Looking over the Kent Estuary towards Arnside viaduct and the Lake District

This little land is a place that has all the rural attributes anyone might wish for. It has hills and valleys, it has lush pastures and woodlands aplenty. It has rivers, wetlands, coastline with secret coves, ruined fortifications from centuries gone by, splendid villages and hamlets, and a range of wildlife that would make places a hundred times as big green with envy. It is the Arnside and Silverdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and, for those who know it well, nowhere else will do.

Limestone pavement is a defining feature of the area
Photo: Jonas Holdsworth

The Arnside and Silverdale area is easy to define. It stretches from Warton, near Carnforth, in the south to the estuary of the river Kent in the north. It is bounded by the A6 in the east and the coast in the west. It straddles the county boundary of Lancashire and Westmorland and it is underlaid by carboniferous limestone. Now, you don’t have to be an expert geologist to appreciate that limestone is pretty special stuff. It is silvery-grey in colour and slowly dissolved by water. This causes it to produce one of the most wonderful landscapes England has to offer: limestone pavement. Few people remain unimpressed when they first see Nature’s very own crazy paving, the bare outcrops of limestone criss-crossed by long, deep clefts (or ‘grykes’) that are the signature of limestone pavement.

In these grykes all manner of curious and rare plant life flourish. Dog’s mercury, hart’s tongue and many other shade-loving plants find a welcome Our World in the crevice-like grykes of limestone pavement. And of all the places limestone pavement occurs, the best of all is at Gait Barrows, a couple of miles outside Arnside. After years of restricted access it is now open to the public and maintained by Natural England. Go along and sample one of the most unusual landscape Lancashire – or anywhere else, for that matter – has to offer. You won’t be disappointed. Arnside and Silverdale doesn’t just have low-lying limestone, as at Gait Barrows. It has limestone hills too. The main ones are Warton Crag and Arnside Knott. On Warton Crag the landscape is covered in woodland, and the trees create a beautiful, secret landscape where visitors can lose themselves in the intricate pattern of copses, birch and hawthorn-clothed screes, cliffs and tiny fields and enclosures bounded by crumbling walls. Here grazing deer can be seen by quiet, patient visitors. Rare wood ants carry on their endless, feverish toilings in the darkness under trees while nationally important colonies of frittilery butterflies add dashes of vibrant colour as they flit across the glades. Near the top of Warton Crag great vistas open up and walkers pause to gaze on the vast sands of Morecambe Bay marching away southwards towards the open sea. To the west the view is of another of the wonders of the Arnside and Silverdale area: the great nature reserve of Leighton Moss.

Right - The landmark Millenium clock at Silverdale

Leighton Moss is the largest expanse of reedbeds in the North West. Here the RSPB oversees rare marsh harriers, bearded tits and bitterns which thrive in this ideal habitat. Large meres, glinting in the sun, lie amid the reedbeds and the whole area is enfolded in a natural amphitheatre, with the forested limestone hills on all sides except the south where Leighton Moss gives way to salt marshes and the open expanse of Morecambe Bay. Nature trails snake across the site, complete with observation hides. A visitor centre caters for all comers – expert ornithologists and enthusiastic amateurs alike – and the nearby Silverdale station provides easy access from Lancaster and beyond. Leighton Moss is nationally important – but then so much of the Arnside and Silverdale area is special. It is an extraordinary place with a unique atmosphere. Small wonder discerning visitors come here time after time.
Not all Arnside and Silverdale’s special features are natural.

Some are man-made but seem rooted in the landscape as though they grew there. Arnside Tower, for example, is a fortified keep, a pele tower (pronounced ‘peel’) to give it its correct name. Such edifices sprinkle the far north of England, look-outs against incursions by the Scots.

Right - The Albion front looking onto the Kent estuary

Villages too are part of the scenic backdrop of the area. Warton, nestling at the foot of Warton Crag, draws visitors from far and near due to its connection with George Washington, first President of the United States. Yealand Conyers and Yealand Redmayne are delightful linear settlements which straddle the road alongside the wooded eminence of Cringlebarrow. Beetham, with its quaint parish church and Wheatsheaf pub set on a meander of the river Bela, seems the archetypal chocolate-box village. Silverdale itself is the scattered village which spreads across the fields in a little vale between rising wooded slopes.

Right - Leighton Moss famed for its Bittern reserve

Perhaps on the Gait Barrows limestone pavement, or by the great boulders called the Three Brothers on Warton Crag, the sightseer might feel he has wandered into a charmed land,But of all the curious places in this unique landscape, perhaps the one that suggests the almost other-worldliness of the area is the strange stone stairway called Fairy Steps that cuts through a limestone cliff in the woods near Beetham. Legend has it that if you can ascend the steps without touching the sides – nearly impossible, as it is extremely narrow – then the little folk will grant your wish. But having sampled the magic of Arnside and Silverdale, you might just believe it. In a place like this, anything’s possible.