At the start of the walk, there is an inviting grassy bank on the side of the River Hodder opposite the car park. In the 19th century, hundreds of rabbit skins were pegged out here and used to make beaver-style hats.
The names of the fells near Slaidburn are a reminder of the past: Salter Fell was on the route of a packhorse trail used to bring salt to outlying farms for preserving meat. Rising from Slaidburn itself is Tenter Hill, where locally made rolls of woollen cloth were hung from tenterhooks for a softening treatment with potash made by burning bracken. Near Tenter Hill is the rolling farmland and woodland known as Woodhouse — in the 14th century, the Abbot of Kirkstall Abbey (near Leeds) owned a great deal of the land of Bowland, and Woodhouse was used as a stud for the Abbot's horses.
In late summer, the moorland view is coloured in purple with cross-leaved heath and orange bracken. As well as moorland birds (lapwing, curlew, and golden plover), there are thousands of black-headed gulls breeding on an island in Stocks Reservoir (just out of sight beyond Woodhouse), which is also home to nesting geese, red-breasted mergansers, and wintering goosanders.
Field paths lead to Easington, an old settlement mentioned in the Domesday Book where the site of the old manor house has been excavated, revealing walls over 4 feet (1.2 metres) thick. The path from Easington returns you to a tranquil section of the River Hodder, whose quiet reaches are ideal for spotting sand martins, sandpipers, dippers, heron, oystercatchers, and redshank.
A little bridge crosses the River Hodder and bears right past Dunnow Hall. The hall was built in the 1830s for the Wilkinsons, but the family never lived there: tragically, while the first owner and his wife were honeymooning in Switzerland, the coach in which they were travelling slipped over the cliff edge of an Alpine track, and though Mr Wilkinson survived his bride was killed.
A quiet lane leads back towards Slaidburn. The first significant building you reach is St Andrew's Church, whose history can be traced over eight centuries (near the church, traces of a Bronze Age settlement have been discovered). Next to it is the old Grammar School founded in 1717, built in an unusual English architectural style — the Carolean.
At the far end of the lane is the Youth Hostel (previously the Bull Inn), opposite which is the Hark to Bounty Inn. The story goes that it changed its name from the Dog Inn in 1875 after a hunt by the Reverend Henry Wigglesworth picked out the sound of his hound, Bounty, from all the other baying outside the inn, and the upstairs of the Hark to Bounty contains all original furnishings from the time when it was the local courthouse.
Acknowledgment: Text derived from the Out and Out Series; Discovering the Countryside on Foot. Pictures courtesy of Wikipedia.
