Bowscale Tarn

Walk Date – 19th August 2014

Distance – 3.4 miles

Weather –  sunny spells, cloudy, with a cold wind

 


Route – out and back

Just a short walk today as we only had the morning available, so we opted for a walk up to Bowscale Tarn. Its a very straightforward walk from the hamlet of Bowscale, simply a case of just following the track until you reach the tarn. This is the path up the Caldew Valley from Bowscale.

Looking up the valley towards High Pike, that’s the one in the sunshine on the skyline. The purple heather on all the fell sides is showing up nicely in the sunlight.

Below us the River Caldew is winding its way down the valley. Those dark clouds up ahead are also coming our way.

Carrock Fell across the valley.

Bowscale Fell comes into view as the path turns upwards.

Rounding the corner we get our first view of Bowscale Tarn, with the slopes of Bowscale Fell behind it.

We continued on for a little way around the tarn.

The light goes out as the dark clouds arrived over Bowscale Tarn. The strong wind was scudding the clouds along rapidly and it really was quite cold up here.

We climbed the fell side for a short way to get a full view of the tarn, found a sheltered spot out of the wind, and watched the sunny weather going away from us. The tarn faces north so it never gets much sun. Its quite a high tarn too, even though we aren’t on any summit we are higher at this point than the tops of about 40 other fells, that’s if I’ve counted them all correctly.

A view over towards High Pike from our sheltered perch.

A possible route upwards across the grass which might be worth investigating one day.

Looking down the valley as we descend, with the Pennines in the far distance.

Approaching the little hamlet of Bowscale.

Its not often you can capture the entirety of a place in one photo, but I think I may just about have managed it here. I don’t thinks there’s much more to Bowscale than you can see in the picture.

We still had time to spare so we drove from Bowscale along to Mosedale, and then followed the narrow road up past the Roundhouse to have a wander beside the River Caldew. This particular spot is popular in summer as the pool is large enough to bathe in and there are lots of places to sit and have a picnic on. Nobody here today though, it was just a bit too cold and windy, and it didn’t feel at all like summer.

The view upstream with plenty of paddling places, its the school holidays and if it was a warmer day no doubt there would be lots of youngsters here waving fishing nets around.

Water worn rocks in the Caldew and couple of shots taken further upstream …..

We made our way back to the plunge pool …..

….. and here’s where the river tumbles down into the plunge pool.

Lots of rock forms in the river bed. This one always makes me think of a big fish about to swallow up a little fish.

Natural stepping stones so its easy to get from one side to the other today.

A natural barrier helps in slowing down the flow of the water. Well, that’s as much as we have time for, so we’d better get back home and see if the person coming to give us a quote will actually turn up.