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Harter Fell, to the right, at the head of Eskdale (photo taken on the previous walk)
With the mighty mountains around Scafell to the north, Harter Fell does not exactly dominate upper Eskdale but its isolated pyramidal shape to the south is a familiar sight. We had some doubts as we set off to walk up Harter Fell from a lay-by at the bottom of the Hardknott Pass. The top of the fell (653 metres) is higher than we have walked for twenty months, since Pen-y-ghent [189]. And it was hot. We hoped that a few days of Eskdale walking had made us fitter. Or perhaps a few days of Eskdale eating had made us fatter.
Looking back towards the head of Eskdale, Bowfell central
On and on, up and up. As we gained height, the bracken gave way to scruffy heather, where we lost the path. Since we were near the top we paused for a sandwich.
Our path through bracken (left) and that's not the top - and neither is this (right)
Eskdale from nearer the top of Harter Fell (the shape of the Isle of Man can just be made out on the horizon left)
As we often find, we weren’t near the top at all. So more up and up. Eventually we could see over the horizon to a grand view ahead, which puzzled me at first because a large lake was prominent. Then I realised we were looking west to Seathwaite Tarn and the fells around Swirl How and Coniston Old Man. The view I expected was the one from the trig point of Harter Fell, just up a little to our left: a view of the architectonic splendour of the head of Eskdale.
From the top of Harter Fell: Slight Side, Scafell, Scafell Pike, Great End, Esk Pike, Bowfell, Crinkle Crags
Symonds (1933) spent five pages extolling the wonders of the head of Eskdale. I should put his words into context. The Rev. H.H. Symonds, later to become the founder of the Friends of the Lake District, was writing at a time when authors of Lake District guides knew Ambleside, Keswick, Helvellyn, and so on but were relatively unfamiliar with the remote and somewhat inaccessible western dales. Symonds clearly knew Eskdale intimately. He seems to have been familiar with every farmstead and footpath in the valley and on surrounding hills. He wanted to give due credit to Eskdale, including the magnificent head of the dale.“Eskdale has a valley head pre-eminent for its dignified and stately beauty ... to find anywhere a valley so architectonic in its composition as Eskdale must be very rare ... the great fells of Eskdale are the head of Eskdale, standing spaced about it in a slow curve; the waters of the dale come from all of them, and all from them; the mountains are a unity, a logical unity and a unity in structure ... the mountain semicircle at the head of Eskdale is a work of natural logic, irrefutable and self-sufficient.”‘Architectonic’ is a new word to me but I think I can see what he means. First, the River Esk has a clear source, arising at Esk Hause below Esk Pike (what could be simpler?). For many of the other dales it is hard to know where the river therein arises – think, for example, of Ennerdale or Borrowdale: wherever the source is, it is probably tucked away up some side valley.
A different interpretation of the skyline of the head of Eskdale is given by Pepper (1984),
although I hesitate to mention it because it may taint your impression of this marvellous
view. I should also put John Pepper’s comments into context. For a few years it was
Pepper’s custom to spend the winter months living in a barn at Cockley Beck, the remote
farm at the head of the Duddon valley between the Wrynose and Hardknott Passes. He went
there after some personal trauma in order to lose himself and find himself. There was
no thing here to remind him of the world he was escaping from – and there was plenty of
time to think about what really mattered to him.
“The whole Scafell massif was arrayed before you now in its most magisterial, crenelated glory, like the cryptic realm of Shambhala. It looked the sort of place that would defend its secrets fiercely. Yet, take the eye away from the particular, the ravaged pinnacles and grooves, let it trace the silhouette of the whole; the mind in neutral; and you could pick out something I had not seen recorded on any page – spread across the sky, a form lithe and soft; a nude.She must have had Crinkly legs. This is what happens if a man isolates himself from femininity for months – he sees nudes everywhere (like those Frenchmen crossing the American prairies to find the Grand Tetons). Strangely, Norman Nicholson, the Millom poet who normally wrote sensibly about the Lake District, also genderizes the Lake District. Writing about John Ruskin he says that he was “yet another of the sexually deprived or distorted who found consolation and comfort in the feminine hollows and roundnesses of lakes and hills and the masculine verticals of crags and trees” (Nicholson, 1955).
She was a round-cheeked child bride from Spain, on her back. She wore the traditional head-dress, the lace mantilla, which flowed away down her pillow. Her head was tilted a little away from you, the Scafell summit her nose. The curved edge of Mickledore was her throat; and Scafell Pike, hands calmly folded on her breast. Ill Crag was her rotund pregnancy; far Great End the unfurled thigh. A comely lass.”
“Craggy and pyramidal Harter Fell is a gem that shines from all angles – a resplendent fell. For beauty, grace, noble defiance and exposure of summit she is unsurpassed. To walk her flanks is a pure pleasure, to explore her three rocky tops a privilege.”If she had two rocky tops then that might not read so well. I’m not aware that he describes any other fell as a she. I must lack sufficient affection for the fells because I have never considered any mountain to be a she (or a he). Nor any other inanimate object, for that matter. Except a car we called Nellie. But that was because her registration number was LFN …
Nearly back, with another view up Eskdale head
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© John Self, 2018-
Top photo: Rainbow over Kisdon in Swaledale; Bottom photo: Ullswater