Qualla: Howgill Fells

Howgill Fells: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cyberdemon007 at en.wikipedia, Public domain. From the M6 the Howgills look improbable - smooth velvet humps rising abruptly out of the Lune Gorge, with none of the craggy theatricality of the Lake District peaks just to the west. Walkers call them sleeping elephants. The geology is the reason for that softness: while the Yorkshire Dales next door are built of pale Carboniferous limestone that fractures into scars and clints, the Howgills are made of much older Palaeozoic slates and gritstones that erode differently - rounded rather than cleft, sheep-cropped rather than scattered. The range sits in a kind of cartographic awkwardness, claimed at various times by Yorkshire and Westmorland and now divided between historic counties, and it took until 2017 for the whole range to be officially absorbed into the Yorkshire Dales National Park. They are upland between two more famous uplands, and they reward attention precisely because they have not been famous.

Read more: Howgill Fells on Qualla

Image: Cyberdemon007 at en.wikipedia | Public domain

Howgill Fells: Geography of the Triangle

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Donald Cruttenden, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Howgills sit roughly within a triangle formed by the town of Sedbergh in the south and the villages of Ravenstonedale and Tebay in the north. The River Lune defines their western edge, where the M6 motorway threads through the Lune Gorge - itself a major glacial meltwater cha...

Read more: Howgill Fells on Qualla

Image: Donald Cruttenden | CC BY-SA 2.0

Howgill Fells: Older Than Most Things You Can See

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ian Taylor, CC BY-SA 2.0. The oldest rocks in the Howgills are Ordovician slates in the vicinity of Backside Beck in the east - around 445 million years old. The oldest Silurian rocks here are the laminated siltstones of the Stockdale Group, laid down in what was then a deep marine basin. Above these come...

Read more: Howgill Fells on Qualla

Image: Ian Taylor | CC BY-SA 2.0

Howgill Fells: The Norse Name

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit M J Richardson, CC BY-SA 2.0. The word Howgill is Old Norse: haugr meaning a hill or barrow, and gil meaning a narrow valley. The Norse settled the western fells of northern England heavily in the ninth and tenth centuries - their place names cluster across Cumbria more densely than almost anywhere else outsi...

Read more: Howgill Fells on Qualla

Image: M J Richardson | CC BY-SA 2.0

Howgill Fells: The Walk and the Weather

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michael Graham, CC BY-SA 2.0. Alfred Wainwright wrote about the Howgills with the affection of a man who had grown tired of crowds on Helvellyn. The walking is different here from the Lake District: less rocky scrambling, more sustained climbing on grass and bracken slopes, with long ridge walks linking summi...

Read more: Howgill Fells on Qualla

Image: Michael Graham | CC BY-SA 2.0