Читать книгу Great Mountain Days in the Pennines. 50 classic hillwalking routes онлайн

65 страница из 71

Their name comes from a small hamlet in the Lune valley, which was supplanted by Ordnance Survey cartographers to give to a fairly well-defined group of hills a collective name; and quite fortuitously, too, for neither ‘the Sedbergh Fells’ nor ‘the Lune Hills’ has quite the same ring. ‘Howgill’ derives from two old Scandinavian words – one from Old Norse (haugr, meaning ‘hill’ or ‘mound’); the other from Old West Scandinavian (gil, meaning ‘ravine’). Combine the two meanings and it becomes easy to see why ‘fells’, as in ‘Howgill Fells’, is surplus to requirements – tautology, in fact.

Walkers in the Howgills are certain to encounter springy turf underfoot almost everywhere, outcrops of rock being few and occurring only at Cautley Spout and in the confines of Carlin Gill. This is free-range country, where bosomy fells, unrestricted by walls and fences, and sporting surprisingly few trees, rise abruptly from glaciated valleys, their sides moulded into deep, shadowy gullies, and their tops a series of gentle undulations that shimmer in the evening light like burnished gold. This is a region inhabited by free-roaming cows, black-faced Rough Fell sheep and long-haired wild fell ponies, and is a delight to travel.