See also: Arnside & Silverdale In Pictures

The bearded tit is a shy and retiring type. It’s a beautiful small blue bird, oft photographed doing the splits between a couple of shafts of reed, mascara markings bleeding artfully down a fluffy face (perhaps crying because it took the splits too far? We’ve all been there). There are not many places in the UK where bearded tits are resident, all of them coastal regions with reed beds. Our nearest is RSPB Leighton Moss in Silverdale, Lancashire, and this is the third time we’ve attempted to take this trip to spot the passerine puffballs, the last two being scuppered by stormy weather.

This weekend we fared better, but not without an unexplained train cancellation which delayed our departure by an hour or two. Having to change train plans is stressful when bicycles and the West Coast Mainline are concerned, because bike spaces are limited and must be booked in advance. (A margarita at The Bank in Dumfries while we were waiting took the edge off). After Arnside, where we alighted to spend the night, the train continues to Barrow-in-Furness (some services go all the way to Carlisle, if you’re not in a rush) and as it travels to Grange-over-Sands, the train takes a straight line over a staithe-like bridge across the Kent estuary. In the dark you can’t observe the bridge at all and it seems as if it’s darting through thin air, like the Sea Railway in Spirited Away. We could see it gliding into the distance from our bedroom window and Hubs affectionately described it as Howl’s Moving Train, because he got his Ghibli film references muddled up.

~ Day One ~

We woke up to the best ever weather, a day we felt we’d earned after months of driving wind and rain and cancelled plans; a pink sky and a low, silent mist across the estuary and into the hills, throwing into relief all the contours and layers of the Shapdale hill range that yawned to the west. We loosely followed the southern loop of a route concocted by Cold Dark North and available for free on their Komoot page. (If you use one of their ride profiles, please consider donating what you think it’s worth to a charity of your choosing).

RSPB Leighton Moss is less than five miles from Arnside but don’t overdo your Full English before you go because the road out of Arnside is steep! Entry to the reserve is £4.50 for adults rather than £9.00 if you arrive by public transport, foot or bike. We arrived to discover that much of the reserve was flooded and impassable without the welly bobs we didn’t pack. There was plenty to enjoy on our limited tour, through newly-formed swampland on boardwalks barely above the water line, with every step a squelch that suggested foot submersion in ice-cold water might not be far away. There is something innately calming about standing amongst tall reeds, surrounded by water, on a winter’s day with a bright sky, cold that burns the cheeks, and not a wisp of wind.

We got within a stone’s throw of the grit feeders that the bearded tits venture onto when the weather is cold, and watched enviously as a guided tour of better-prepared birders power through calf-deep water to fix their gaze and camera lenses on our prized quarry. Second prize was the silhouette of a water rail wading out onto the track at peaceful intervals in between the comings and goings of wildlife enthusiasts in camouflaging jackets, and pricks in green flat caps aboard impatiently-driven Land Rover Defenders off to shoot grouse nearby. (We overheard a few of them bragging about their kills at a local wine bar that night. It’s not nice to be mean about people but if you shoot animals for fun then you deserve for me to sneer at your ridiculous Oompa-Loompa outfits and obvious lack of moral fibre🖕).

After Leighton Moss we headed south towards Warton, then anti-clockwise towards Yealand Redmayne and Silverdale, a terrain that is low-traffic, vertically challenging and optically pleasing. Even at the height of winter, this agricultural flatland was brimming with wildlife enjoying the newly-changed landscape; ducks and geese enjoying the temporary wetland as sheep lapped from the newly-formed pools; nearly-naked hedgerows bristling with the survival dance of marsh tits, blackbirds, tits and robins; graceful marsh harriers expertly navigating the little wind there was like deadly stunt kites. Jenny Brown’s Point, a coastal peninsula with views across Morecombe Bay, is well worth the detour. Watch out for quicksands!

After Silverdale we took the long route back to Arnside, past Trowbarrow quarry towards Beetham, and the Fairy Steps tourist attraction, a naturally-formed stone staircase through a narrow gorge. Our hotelier told us he couldn’t get through it any more because of his advancing age; we suspected it was more likely due to his large beer belly and oft-expressed penchant for Carling lager, even while on duty.

