Issue 90 Sneak Peek!

Classic Ride: Walna Scar Road.

Feast your eyes on some Cumbrian loveliness, courtesy of this issue’s Classic Ride.

Words by Barney Marsh, pictures by Steve Makin.

This ride has its roots in a recent stag do, during which we managed to ride (admittedly ridiculously hungover) pretty much this entire route, backwards. I am here to tell you, right now, it’s much, much better this way round.

Torver (originally ‘torf erg’, which is Norse for turf-roofed hut) is a small hamlet just south of Coniston. Things have come on a bit since the place was named, happily, and it’s a fine place to start the ride, although the buildings are disappointingly bereft of green roofs. Not only does it have an excellent pub and deli in the Wilson Arms – for pre-ride snack acquisition and post-ride thirst slaking and food inhalation respectively – but it’s also quite a lot easier to get to than the other potential starting point, Seathwaite, which also has its merits. More on these later. Andy, Chipps, photographer Steve and I park by the pub, which also has a large car park at the back. The pub is happy for folk to park there, depending on numbers, but have asked that riders please pop in to let them know before setting out – especially if you’re in a large group.

Squelch is in evidence here and there

Leaving Torver, we head south along the A593 – which really is far too minor a road to have the sobriquet ‘A’. It meanders slightly uphill: no problem for hardy adventurers like us, and we spin along chatting happily until we find Old Rake, which heads off to the right. Sharply upwards, of course. One in four. And, of course, it’s up here that we’re supposed to go. So, not yet warmed up, we groan and creak skywards. Halfway up, we notice that Steve has stopped to take photos so we all wait for him gratefully, taking the opportunity to relieve ourselves of the watery by-products of pre-ride fizzy pop and coffee. A few hundred grams lighter and reunited with our photographer, we head off again and duck into the Forestry Commission woodland that surrounds Appletree Worth Beck.

This is a pleasant surprise. Generally speaking, if you’re riding in the Lakes you know what to expect, and sinewy woodland singletrack isn’t it. But here we are. After a short fire road section, the trail drops down through a boggy stream; once over the other side, the fun really begins. Swooping and occasionally rocky singletrack, with little drops, smaller techy bits and the odd tree to limbo underneath. It is a total blast on the day we ride it. The bridleway works through the forest, occasionally joining the fire road again before ducking off under the tree canopy once more. The best bit? It’s mostly downhill. Be aware that it can get quite boggy when the weather turns inclement, although in places there is evidence that the trail has been (extremely sensitively – nice work, Forestry Commission) prepared to be good all year round. Other sections haven’t fared quite so well, however. There was a thunderstorm the day before we ride through, so squelch is in evidence here and there.

Brace yourself: here come the Dad facts…
Eventually, after innumerable photo stops, and ‘ride-that-bit-again-but-with-more-elbows-and-less-knees’ requests, the trail spits us out onto the road just south of the old farmhouse (it’s now a holiday let) of Stephenson Ground. Archaeological digs near here apparently show evidence of human occupation for four thousand years. They’ve found a Bronze Age roundhouse, a Viking longhouse and early medieval buildings. Not all at once, I suspect. Apart from the views, it’s difficult to see what medieval people saw in life here: there’s no phone signal, and there isn’t a pub for almost two miles.

From here, there are a few options. We decide to ride along the road for a bit, exchanging pleasantries with the few walkers we see, past Jackson Ground until we find Carter Ground. It’s difficult to find out (at least just using the internet) why these ‘grounds’ are so closely grouped. Presumably it’s something to do with a land claim; Stephenson Ground and Jackson Ground were farms and Carter Ground was (according to a friendly old local we met) a tiny hamlet of four or five iron-ore mining cottages – now amalgamated into one house, a few barns and quite a lot of ruins.

A peaceful, serene air only broken by the wheezing and grunting

After some confusion as to where the path actually goes, peering at Garmins and looking at maps, some local farmer-types drive up and tell us that the trail runs directly through the rather lavish garden of the house. Anxious not to cause offence, we dismount and walk through, admiring the flowers and greenery. It’s no exaggeration to say we feel out of place, but apparently the lady who lives there is quite friendly. We hope not in a ‘twelve-bore and a smile’ kind of way. We furtively take our bikes through the gate at the top of the garden, and continue on.

The climb from this point is more typical Lakeland riding. Exposed hillside, the odd alarmed sheep and a peaceful, serene air only broken by the wheezing and grunting of four cyclists all looking forward to the next available beer stop. It’s quite satisfying to see the top of a hill on the close horizon with only a narrow wiggle of singletrack leading to its summit, and to clean it without too much difficulty.

It’s rather less satisfying to look around once you’re there to see the same wiggle of singletrack heading really quite a long way into the distance, and mostly uphill. Actually, that’s not quite true. There is quite a bit of ace, slightly-downhill contouring around Raven Crag included in the deal before we climb up Park Head Road to the top of the Brock Barrow descent.

