The Book of Coniston

Our first walk is naturally to climb the Coniston Old Man. By the easiest route, which fortunately is the most interesting, there is a path to the top; good as paths go on mountains—that is, plain to find—and by its very steepness and stoniness all the more of a change from the town pavement and the hard high road. It is quite worth while making the ascent on a cloudy day. The loss of the panorama is amply compensated by the increased grandeur of the effects of gloom and mystery on the higher crags, and with care and attention to directions there need be no fear of losing the way.


About an hour and a half, not counting rests, is enough for the climb; and rather more than an hour for the descent. From the village, for the first ten minutes, we can take two alternative routes. Leaving the Black Bull on the left, one road goes up past a wooden bridge which leads to the Old Forge, and by Holywath Cottage and the gate of Holywath (J. W. H. Barratt, Esq., J.P.) and the cottages of Silverbank, through a gate opening upon the fell. Turn to the left, past sandpits in a fragment of moraine left by the ancient glacier which, at the end of the Ice Age, must once have filled the copper-mines valley and broken off here, with toppling pinnacles and blue cavern, just like a glacier in Switzerland. Note an ice-smoothed rock on the right, showing basalt in section. Among the crannies of Lang Crags, which tower above, broken hexagonal pillars of basalt may be found in the screes, not too large to carry off as specimens. In ten minutes the miniature Alpine road, high above a deep ravine, leads to the Gillhead Waterfall and Bridge.

An alternative start may be made to the right of the Post Office, and up the lane to left of the Sun Hotel; through the gate at Dixon Ground, and over a wooden bridge beneath the mineral siding which forms the actual terminus of the railway. Another wooden bridge leads only to the grounds of Holywath, but affords a fine sight of the rocky torrent bed with Coniston limestone exposed on the Holywath side. The Coniston limestone is a narrow band of dark blue rock, with black holes in it, made by the weathering-out of nodules. It lies between the softer blue clay-slates we have left, which form the lower undulating hills and moorlands, and the hard volcanic rocks which form the higher crags and mountains.

The cartroad to the right, over the Gillhead Bridge, leads to the copper mines and up to Leverswater, from which the Old Man can be climbed, but by a much longer route. We take the gate and rough path to the left, after a look at the fine glaciated rocks across the bridge, apparently fresh from the chisel of the sculpturing ice; the long grooves betray the direction in which the glacier slid over them in its fall down the ravine. From a stile over the wall the copper mines become visible above the flat valley-bottom, filled with sand from the crushing of the ore. The path leads up to the back of the Scrow among parsley fern and club moss, and fifteen minutes from the bridge bring us through a sheepfold to another stile from which Weatherlam is finely seen on the right, and on the left the tall cascade from Lowwater. A short ten minutes more, and we reach the hause (háls or neck) joining the crag of the Bell (to the left) with the ridge of the Old Man up which our way winds.

Here we strike the quarry road leading from the Railway Station over Banniside Moor, a smoother route, practicable (as ours is not) for ponies, but longer. Here are slate-sheds, and the step where the sledges that come down the steep upper road are slid upon wheels. The sledge-road winds round the trap rocks of Crowberry haws (the grass-grown old road rejoins it a little higher) and affords views, looking backwards, of Coniston Hall and the lake behind. Five minutes above the slate-sheds the road finally crosses Crowberry haws, and Lowwater Fall comes into view—a broken gush of foam down a cleft 500 feet from brow to base.

A shepherd's track leads to the foot of the fall and to the Pudding Stone, a huge boulder—not unlike the famous Bowder Stone of Borrowdale—a fragment from the ""hard breccia"" cliffs rising behind it, namely, Raven Tor high above; Grey Crag beneath, with the disused millrace along its flank; and Kernel Crag, the lion-like rock over the copper mines. Dr. Gibson, the author of The Old Man, or Ravings and Ramblings round Conistone, writing half-a-century ago, says:—""On this crag, probably for ages, a pair of ravens have annually had their nest, and though their young have again and again been destroyed by the shepherds they always return to the favourite spot."" He goes on to tell that once, when the parent birds were shot, a couple of strange ravens attended to the wants of the orphan brood, until they were fit to forage for themselves.