WHEN is a short path not a short path? When it’s a lonning, perhaps.
At least, that would be the Cumbrian answer to this riddle, according to old friend and colleague Alan Cleaver (aka @thelonningsguy), who’s become something of an expert on picturesque country lanes all over the Lake District.
So much so that he and his wife Lesley even published a book on the subject, criss-crossing the county in search of ancient paths with ever more intriguing names and plotting them onto a map for others to discover too.
Alan rapidly found out that while everyone in a village might know the name of a lonning and where it is, such paths were rarely recorded on signs or maps, so his project soon began to generate a lot of interest from intrigued locals.
From Squeezy Gut Lonning and Blue Bottle Lonning to Tatie Pot Lonning and Dynamite Lonning, there always seemed to be a new route to explore.
Indeed, Alan subsequently went on to write books about corpse roads and postal paths too, so lonnings were just the first step on a more ambitious labour of love.
So why are we talking about lonnings on a Chilterns website? Because the recent sweltering heatwave drove us north in search of cooler breezes, and a flying visit to a small corner of Cumbria I’d never visited before – the northern end of the Vale of Eden, just outside Carlisle.
On our way north, there were plenty of familiar reminders of past trips to the Lakes, conjuring up memories of teenage explorations around Shap, for example, or recollections of just how astonishing the landscape can be as soon as you leave the M6.
The names on road signs are different too, a reminder of how Celtic, Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse influences echo across this part of Britain, with its becks and fells and tarns, its thwaites and ghylls and howes.
Which means it comes as no great surprise when our host in Cumwhinton uses the word lonning to direct us to a pleasant nearby local path to walk the dog: it’s not just the landscape that is different here, but the language too.
Nestled just a few miles from the Scottish border, this area is part of the ancient kingdom of Strathclyde where the tongue was closely related to Old Welsh.
Inglewood Forest became a royal hunting ground after the Norman invasion and the sparsely populated forest was a place of legend and romance, with the river forming the eastern boundary.
It was the backdrop to many chivalric adventures in the late medieval period, and some claim it was the original setting for the Robin Hood legend, rather than Sherwood Forest.
To get here the 90-mile long river has been through Kirkby Stephen and Appleby-in-Westmorland, topped up by becks from the Pennines and longer rivers from the Lakes.
But in the pleasant village of Wetheral it’s channelled through a striking gorge spanned by a Grade I listed railway viaduct dating from 1834 and surrounded by ancient woodlands where wealthy industrialists built their mansions in the 19th century.
It’s a glorious spot for an evening walk, following the river down to the caves where, legend has it, the sixth-century Scottish king Constantine is said to have lived as a hermit after relinquishing the throne.
Our visit is the briefest of exposures to a glorious part of the world, close to Carlisle and with easy access to the M6, but with an atmosphere very different from the areas of the Lakes and Dales better known to tourists.
This end of the Vale of Eden is clearly a hidden gem, frequently ignored by those hijacked by the more obvious Lake District attractions to the south. But there’s plenty to engage walkers, wildlife enthusiasts and history lovers around these parts, and it’s more than worthy of a longer return visit.
Our escape from the sweltering heat down south is all too brief. But we’ll be back. We’ll just have to brush up on some of those Cumbrian terms and explore some more of Alan’s lonnings when we get there.