An indisputable high point.
Oh, now this is fun. Quite possibly one of my favourite Cumbrian descents, the Brock Barrow trail into Seathwaite is loose, rocky and completely fantastic. It starts off innocuously enough, and just when we’ve gathered enough speed to make the clack-clachack of stones under our wheels become deafening, we are faced with a selection of sudden corners and alarmingly steep step-downs, or a sudden change in terrain that causes a brief, sphincter-tightening, two-wheel drift before hurling us down something else chute-like.

Time to exercise some self-restraint

The penalty for failure would be painful, but the fantastic thing about stuff like this is that it respects the speed at which you ride it. If you take it slowly, for the most part it’s relatively forgiving. Hit it a bit harder, and the fun and technicality increases exponentially, as the time to decide line choice is dramatically reduced. Thus, with little-boy-in-an-unattended-sweetshop giggles, we make our way into Seathwaite, and, in the glorious sunshine, stop for lunch.

We all pile into the Newfield Inn and, despite a near miss when a particularly humorous local tells us the beer is off (we let him live), order drinks and food.

The Newfield Inn has a fantastic slate floor – this type of striped slate was once mined locally, along with the graphite for pencils, fact fans – and Chipps assures us that the B&B facilities are excellent too. So, although it’s a bit of a fiddly drive to get to, this would also be a fine place to start and finish the ride; the prospect of food and bed at the end of that fabulous descent would be extremely tempting. As a happy bonus, the Newfield Inn has Jenning’s Sneck Lifter on tap – one of the finest beers known to (this particular) man. Mmmm. Time to exercise some self-restraint.

Chemically altered.
An hour or two later, marvellously refreshed having spectacularly failed in that self-restraint thing, we pedal nervously to the start of Walna Scar Road and the frankly ridiculous sign that permits horses – and carts. I would be more than a little impressed to see a horse and cart driven with sufficient skill to negotiate Walna Scar Road. I suspect some sort of antigravity device would have to be employed, as well as some sort of horse-calming mechanism. Like ketamine.

The little elephant starts to hallucinate after too much booze

The trail starts off steeply, with some loose but negotiable rocks, and some grippy bedrock in the corners. Saddle firmly lodged up fundament for optimal weight distribution (at the expense of dignity, comfortable walking and the long-term prospects of children), I make a decent fist of the first – oh, hundred metres or so. And then I look at the trail which disappears up, up, up into the distance. If you’re really fit, and you’re determined, and you’re lucky, and you’ve not been drinking Sneck Lifter at the Newfield Inn, you might be able to make it up Walna Scar Road to the saddle of the hill without dabbing. Or pushing. Or weeping bitter tears of failure and regret.

It’s quite a slog: one and a half miles or so of loose rocks, arranged carefully with their counterparts to cause maximum annoyance and minimal satisfaction. Around a third of the way up, and after the second ‘comfort’ break since leaving the pub, I repeatedly start to think the rocks I am wearily walking over (yes, yes, I know) are churning and writhing, assuming amusing shapes, before I shake my head and normality resumes. My predicament brings to mind a famous scene in Disney’s Dumbo, when the little elephant starts to hallucinate after too much booze. I can’t claim anything that dramatic, but I guess the rocks are more or less elephant-coloured. I blame the heat. Definitely not the beer.

The last hurrah.
And on, and on. And on. Brief flurries of red-faced riding for the camera turn into testosterone-charged ego massages, which turn into ignominious defeat as the large, tired, beer-numbed portions of my brain round on the (increasingly defensive) testosterone-y bits and beat them up with hewn chunks of crystalline can’t-be-arsed.

And so it is that we reach the top, and the view. Oh, man, the view! The whole valley spreads out before us: Old Man of Coniston on the left, the lake to the right and a lovely, lovely ribbon of twisty downhill stretching invitingly out before us.

White-knuckled, teeth gritted

There will no doubt be folk who bemoan the fact that this trail was sanitised, and thus ‘ruined’, a couple of years ago. It’s not as technical as it used to be, perhaps – but after a couple of years of weathering, the top section of the descent is still an absolute hoot. Switchback after rocky, technical switchback – the same loose, skatey slate as the upside, conspiring with the underlying bedrock to force us into a variety of unwise line choices that we’re delighted to ride away from relatively unscathed. A couple of relaxed walkers coming up from Coniston look at us as we’re riding, white-knuckled, teeth gritted: “Rather you than me, mate!”

Yes. A thousand times yes!
The descent eases a little, and it’s at this point – to me at any rate – the resurfacing becomes more apparent. The trail is very, very fast, and, because of the rocks, extremely loose and treacherous under wheel. But we are only on it for a few hundred metres before we peel off to the right, down to Torver. Be careful to take the correct bridleway here: there are two that run parallel 20 metres away from each other. The one to the west (closer to the summit) is rather boggy at the top.

Cans of cold pop and unfeasibly large sausage rolls

For my money, the other one (over the stream, and towards Coniston) is preferable. Fast, fast grass track followed by rocks and drops, through some sort of old quarry workings, past a magnificent fenced-off hole in the ground complete with waterfall, and a final rocky lane leading inexorably down, down and into Scarr Head, dropping back into Torver, where cans of cold pop and unfeasibly large sausage rolls await us from the deli at the Wilson Arms.