ACROSS LAKELAND - A Northern Coast to Coast Walk: From St Bees to Robin Hood's Bay - page 16

Between Sandwith and Cleator we find ourselves threading a tapestry of patterned
fields and flower-decked lanes that try to shrug off the nearby urban influence, and in
spring and early summer are sure to have botanists dragging their feet. (Author's com-
ment: having experienced the walk and its floral richness in its entirety more than once,
I'm of the view that botanists might well be advised to keep the days short, add an ex-
tra week, and either travel alone or with very understanding and sympathetic friends!)
Once through the underpass, bear half-left across a meadow to a group
of trees, and then follow a hedgerow away to a field corner, with Stanley
Pond concealed nearby. Follow a fence on the left, the corner of the field
proving boggy after rain, to a gate. Keep with the ensuing fence (now on
the right) for a while, until the path breaks away to cross the field it bor-
ders. More fields follow as the path leads unerringly to another underpass
beneath the defunct Cleator Moor to Whitehaven mineral railway. Press on
beneath the underpass and then choose from two options.
Either (a) ascend easily to a gated access onto the A595 near Scalegill
Hall. Keep ahead across the A595 and head for Moor Row along a metalled
roadway, and at a T-junction near the post office, turn right.
Or (b) immediately after the underpass go up steps on the right to gain
the trackbed of the old railway, and follow this as it passes beneath both
the A595 and then Scalegill Road to reach Moor Road, where you can turn
right again into Dalzell Street. Walk down the street to meet (a) at a T-
junction, and there continue ahead. Moor Row is a small industrial village of grey
Victorian terraces, in its heyday a busy railway meeting point, operating passenger and
mineral lines, now merely a forlorn reminder of past glories.
Now leave the village, climbing steadily. Shortly, over a brow, depart
the lane at a kissing-gate on the left giving access to a field. Keep ahead,
passing through a succession of gates and crossing another old railway
line, until you meet the edge of Cleator at its cricket ground, from where
a metalled roadway leads into the main street. In the distance, a little nearer
than the main Lakeland fells, a rounded grassy dome has been looming ever larger. This
is Dent fell, a Lakeland 'hors d'oeuvre', all too soon to be encountered.
CLEATOR
Cleator, alas, is like so many of the villages that in this part of Lakeland were dependent
on mining for their well-being and prosperity, and has clearly seen better days. The
growth of the iron-ore industry, and the rapid building of simple, unattractive terraced
houses to meet the demands of miners, destroyed much of the village's former charm
and character. Affected as it was, Cleator was not alone in feeling the impact of indus-
trial expansion.