A summer hike up Clougha Pike
Above: Bowden
C
LOUGHA Pike is the ideal beginner's hill. When I went up, three young children with their grandparents were there, scampering about like young rabbits let out for the first time, all chuffed to bits to have reached the top.
Pronounced 'Cluffer', this is really a heap of gritstone boulders, a playground for boulder scrambling and thick with bilberries in late summer. These lonely moors are deserted except for the birds: grouse can be heard and seen, calling with their nervous 'go-back, go-back' call; curlew with their lonely piping bubble and lapwings with their alarmed screech in case their nesting is disturbed. Very occasionally you might see a hen harrier which has found a home in Bowland, to the delight of naturalists.
Gritstone was quarried here by the Romans for making 'querns' or millstones for grinding corn. You can still find them abandoned, perhaps rejected by Quality Control. Quernmore, the village at the foot of Clougha, takes its name from this connection although it is known as 'Quormer' locally.
This is the first high ground from the sea and it can be wet and hostile for much of the year. Yet in dry weather it is like a tinderbox with a high risk of moorland fire. This is Access land, meaning we are allowed on it by agreement with the landowner, the Duke of Westminster. Dogs are not welcome not even on a lead, but walkers are so let's get on with the walk.
Park at Birk Bank car park on Rigg Lane, a single track road that runs over to Littledale. It gets its name from the vast heap of rocks that rises like a rampart from the fell side and was used as a firing range between the wars. Occasionally old shells are discovered and indeed I discovered one myself once, an evil looking thing corroded and rusty. I gingerly handed it over to the Ranger who was not best pleased. The feeling was I should have left it where it was but it seemed to me better to get it dealt with.
Leave the car park by the gate that leads to the open fell on a clear track, taking the right where the track divides. When you meet a gate, turn down left and cross an area of boggy ground by some wooden boards. Follow the path up through gorse and young oak trees and we come to a wall corner and a choice of two ladder stiles.
Climb the one on the right and follow the wall quite steeply up a bank until the feint path levels out on the open fell. Ahead, a wall is seen crossing our way and we should aim for the right hand end, crossing an area of marshy grass. Go round the end of the wall as it turns left and stay with it till it turns right where a little wicket gate is found. Ahead, the rocky ridge of Clougha stands, our objective.
The path becomes more obvious thanks to the passage of boots over the years which has worn through the vegetation to the brown peat beneath. Rocky outcrops start to become more prominent as we gain gradual height until we pass through a gap in the jumbled boulders to gain the ridge which has a wall running along it with fence posts at intervals. Our path goes right and we pick our way among the rocks heading for the plateau, keeping the wall on our left.
When the wall dog-legs right, clamber through it and continue along what is now a fence line for about 100 yards before striking away half right towards the summit. The scattered rocks clustered around the white triangulation column mark the actual summit of Clougha Pike. Three shelters, open to the sky, offer some protection from the wind and provide a handy spot to raid the rucksack. The view from here on clear days is superb. To the east, the empty moors towards Ward Stone, to the northeast the stick-like windmills of Caton Moor Wind Farm, to the west the estuary of the River Lune and the conurbation of Lancaster and Morecambe. If you are very lucky it is sometimes possible to glimpse the Isle of Man. This is a fine spot for contemplation and I am reluctant to leave it.
But leave it we must and the path down heads west aiming for a farm seen below among the trees. The path is quite worn descending steeply at first then becoming more gradual across Rowten Brook Fell and crossing Rowten Brook whose course we follow all the way down to the farm. The stream has cut a deep channel in the peat and acts as our guide through two gates on a clear track. Approaching Rooten
Brook Farm the track cuts right, crosses the stream and turns left by which time the frenzied barking of dogs starts up. Don't worry, they are all penned in. I can only assume that the spelling of Rooten Brook Farm was to distinguish it from the neighbouring Rowten Brook Farm.
Follow down through the farm buildings, the track becoming surfaced. Cross the brook again in a wood and look for an opening on the right just before a green-painted wooden building. Follow this ancient track between walls and at a broken down gate emerge into sheep pasture. Look for the roof of a stone house ahead in a dip and make directly for it. The field drops away and a stile leads to the access track right in front of the front door of the nicely restored house, The Old Mill House. Walk down to the road and turn right and in 300 yards take the lane on the right, Rigg Lane, the single track road that leads to our car park. To the left Quernmore Church can be seen against a backdrop of trees, a beautiful setting for a country church.