Ullswater
Walk date – 15th June 2026
Distance – 6.8 miles
Weather – Sunny spells to begin with but gradually clouded over, dry, light breeze, hazy
During the past week the weather has felt more like mid October than early June and has followed a daily pattern, cool, cloudy and showery and accompanied by strong winds. Today’s forecast was for gentle breezes with sunny spells and very good visibility, although the skies would cloud over eventually with rain showers later on. Hmm, we thought, that sounds a lot like the weather pattern we’ve become accustomed to during June so, after much consideration, we decided on a relatively short local walk around Ullswater. Its all very annoying especially now when we have longer daylight hours in which to enjoy walks on the high fells.
Route
Pooley Bridge – lakeside walk to Waterside House – road walk to Ullswater Yacht Club – Seat Farm – Crook A Dyke cottage – Thwaitehill Cottage – Sharrow Cottages – Swarthbeck Bridge – Lock Bank – Aik Beck – Elder Beck – Roehead – Pooley Bridge
Milky blue skies over Ullswater as we begin today’s walk but already we can see that the forecast for ‘good visibility’, according to our understanding of the phrase, doesn’t match the reality. Nevertheless, it was a calm morning and I took a few shots as we walked along the shoreline …..
….. two people, probably from the Waterside campsite, were engrossed in feeding the ducks …..
….. approaching the footbridge across Elder beck …..
….. walking across the wide expanse of gravelly beach …..
….. looking ahead to Arthur’s Pike and Bonscale Pike on the left with Hallin Fell and Place Fell over on the right …..
….. and then approaching the Waterside campsite which is behind the trees just ahead of us.
The camp site had plenty of spaces available but even so quite a lot of tents had been pitched and many camper vans were in evidence. People were busying themselves with the usual camping morning chores or just relaxing in the weak sunshine. In the shot is one of the Ullswater ‘steamers’ which has been hauled up onto the slipway and is undergoing its annual ‘spruce up’ in readiness for the main holiday season once the schools have broken up. With a zoom in you might be able to see that beside the gate in the shot is a notice board which is …..
….. this one, which gives information about Hodgson Hill, now part of the camp site, and the following shot looks back to …..
….. Hodgson Hill from where I took the shot of the ‘steamer’ on the slipway. There was nothing I could do about the car and the tent perched on the flat area at the top of the hill.
As we walked through the main area where there is a cafe/bar plus all the other amenities necessary for a camp site (all of which were spotlessly clean) this mock up of a VW camper van caught my eye, especially the surfboard on the roof. It would have more appeal to children probably than adults …..
….. whereas this stack of paddle/ boards would probably be more appealing to adults. All you need is a hot, sunny day so no takers today.
The lakeshore path comes to an end at Waterside House where the farmer, who is also the owner of the camp site, and his family live. Its a typical Lakeland cottage and is always in spick and span condition. The washing line across the middle of the shot seems to be a permanent feature though, its also strung across the photo I took of the same house during our walk of 18th November 2017.
From Waterside House a section of road walking follows until you arrive at the Ullswater Yacht Club where all kinds of yachts were on display. Some pulled onto the grass, as in the photo, others moored a short distance from the club, a few up on wooden stocks undergoing, or awaiting, repairs or attention of some sort. This is the club which holds the annual Birkett Trophy yacht race, a two day event held in honour of Lord Birkett, whose impassioned speech in the House of Lords in Feb 1962, led to Manchester Corporation not being given permission to convert Ullswater into a reservoir which would have limited its recreational use. It was thus kept in its natural state for everyone to enjoy from then on. I have read his speech several times and at the end of it Lord Birkett had this to say – ‘Your Lordships will have a great opportunity this evening when the Division is taken—it may be late I am afraid, but their devotion to this cause might persuade Members to undergo a little inconvenience in order to stay and vote—the first opportunity you will have had on this matter, to vindicate the right of the House to say on any measure such as this, “Thus far and no farther. Go away. Come again another day, if you will. But in the meantime, do that which ought to have been done before. Produce the hydrological data on which the House can come to a proper decision. Until that is done, you have no right whatever to invade the sanctity of a National Park”. How different our present situation might be if we had independent politicians today who had the ability to write, and the backbone to deliver, such a speech.
Moving on from the yacht club entrance we walked up the lane, exactly opposite it, to Seat Farm where the tenant farmer has Swaledale and Herdwick sheep grazing on his farmland. There is also a holiday park attached to the farm which contains privately owned holiday lodges and also a self-catering holiday cottage available on the site. The holiday park is open all year round but as it is private property we only had the above glimpse of what things looked like.
The path diverts around the property so again we had only a partial view. On our 2017 visit building works were taking place and we were diverted on that occasion. This was where the building works were taking place at the time and it looks as though there is now a garden beyond the slate archway. That wasn’t there in 2017 and neither was all the tarmac. Notice the PRIVATE sign, what intrigued me most of all however was why, when writing a notice in capital letters, people add a dot above the capital I which immediately turns it back into a lower case i.
