Carlisle; Tuesday, 26 May, 2009

The pain in my foot had suddenly come on nearly three weeks earlier. I’d gone to bed fine and woken up with an aching ankle. Since then it had gotten better then worse again, and yesterday had been the worst ever. So it was with quite some surprise that I woke up with no pain. I got out of bed and put my weight on my foot, getting ready for inevitable shooting pain and collapse back onto the bed, but nothing came. As quickly as it had come, my foot had, apparently healed itself. Which was thankful as I had planned quite a bit of walking for today.

First stop, once again, was the station for another early train, and another special ticket, this time a “North West Round Robin” which takes in one of the most famous lines in the country, the Settle to Carlisle line. For such a famous line the frequency of trains is even less than the previous days Cumbrian coast line, but then there was a time when there could have been no trains. The line came within weeks of being shut (they had even put up the closure notices with the confirmed closure date before a final last minute reprieve). Today, it’s a booming line, though the 8:53 this morning only had a spattering of people as it pulled out of Carlisle.

By the time we reached Dent, the highest station in England, the train was bustling with most seats taken, hill walking equipment strewn around the carriage, and a guide from the friends of the Settle and Carlisle line pointing out key sights.

From Dent the line descends to one of the most famous railway structures in the country, the Ribblehead viaduct. Whilst it’s not as architecturally stunning as the Forth rail crossing, and there are considerably longer viaducts and bridges elsewhere in the country, the sheer beauty of the scenery that it crosses is hard to beat. Just at the end of the viaduct, situated in the middle of nowhere, is Ribblehead station, here you can disembark and take in the viaduct, or go walking, but I had a cunning plan. Rather then spending three hours at Ribblehead, where I was sure after looking at the viaduct I would have to find something to do for nearly three hours, I stayed on the train to Settle, where I would have an hour to look around there, before catching the train back to Ribblehead, and then catching the next train back towards Settle and beyond.

Settle was a pleasant market town, with a lively market and a small museum, though there wasn’t really anything particularly spectacular about it. According to the guidebooks the best thing to see was to climb to the top of Castleberg to take in the sites of the surrounding countryside, but sadly, Castleberg is currently closed as it’s unstable. After wandering around the town for about 50 minutes I made my way back to the station and then back to Ribblehead.

It was only as I was walking along the path at the foot of the Viaduct that I remembered how much pain I had been in the previous day and wondered where it had all gone (apart from a minor ache in my leg muscles, but probably more caused by them having gotten used to walking strangely whilst my foot was playing up).

As I had predicted it didn’t take very long to take in the Viaduct and the Dales around it, so I wandered back to the station with about 25 minutes to spare before the train. The ticket allows you to cover quite a distance, though in reality, once you have gone beyond Settle there isn’t much more to see as I was about to find out.

From Ribblehead I got back on the train all the way to Leeds, where it was a quick change onto the train to Preston going through Bradford, Halifax, Burnley and Blackburn. Whilst there were a few small sections of stunning scenery, most of the ride was pretty dull, and some of the towns that the train went through remind you that there are swathes of the country which have never recovered from the industrial decline of the 1970’s and 80’s. At Preston I changed onto the train back towards Carlisle, but then changed my mind at Oxenholme and got a return ticket on the branch line out to Windermere in the heart of the Lake District.

Of course, what I had just done was the standard tourist thing of thinking that because there is a lake called Lake Windermere, and there is a town in the Lake District called Windermere, the two must be next door to each other. With just an hour between arriving and having to catch the train back to Oxenholme to stand any chance of making back to Carlisle in a reasonable time, I didn’t have much time to explore. You can get to the side of the lake from Windermere, but it’s a 25 minute walk down hill from the station, so after just a couple of minutes taking photos I had to head back up the hill to catch the train back to Oxenholme and from there back to Carlisle and my bed.