Great Coum, Gragareth, Green Hill & Grag Hill

Sheep are well heavy!

Summary

Great Coum, Gragareth, Green Hill & Grag Hill are neighbouring fells nestled in the Yorkshire dales that lie on the border of Cumbria. (Cumbrian Dales) This is a long ridge walk on uneven grassy terrain with panoramic views of distant fells; and on a clear day you have views of the southern lakes, the Howgill Fells, Morecambe Bay and the Yorkshire Three Peaks. Gragareth and Great Coum are also two of the Dales 30 Mountains.

The Hike

We began the hike from the small quaint town of Ireby that had your typical dales narrow country roads, which made it hard find parking; however we managed to find a spot by Leck House. As we began our walk on the lonely roads up to the fells we could see that the clouds were very low, so it was no doubt that we would be in clouds on most of the ridge.

Busy in mid conversation, we could see ahead of use a lonely sheep struggling to free itself from the wire mesh. It appeared that it was a ram that had its curved horn caught in the mesh. I jumped over into the field and picked up the sheep (SHEEP ARE WELL HEAVY) whilst my friend helped untangle its horn. No idea how long the sheep was there for but I was covered in its poo! Yak! We managed to free the ram; and as I put it back on the ground we watched it run into the distance. It definitely boosted our morale for the rest of the day!

The worst part of the hike is probably walking on the road before it veers off to the right onto the grassy path that heads up towards the ridge. Some mysterious views of the low cloud on the hills were in the distance as we entered the white mist above. It felt very eerie, spooky and extremely quiet! We couldn’t see anything past a couple of metres in front of us. I remember sitting down, having some lunch, and my friend tuned to me and said “shh, stop chewing. Listen to how quiet it is?” It was a surreal moment and makes you realise how much noise pollution there is in the world.

Onwards after lunch, we descended out of the clouds to the bottom of the valley. Following this, we past a landmark of a caving system that can be found under the ground beneath us, this is one of the biggest caving systems in the UK - an interesting and an unexpected find! Following this we winded through the almost jungle landscape to Leck Beck which was another un-expected find to the route, with deep shake holes and big gorge faces overpowering us. It was a great end to the hike as we slowly descended back to Ireby.