We followed the path around Seat Farm and strolled across this lovely buttercup meadow where Arthur’s Pike and Bonscale Pike were towering above us. We get some weak sunshine through the milky clouds from time to time but …..
….. looking over towards Hallin Fell and Place Fell we can see that the cloud is beginning to gang up on us.
A stile and a gate somewhere between Seat Farm and …..
….. Crook A Dyke cottage, about which I can find no details on the web. In 2017 the path we were on went straight past the cottage but this time we were diverted around it so somebody values privacy. With all the fencing and natural plant growth around it I had some difficulty taking the above shot of it.
The diversion around the cottage brought us out onto the cottage’s driveway at the end of which a car was parked so perhaps somebody was in residence there. We turned to the right and headed towards the next landmark …..
….. which bears the name ‘Thwaitehill’, with no mention of the building being a cottage or a house, and no indication that there was anyone in residence. The path diverted around the back of the building and the hedge was so high and thick that it was impossible to get any kind of a view of the building through it or over it.
The next buildings on our walk were Sharrow Cottages which looked like three separate dwellings as we walked past. No-one around to ask either so we moved on.
At the end of the Sharrow Cottages was a sign pointing to an uphill path leading to Howtown. We weren’t going to Howtown but knew the path would lead us up to the path going from Roehead to Howtown which we wanted for our return trip. Part way was this stile, another variety this time, which J managed easily enough using the step closest to the ‘grab’ pole. With my little short legs I couldn’t manage the higher step but the lower one I could step onto only to find that the ‘grab’ post was just that little bit too far away from the step! Wonder why it didn’t occur to the installers of the stile to put the steps on either side of the fence post so that anyone could reach it?
We moved on across the meadow with the beacon on Hallin Fell clearly visible although the fells behind are looking decidedly murky now.
Another stile at the end of the meadow and we’re back to a more traditional stile with steps set into the dry stone wall and a little gate at the top to keep any inquisitive sheep out.
Not in view, but below Hallin Fell is Howtown and the ‘steamer’ jetty so we knew that the path we were heading for was not very far away now …..
….. and a few moments later the gate appeared where we emerged onto the path between Roehead and Howtown. We decided to have a ‘Mars Bar’ break here and just watch the world go by for ten minutes. Quite a few folk were on this path today.
Break over and done with and just around the corner from where we’d stopped was Swarth beck and the slab bridge going over it. AW warned against exploring anything above the beck’s lower reaches ‘because of its obvious dangers’. We didn’t even explore the lower reaches as the surrounding bushes and small trees are in full leaf at present so we couldn’t see much of what lay above them at all.
The steeper section of the path across Lock Bank just below Auterstone Crag, taken from the point at which the path on the left across Sharrow Mire begins. It also shows that today’s walk does contain some steeper sections rather than being just a flat valley walk. The doesn’t really begin to descend until just beyond Aik Beck although there are a few ‘level’ sections along the route.
Walking up Lock Bank with a look back at the view of Ullswater and its surrounding fells. On the right just below us are the conifers in Auterstone Wood.
One of the installations peppered around the Ullswater Way route. This one is called the ‘Wainwright Sitting Stone’ and includes a quote about Ullswater from AW – ‘that loveliest of lakes, curving gracefully into the far distance’.
Another look back as we’ve nearly reached the top of the path where the long distance views had blended together to produce the familiar blue-grey murk.
Descending to the crossing of Aik Beck which wasn’t in full flow today.
Shortly after crossing Aik Beck we left the main path and followed a grassy, and at times a squelchy route across to Roehead. The shot shows Dunmallard Hill, the Pooley Bridge jetty and some of the houses in the village. Most of Pooley’s residences, hotels and shops are hidden in the trees below Dunmallard Hill.
In view on the opposite bank is the path leading from the crossing of Elder Beck from where we followed a slightly less damp route over to the lane at Roehead.
I took a few photos of the murky fells on the skyline around Ullswater as we walked across. Arthur’s Pike and Place Fell towards the left of the shot were prominent …..
….. as were Raise, Great Dodd, Clough Head and Little Mell Fell but everything else had become a dark green splodge …..
….. and on the distant skyline, behind the two Mell Fells over to the left, was the distinctive shape of Blencathra, possibly followed by Bannerdale Crags with Carrock Fell on the extreme right. Somewhere in the murk between them will be the tops of Bowscale Fell and High Pike.
When we reached Roehead we walked down the long lane from there to the crossroads just outside the village and then down the road opposite where we turned left at the church and into the village. The Sun Inn is the building on the extreme left of the shot and the parking sign indicates where we are parked which cost us £4 for a whole day’s parking. That works out cheaper than the car parking area at the bridge end of the village which costs £6.50 for four hours. We were unlikely to need four hours anyway so why pay more than is necessary. There’s plenty of space in it too.
In case anyone wishes to read Lord Birkett’s speech the following link will take you to Hansard, the official parliamentary record of who said what and when. It will be necessary to scroll down to the second Lord Birkett entry (his actual speech) though as the link takes you to the start of the debate.