Grisedale

Monday, 30th August
11.8 Km (7.5 miles) - Time : 3:45
Map - OL19 - Howgill Fells

Round Ing - Grisedale, North Yorkshire

 

 

A couple of weeks since we've been walking due to holidays abroad but a glorious sunny Bank Holiday Monday was too good to miss and this was a walk back into my family history.  Round Ing - a lonely and secluded farm at the top of Grisedale is where my maternal grandmother was born.  Indeed when she and my grandfather moved to the village of Langcliffe they called their house Grisedale a name, I believe, it is still known by.

The walk started just below Garsdale Station  (SD 788918). This is a good 1 1/2 drive from home but just getting out of the car felt special and, with bright blue sky, we knew we were in for a good day's walking. 

The path from the bottom of the steep incline up to the station is easily found and within minutes we were in the seclusion of Grisedale itself.  Grisedale shot to some prominence thanks to a television documentary "The Dale That Died".  It was once home to some fourteen families but during the fifties and sixties they all moved away and gave up farming in these remote surroundings.  Apparently, the Dale has now seen something of a recovery and many of the old farms now have residents but, as we found, Round Ing, right at the end of the Dale is beyond any kind of repair and is simply a fallen down ruin with no vehicular access at all.

The first part of the route was a simple stroll up the dale.  Whilst the footpaths are indistinct, the waymarks are, in the main, well maintained and show the way up the dale - some of it accompanied by the beck that runs down the dale until we reached Round Ing (SD 764941).

After lunch in bright sunshine our route took us down the side of the valley and then up and over Grisedale Common. This was the high point of the route at some 450m. We then dropped off the top of the common towards Lunds, where we saw a deserted chapel, with gravestones from the late 19th century and headed down the valley past the delightful Ure Force Rigg before taking a (enforced!) break at the Moorcock Inn.

The last section proved a bonus as a new (not marked on the map, anyway!) bridleway allowed us to walk alongside the Settle-Carlisle railway and underneath Dandrymire Viaduct bringing us out just below the station and a couple of metres from the car.

Fantastic weather always adds to a walk and throughout we had bright sunshine with hardly a cloud in the sky.  The fact that we took in some of my family history was a bonus.  How my Great-Grandparents survived and brought up children in such remote surroundings (and in the early part of the twentieth century when cars/land rovers weren't around) amazes me. Sad that the farm is now now in such disrepair that it will never be a habitation again but it is good to see that the Dale is not Dead but remains a tranquil and remote spot.

Link to some photos.