Tom Hutton strikes gold in a littleknown corner of the Lake District

WORDS & PHOTOGRAPHY TOM HUTTON

It’s not often an injury turns out to be a lucky break. But it’s always good to try to see positives in these things. And, as I gazed up from the climb at the peaks of Western Lakeland backed up by a totally cloudless, azure sky, I was having an easy job convincing myself that my last little mishap had been for the best. Well, at least as far as producing this Singletrack Classic Ride was concerned anyway. Had I not fallen off my bike the day before we were due to originally shoot this feature, we’d have been riding in clouds and rain. As it was, due to having had to take three weeks off the bike to heal, when we returned to the Lakes, we were treated to glorious weather.

Taking two.

So here we were, take two, back in the Lakes. And, despite the mid-week snow that had temporarily put this second try in jeopardy, it now looked like we had lucked out big time. The snow had melted, the temperatures had risen enough to melt any remaining ice, and the sun was shining. Well, out of the shady depths of the deeply cloven valleys anyway.

It’s little wonder we’re smiling as we turn the pedals and warm up our travel-weary legs on tarmac before starting the first of the day’s many brutal climbs.

So where are we exactly? The answer is the Duddon Valley – not the most obvious of the Lake District’s much-lauded dales, but an impressive one nonetheless. The River Duddon rises in the cleavage of the Langdale Pikes, high above the top of the Wrynose Pass. The river drops west to carve itself a deep channel that the vertiginous road follows. And at the foot of the legendary Hardknott Pass it swerves south-west, drawing a watery line between the shapely bulk of Harter Fell and the huddle of summits that make up the Coniston range. It then fianks the Dunnerdale Fells on their western slopes.