Carlisle & District Rambling & Fellwalking Club

Walk & Event Reports

Sunday 16th April 2017

A Walk

Gilsland Area

? Miles Grade ?

Leader: Alan Dobson

Report by Peter Flynn

Photos by

Peter Flynn & Lauren Sarasini

Once in a while a really memorable walk simply pops up by accident.  We were due to do the Kentmere Horseshoe.  This was cancelled for two reasons – a) a mix-up in the dates and b) the impossibility of parking on a bank holiday.  Alan was designated as leader after the mix-up and decided on Place Fell.  It was such a miserable day that no one showed the slightest enthusiasm for any of the fells,  so he suggested a walk from Gilsland.  Lauren,  Zoe and yours sincerely reluctantly agreed to walk in the rain.  Zoe said she had not seen the Roman wall properly and this was an excellent introduction to a section of it – it turned out she had walked this stretch in reverse some time ago,  but we still enjoyed it.  We followed the wall towards Birdoswald and doubled back along the valley of the Irthing,  through Gilsland again and into a deeply wooded area.  Alan showed us a dried up sulphur fountain that cured everything from ingrowing toe-nails to dandruff.  He then took us to the old swimming pool that used to belong to the Gilsland Spa (now a hotel with a highly recommended carvery) but was now empty apart from a few branches that had fallen into it.  This did not prevent the other 3 from trying out their swimming strokes at the shallow end. They are like that!  A long walk along the river took us to a magnificent waterfall (cf. the photos) called Crammel Linn and showed us the spot where he used to jump in from a ledge about 30ft up,  making sure to jump well out so as not to land on the rocks.  It was a bit chilly and none of us had brought our swimming cossies so we gave it a miss.  From there it was back along the other side of the river,  through the Spadeadam bomb and tank range (“Don’t touch military debris, it might explode in your face”),  past the Spa hotel and back to the Old Meg café in the village for an excellent scone and tea / coffee. A superb walk,  totally reliant on local knowledge – thanks Alan for sharing  this with us.  

Peter