The Land of the Lune - Drakkar Press

166 Chapter 10: The Wenning Headwaters
The now well-established Wenning passes under
Clapham Viaduct, which, unlike earlier viaducts,
has no aesthetic merit. The viaduct carries the Leeds-
Lancaster railway line. The original plan was to build
the Lowgill-Clapham line via Ingleton first but work on
this was suspended and instead the branch to Lancaster,
completed in 1850, became the main line, with the
Lowgill line eventually completed in 1861. The line to
Wennington runs down the Wenning valley, naturally
without all the meanders of the river, which it crosses
seven times in all.
Just beyond the viaduct the Wenning is joined
by Jack Beck, which runs past Jack Beck House,
where painting courses are run by the painter Norma
Stephenson. I like her description of her modus operandi
for producing her semi-abstract pastels of the northern
fells: “dissatisfaction sets in ... almost always ... because
the painting has become too explicit. Radical measures
are required ... I will often dribble water into the pastel,
causing rivulets and textured effects, or I will sweep my
hand across the surface to remove detail.” I have tried
this with the creation you are reading, to no great benefit,
alas. I conclude that it is not a work of art.
Beyond the new Skew Bridge, Keasden Beck joins
the Wenning.
Keasdendale
Keasden Beck
Our journey has taken us to many hidden and unknown
becks but compared to Keasden Beck they are all
gaudily extrovert. Nobody seems ever to have written
a good or bad word about Keasden Beck. There are
no postcards of Keasdendale (in fact, I may have just
invented ‘Keasdendale’). In the 4km from Gregson’s
Hill to Turnerford Bridge there are no footpaths in the
valley or across it. There is no road in the valley: all
the farmsteads are reached by private tracks from the
Clapham to Bowland Knotts road.
However, now that all of Burn Moor above the
pastures has been made CRoW land we can at least gain
a long distance view into this secretive valley. Burn
Moor is tough going: all heather, grass tussocks and bog.
When it was restricted to grouse shooting Burn Moor
was called the ‘forbidden moor’: now, ‘forbidding’
would be a better word. There is a good path on springy
peat (in summer) along the ridge from Bowland Knotts
to Great Harlow (486m) and over Thistle Hill, but
elsewhere walking is a struggle. Should your eye catch
upon Ravens Castle and Raven’s Castle on the map,
be warned that there are no castles, although there are
ravens. And yet there is compensation up here. The
This is Chapter 10 of The Land of the Lune (2nd edition), http://www.drakkar.co.uk/landofthelune.html, Copyright © 2010 John Self