A Walk in Silverdale, Lancashire

The autumnal path through Eaves ancient woodland
 

The Tower House of Arnside

We’ve been up to Lancaster to see Ems in her new house and see a little more of the area. Although the weather forecast wasn’t brilliant, we did get a good day on Saturday to have a walk in the woods and near the sea around Silverdale. We parked at a woodland car park near the Park Lane road (SD 47106 75963) with the sun shining. The first part of the route was through ancient woodland, Eaves Wood. We were heading for the Arnside Tower to the north of Silverdale village. The path was muddy after the recent rains and contoured near the edge of the wood near some coppiced hazel with a few paths deviating further into the trees and signed to “The Pepperpot”, a monument built in 1887 to commemorate Queen Victoria’s Jubilee. Our path, strewn with the autumn leaves, continued on past and through a caravan park to reach the tower set with open views down a valley and the limestone hills of Arnside Knot to the north. The tower is thought to have been built in the 15^th century but probably not as a fortification against the Scots but as a domestic house or hunting lodge.  Little has been written about its history although it is known that it was severely damaged in a gale in 1884. 


The shoreline at Silverdale; still a blue sky!

We then turned and found the footpath to Silverdale village and the coast. Soon we joined the coastal path at the shoreline and this led over fields into Silverdale village itself with a pub nearby, The Silverdale Hotel. This doesn’t look much from the outside but inside it was warm and cosy with a pleasant conservatory, gardens and good food. After this break we continued down Shore Road to the sea front and a view along the coast. Retracing our steps we passed a sign for Jenny Brown’s Point where there is a chimney, the remains of a copper melting industry, and then on the road to find another woodland path leading to the National Trust, Lambert’s Meadow. Here the ground was very wet but we soon gained height to rise back to Eaves Wood just as it started to rain, so well planned!

There are lots of walks in the area and we managed to straddle the Lancashire- Cumbria border on this one and thought ourselves lucky to have had such a bright autumn day.

 

 

View down Lambert's Meadow.