We’re enjoying a string of excellent days, one that is expected to stretch out for several more before rain starts working its way back into the rotation. Today looks like it will be the most summery of the lot, with a high pushing eighty - enough so that it’s almost too warm with the sun beating down on my back when I return at the end of the ride.
Perfectly clear this morning. Across the street from us is the pub we stayed at two years ago.
I’m heading west of town this morning, with my destination a strange sounding feature: the Great Asby Scar Nature Reserve, a place noted for its limestone pavement. Here’s a description I found to pad the gallery of photos I brought back:
Great Asby Scar is an area of high ground lying between the villages of Orton and Great Asby famous for its limestone pavement and is a National Nature Reserve because of this and the plant species that hide in it.
The highest point of the Scar is called The Knott at 412m (1352 feet) with Castle Folds, an old fortified settlement, found high on the limestone fells.
Great Asby Scar is another great little hill which can be easily summited. You can walk up from Orton for the full experience, or park besides the Orton to Appleby road to get a bit of a head start. There are a series of paths leading through the wide area of limestone pavement. This is a large area of limestone pavement which is a bare area of rock left behind after the last glaciation. Limestone is slightly soluble in rain water leading to a pattern of blocks known as clints, separated by cracks known as grikes. Be warned - this type of pavement is difficult to walk on, especially when wet, so you are better off sticking to defined paths.
We biked not far below the Scar on our ride into Kirkby Stephen - near enough that I could make out the limestone whitening the hilltop in the distance. My ride today is a loop, backtracking the previous ride on the way up and then dropping back down on the western side. After a few miles of easy riding north along the river I come to the village of Great Asby and start climbing.
Looking east across Eden Valley. I think that gap in the fells is the course of yesterday’s ride - up into the gap and then turning right and steeply up behind the nearest ridge.
Looking at the map now though, I’m reminded that it’s not actually as flat as I remembered. First I have to cross the shoulders of a string of low hills: Crossbers, Codgy Bank, Terrill, and finally Turkeytarn. After all that work it’s no wonder that I’m primed to take a break and appreciate Great Asby when I get there.
Crossing the bridge into Great Asby. The small farming town is split by a small stream (virtually dry at the moment), Asby Gill.
Great Asby is a small farming town, attractive enough to hold my interest for awhile while I rest up for the climb ahead. I’m charmed when I cross the bridge to come to what looks like a bus shelter but is actually a small orientation/heritage space. One wall is lined with a not so little Little Free Library, and the whole back wall is covered with an illustrated, documented map of the town as it would have looked in 1911. It’s really a creative feature, and causes me to stop and look around again at the nearby buildings described on the map.
Plenty of excuses to admire the limestone walls as I climb. They obviously had building materials in abundance - many of these wallls are nearly six feet tall.
The access road into the Scar comes right at the high point of the ride. It’s not much of an access road - just a gravel path really, that peters out after just a mile. And there’s nothing at all at the entrance indicating this is a natural reserve.
And now that I’m here, here’s another short description that gives a bit different take on the place:
Great Asby Scar NNR contains some of the best examples of limestone pavement in Britain. The extensive limestone pavements of the Orton Fells present a wonderful and wild landscape that was once typical of upland Northern England. Limestone pavements are nationally rare and have been extensively damaged in the past by removal for garden rockery stone. Great Asby Scar contains some of the best remaining intact examples in Britain.
I’m open-minded about how far out this road I’m going to bike. If it turns too rough I’ll stop or lay down the bike and walk. I don’t want to risk slashing a tire on the limestone if it seems sharp-edged.
I’m really surprised to find a large open space surrounded by this unbroken wall, with the exterior largely cleared of the limestone. Hard to imagine anyone trying to farm up here, but I see from the blurb at the top that there was an old fortified settlement up here, so perhaps this is the remains of that.
I make it out nearly to the end of the mile-long road before turning back, and then am back to pavement without any apparent tire or derailleur damage. I have picked up a slight rattle from bouncing over the rocks though. Something has worked itself lose, and it worries me when I can’t locate it after getting off and testing everything out several times. It makes me anxious and cautious on the long descent, fearful that there’s something wrong that might cause a failure.
Did you remember? I’m pretty sure we’re looking down on that walled green meadow from the earlier shot.
I bottom out at Orton and then turn east. I stop almost right away though because my mirror is really loose and has turned 180 degrees, helping no one. I tighten it down, and when I start biking again the disturbing rattling sound has gone.
And of course you remember this, since it’s from only two frames back. This is the All Saints Church in Orton. This is the first British church with a whitewashed tower that I remember seeing.
There’s still another twelve miles in the ride, and it surprises me that they’re the best of the circuit. Nothing dramatic, just a beautiful traverse on an empty road through the depression below the hill I’ve just stared down from.
The view north. The Scar must be just beyond the bend in the hill. From the description of the Scar I think this formation must be Orton Fells.
There’s another modest climb on the way back, one that gets me briefly into the snow pole zone. Just to the right is the Little Asby Scar, I see when I look at the map again.
I make it back to town around four. I see that Rachael’s still up the hill working her way down from the Nine Standards; so with dinner at least an hour away (and at a Chinese restaurant at that, which probably will just offer the usual Chinese exports) it seems smart to stop in at a shop and test out a local beer with more character. When she hands it over, the shopkeeper looks at me and suggests that perhaps I could use it. She’s not wrong.
Borrowdale! I biked past this place two years go on a day ride from Keswick.
