Taking a Walk Grandpa’s spirit haunts the Lake District

When I last walked on Scout Scar, some 20 years ago, I helped my mum scatter Grandpa’s ashes.

I should remember the day clearly, but I don’t. There was wind, straggly hawthorn and a sense of completing a task, I think, but this vertiginous ridge of limestone with preposterously fine views everywhere is lodged in my memory from other walks with Grandpa.

In his latter days, slowing up, he eschewed the high fells of his home county and stumped along its lovely limestone edges, from Gatebarrow to Whitbarrow, with his Border Collie, Tess.

I returned to Scout Scar recently while visiting Kendal for its Mountain Festival. The town hummed with impressive outdoorsy folk. Even in the bleak winter, head torches bounced down footpaths after dark. The breath of Lycra-clad joggers hung in the air.

I felt a wuss taking a taxi a couple of miles out of town to Scout Scar, even though this move sensibly turned a four-hour up-and-down circuit into a two-hour, mostly downhill stroll.

The taxi driver knew Scout Scar from lockdown. He took loads of people up then. It’s the perfect nearby wild. There’s the instant gratification of a low hill with spectacular views in all directions: the high fells of the Lakes, the sweep of Morecambe Bay and the sensuous curves of the Howgills.

The ascent from the car park to the ‘summit’ was a five-minute amble beside pale-trunked ash trees. There were a few walkers enjoying the view: a man with a baby in his rucksack and a laughing young couple, who held their toy dog over the precipice for an interesting Insta shot. Better than dangling babies, I guess.

I imbibed the wind from the west. The big fells to the north were sheathed in clouds of midnight blue which threatened rain.

To the west rolled the gentle South Lakes. Patches of ‘improved’ pasture

patrick barkham

were illuminated brilliant green when the sun struck. Underbarrow Pool was flooded; waterlogged fields shone silver.

The top of Scout Scar was a land of limestone rubble, almost as uncompromising as an alien planet.

Yews clung to the western edge and stunted hawthorns my height grew from cracks in the natural limestone pavement. Juniper trees reached the size of clumps of heather.

A raven gurgled as I reached the appropriately otherwordly hut of stone known as ‘the mushroom’, built in 1912 as a memorial to George V.

In its shadow, people had constructed mini towers from the stone. Some see this kind of mass participation in Andy Goldsworthy-style landscape art as vandalism, but it looked fairly benign to me.

After illuminating the pasture, God’s rays moved on to Morecambe Bay. I turned east, crossing the limestone clitter, a jumble of stones resembling a newly-dug quarry, as if geology had just happened. Sheltered from the westerlies grew ginger bracken and grey-green juniper, attractive in winter against the grey stones, and stunning with the addition of flowers in summer.

Then, suddenly, I saw Grandpa. He was silhouetted in the distance, one of two walkers, an old man with flowing white hair, a stoop and a collie.

It was uncanny, except that this lookalike must be my mum’s age – and now my mum was reaching the end, too. Generations move on as briskly as a footstep. Or perhaps it only seems quick once we are old, and time speeds up.

The afternoon appeared to accelerate as I moved off the scar and into a lush green field of fat sheep. Then onto the road that met the upward march of Kendal’s suburbs, Brigsteer Rise taking shape beneath the clank clank of a yellow digger.

I will draw a veil over the rest of the walk, into Kendal, dusk coming in, rush-hour traffic coming out, and back to Oxenholme Station.

Not because it was terrible, just because it happened so fast. And my head and heart were still on Scout Scar long after my body and feet had left it.

Follow the path south through the kissing gate from the car park on Underbarrow Road, LA8 8HB, to enjoy the views from Scout Scar. After a mile, there is a footpath east back to Kendal – or you can loop round and back to the car park