12th October 2023 - Helton Tarn. Witherslack
Helton Tarn! A venue on private land I have intended to visit for ages, albeit only a short diversion from a public footpath.
After a morning of faffing at home off I drove the twenty minutes to Witherslack, and parked just beyond the church.
I was off on foot by11:50 with blue sky and a nip in the air, and quiet road walking for starters, except I was nearly "mown" down by a tractor cutting grass verges. After a bit of road it was onto a track and field paths.
Off and on I could hear another tractor in the distance, and every so often the sound of quarried limestone being tipped into a wagon somewhere hidden in the woods a mile or so away I guessed, and once a helicopter, noisy as it battled against the wind, and later less noisy as it returned downwind. In between I "heard" silence and enjoyed the tranquility surrounded by hills with speculation for future ridge walks, and closer, vibrant green pasture dotted with white limestone outcrops. One of the outcrops provided perfect seating for a sandwich stop. Before that I had taken the diversion from the footpath to a point where I had hoped, from the limited information on the map, I would be able to view Helton Tarn. That hope was squelched. That end of the tarn was surrounded by trees growing out of shoulder high marsh grass, brambles and swamp underfoot - quite impenetrable and no sight of the tarn, and so my thoughst of a walk enhanced with an objective were extinguished so I continued round the perimeter of the field to avoid a flock of sheep at peace in the centre. The next field was traversed for only about thirty yards but I was followed by three or four young cows ambling gently motivated by their innate curiosity. They appeared a bit put out as I looked back at them watching me close the gate to exit their field.
Whilst munching my prawn and mayo sandwich I spotted a deer about three fields away. He was a decent sized stag walking slowly. He came to the corner of a field and a gate. I could see him weighing up this supposed impasse then he went briefly into reverse and took a leisurely leap over the gate. I watched him for another five minutes or so making his lonely way slowly across the landscape.
A pleassnt trip through a mature wood followed after my lunch stop. A sign at the entrance said "Conservation Area" with warnings to stick to the footpath and keep dogs on leads. In my opinion the word conservation was a euphemism for extermination of everything else in favour of the pheasants evidenced by those blue plastic feeding butts scattered throughout the wood.
Back out onto a narrow minor road I had another couple of moments of potential annihilation by tractors. Just before branching off the road from a slightly elevated position I managed to get a photo of a thin sliver of Helton Tarn marginally highlighted by the sun which you may see if you look very carefully at the photo below. Whether I can say if my objective was achieved or not is of no matter, I had experienced a period of pleasurable solace away from the happenings in the Big Wide World.
A pleasant green path followed the river Winster, the outflow from the tarn, down to more roads and a track back to Witherslack church and my car.
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| Just off from the car |
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| Leaving the tarmac |
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| This and below - the nearest I got to Helton Tarn. |
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| The cows looking fed up as they watched me closing the gate |
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| Crossing the River Winster upstream of Helton Tarn |
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| The deer. This photo is on the full but limited zoom of my Olympus TG6 Tough and below the deer enlarged from that photo. Goodness knows how many times the deer is actually enlarged but it is a tribute to these modern cameras. |
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| Entering the " |
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| Mission accomplished? |
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| Start and finish, Witherslack Church, bottom right.anti-clockwise. |
I remember a day somewhere in the south Lakes when I took you and JD on a walk to some waterfalls. We could just about hear them, but even I couldn't convince myself or you that we saw them. Same with you tarn - good try.
ReplyDeleteBonus seeing a stag though.
On the shooting estates around here there are lots of 'Conservation Areas' - never seen a single animal or bird in them. Enough said.
BC - I thought you may rise to the waterfall one
ReplyDeletehttps://conradwalks.blogspot.com/2018/11/waterfalls-i-have-not-visited.html
I was going to title this one Tarns I Haven't Visited"
Some things remain deep in the psyche.
ReplyDeleteWhat next 'Days out long forgotten'?
Bowlandclimber - who?
A photograph of the stag jumping would have been a treasure but it would have meant fiddling - probably in desperation - with the camera and thus missing the event in real time (ie, seeing it directly with one's eyes and not via technology, the whole thing - background and foreground, experiencing the tension within us as the animal prepared its body, an immediate appreciation of its grace, etc, etc). When looking at some remarkable photo it is as well to remind ourselves that this was achieved by the photographer's willingness to sacrifice the real thing for a record of the real thing. It says something about professional photographers (I've worked with many of them as a journalist) that's probably better witheld.
ReplyDeleteRR - Am interesting comment. There was no way I would have got a shot of the leap - I could hardly see the stag in the viewfinder even on full zoom, I just pressed the shutter and hoped I had found it. However, all was not lost in terms of securing something artistic for the record rather than just the valuable memory - I felt motivated to versify - see my next post. Some may disagree with use of the aforementioned "artistic."
ReplyDeleteI'm a little behind the times. Better late than never?
ReplyDeleteYes, mission accomplished, I would say, but the real question was whether the level of accomplishment of the mission justified the risk posed by all those tractors?
I won't say I overdo hyperbole but perhaps there was a bit of blogger's licence with the tractors. If you read on, skip the poem in "Awareness" and read the revised version in the following post "Exploration Innate?"
ReplyDelete