At the top of the Fairy Steps we could just appreciate the sinking sun and, with the short day shrinking around us, we upped the tempo for the last leg of the journey, hoping to catch sunset over the bay at Arnside. The remainder of the route was just as idyllic, with the fading of the light bathing the headlands in a purple-pink hue and enhancing the bare branches of the trees that surrounded us. Unexpectedly, we trundled onto a large estate with sprawling gardens and pale speckled fallow deer grazing peacefully on the bank of the river Bela at twilight, and church bells sang melodiously from nearby Milnthorpe, as if just for us. There’s something about cycling in low wind, racing the sunset after a day filled with fresh air and nature, an earnest hunger brewing, that can make you feel like Hermes on winged feet, invincible.

We hit the estuary, smooth as glass just in time to watch the dark shapes of gulls settling in to watch the last vestiges of sunlight disappear behind low cloud, setting it ablaze and casting beautiful colours over the conk of the Old Man of Coniston, and the tail-end of a starling murmuration. This would be a day for the ages.

~ Day Two ~

We had planned to complete Cold Dark North’s northern loop, to Cartmell Fell and back, but our train from Arnside to Lancaster got cancelled – aaaargh! – so we decided to one-way it to Kendal and Oxenholme, which is probably a blessing, as any cycling in the Lake District can be a bit of a cow, climb-wise. More on this later…

We weren’t ready to leave behind the paradise of Morecombe Bay yet, so we started the day with a short, steep walk up Arnside Knott, a local viewpoint and beauty spot with some seriously gnarly woodland that would make the day of any orangutan acquaintances you might wish to share it with. We enjoyed breakfast with a Country & Western backdrop at the Sandpiper on the waterfront. Then we saw an actual sandpiper (another one for the RSPB bird badge collection!) as we took the majestic journey from Arnside to Grange-over-Sands on Howl’s Moving Train. We alighted and endured perhaps two miles of impatient drivers and close passes (North West of England drivers really are the pits if you’re a cyclist, and I’ve got the lived experience to prove it) until we could enjoy the cycling again on the Back O’ The Fells road from Lindale. Back O’ the Fells: a fabulous local vernacular for a lovely country lane, and it got us to talking about what it is about the Lancashire local dialect that speaks homeliness and earnestness to us, while other northern dialects can sometimes feel a bit contrived. Maybe it’s the Mancunian in me.

Anyway, Back O’ The Fells, a lovely lane, almost bereft of motor traffic. (There was one scowling Karen in a red range Rover Evoque or some demi-gorgon like it, who couldn’t wait to run us off the road and into the muddy bank, but it wouldn’t be a Lake District Experience otherwise). Unusually for the Lakes, the road was also quite flat. Recent heavy rain had transformed the landscape into a patchwork of temporary pools and flooded golf courses, and road ice was a challenge – we learned that an unfortunate cyclist had been airlifted off the icy backroads just the day before – so where the fell cast its’ shade we spent a lot of the route on two wheels and two feet. Despite the slow, tentative miles, we quickly found ourselves upon Crosthwaite and Underbarrow, and this is where my world fell apart. There’s a humungous hill from Underbarrow to the Scout Scar Mushroom that fully defeated me – get your flapjacks in early, a banana won’t cut it – before a giddy descent down aptly-named Beast Bank into Kendal, where we stopped for coffee. 

Kendal is an awful place to cycle round and town planners past and present should be utterly ashamed of how they’ve taken an epicentre of wholesome outdoor tourism and turned it into a car-centric cataclysm which completely kettles the pedestrian public inside the incessant ring road on tiny footpaths not wide enough for your average pushchair. One of Kendal’s few concessions to the otherwise-sidelined non-driver is some cycle markings that suggest you ride against the grain of one-way traffic in a lane that doesn’t make space for anything but cars. Errr, no thanks. We fared little better as pedestrians once we’d given up on biking. IS THIS WHAT THE WAR AGAINST MOTORISTS LOOKS LIKE TO YOU, RISHI SUNAK? IS IT?!?

(I don’t wish to spoil a lovely day with a political statement. I’m just keeping it real. The Lancaster cycling was delightful, whereas the Lake District was hateful. Chalk and cheese).

Gratefully, there’s a traffic-free path that takes you most of the way from Kendal town centre to Oxenholme station, but you do have to give it one final heave-ho up a steep hill to the entrance to the station’s subway, before you can wait and watch the sun set from platform two. We had a short layover at Carlisle before our connecting train into Dumfries, but long enough for a margarita at In The Meantime, one of two favourite I’ve-got-a-while-to-wait-for-my-connecting-train Carlisle bars, where we were welcomed with Shania Twain’s “Honey I’m Home”. More Country & Western than I bargained for, but a holiday bookended by margaritas is just how I like it.

Sunday 7th January, 2024