, as we knew from previous visits that Ravenglass is a very pleasant spot.  Venturing on along the single street we soon left the village at another railway viaduct and a ford across the River Mite.  We were glad that this time a walkway had been provided beside the bridge, even though the ford was here marked with stakes and might have been manageable.  We walked along the head of Saltcoats saltmarsh before leaving along a road NW to Hall Carleton, an isolated farm and a few houses.  Here we had the choice of carrying on to another ford over the River Irt or walking slightly further NE to a bridge.  Given the fact that the swirling river was swollen with all the rain, we decided on the latter option.  A road took us most of the way, but the track off between a double hedgerow was a sea of mud churned up by tractors and we could only just manage to get to the field giving access to Holme Bridge.  This turned out to be a marvellous old pack-horse bridge, very humped, with a cobbled walkway – well worth seeing.  On the far side we walked through a meadow of heath spotted orchids, ragged robin, white sedge, cuckooflower and devil’s-bit scabious, which would have been very pleasant in the sun, but the long grass thoroughly wet our trousers again and filled our boots with water.  Another track took us up to the village of Drigg where a wall by the church conveniently provided a seat for emptying boots and squeezing out socks.  It was then downhill to the station at a level-crossing that was just closing against us.  Fortunately the old station house at Drigg was occupied by a “New Age” craft shop that supplied decent coffee and cakes and also (swoon) warm wool jackets.  This turned into an excessively long break, so we had to walk briskly down the curved road to the shore past a nuclear waste landfill site.  At the far end northern marsh orchids lined the road and we entered a local nature reserve composed of a line of dunes that stretched almost to Seascale, providing a very pleasant walk.  At the end of the reserve a stream provided a good number of marsh plant records to complete the wet theme of the day.  We walked the beach (sea potatoes here), passed the beginnings of Seascale village on top of the low cliff of Whitriggs Scar, to get to the railway station.  The train due at 4.43pm never arrived.  The only other prospective passenger was Emma, a contract manager at Sellafield.  After a futile hour in a bitterly cold wind on the exposed platform, she used our mobile phone to contact her father at his home in Millom.  She got him to collect us all from Seascale Station  and deliver us safely back to our car at Bootle beach.  Thanks, Emma.   Holme Bridge