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2017 EVERGREEN 55<br />

Wainwright’s book and (below) the busy<br />

platform at Dalegarth Station.<br />

The Ravenglass and Eskdale<br />

Railway — known affectionately<br />

as La’al Ratty — is a 15-inch gauge<br />

line that runs seven miles from<br />

Ravenglass on the Cumbrian coast<br />

to Dalegarth, deep in Eskdale and<br />

surrounded by soaring Lakeland<br />

fells. It has operated as a preserved<br />

railway since 1960 though its origins<br />

are as an industrial line.<br />

Walks from Ratty has the same page<br />

size and design as Wainwright’s<br />

classic seven but it only has 32<br />

pages, is unbound and the pages are<br />

merely stapled together. It sits in the<br />

hand like a racecard or an order of<br />

service, but it’s very pleasant to hold,<br />

particularly in its earlier editions. As<br />

you’d expect from the master, it gives<br />

a comprehensive list of suggestions,<br />

10 of them, for walks beginning and<br />

ending at Ravenglass and Eskdale<br />

Railway stations. Most start from<br />

Dalegarth Station<br />

at the head of<br />

Eskdale but others<br />

use the stations at<br />

Ravenglass, Irton<br />

Road and Beckfoot.<br />

The most<br />

adventurous walk is<br />

the ascent of Harter<br />

Fell from Dalegarth,<br />

with material<br />

cribbed from the<br />

appropriate chapter<br />

in Wainwright’s The<br />

Southern Fells, Book Four in the Pictorial<br />

Guide series (which doesn’t actually<br />

mention the railway). The other<br />

routes offer gentler options on lower<br />

fells, in valleys or to picturesque tarns.<br />

Walks from Ratty recognises<br />

something important about<br />

the railway, something that<br />

distinguishes it from many of the

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