Silverdale
&
Arnside
4th June 2025
5.2 miles / 8.3 km
228 m ascent
Easy
6.3 Naismith miles
Silverdale
Step by Step | OS Map | Downloads | Gallery | Fly through
Having enjoyed a run of five walks over 12km and therefore graded as “moderate”, we return to Silverdale and Arnside, a favourite area of the group, for an easier walk.
Easy is not the same as dull though, and this walk manages to pack a lot into quite a comfortable distance: Great views of Morecambe Bay and the Kent estuary, sandy beaches, coves and caves, Heathwaite Woods, an area particularly known for orchids and other wild flowers within the Arnside and Silverdale National Landscape, the intriguing stunted trees of Arnside Knott, a rare fragment of the once common temperate rainforest that covered much of western Britain, and an ancient pele tower.
Step-by-Step
We start in the centre of the village of Silverdale, using free roadside parking. We visited on a quiet weekday away from peak season, so had a choice of spaces, but be aware that this is a popular location, and parking is not always so easy. A good option is generally Stankelt Road, close to the junction with Emesgate Lane.
If you are using Satnav to get to there, try LA5 0RA as a postcode, or if your device accepts What-3-Words tags then atomic.kidney.hasten pinpoints where we parked. If you prefer paper maps, then the OS grid reference is SD46147494. To read more about Silverdale, click . . .
- Here for a Wikipedia article
- Here for visitor information
- Here for a silverdalelancashire page
- Here for a Wikipedia page on the AONB status of Arnside & Silverdale
We start out by heading downhill toward the coast, and as Stankelt Road turns right, becoming Emesgate Lane, we look for the continuation of Stankelt Road bearing left and going downhill.
After about 50m, we see a sign indicating a path to the cove, which we take by climbing a set of steps to access an open field. We were greeted here by rather curious cattle, who are clearly rather familiar with walkers passing amongst them. Although the climb up from the road was very short, we already have a very different view – ahead of now we see Morecambe Bay and the Kent Estuary, and if the tide is out, as was the case for us, rather attractive sandy beaches.
We are now walking northwest toward Silverdale Cove: The path through the fields is clear enough – and at the end of a second field we approach woodland where we enter a lovely green lane which dips down to the Cove.
Silverdale Cove was listed as one of the top 12 “secret beaches” by the Daily Telegraph, and as their website hides behind a paywall, we can be thankful that the secret is well protected.
In reality, this is not a beach that might attract families wanting to sit on deckchairs and build sandcastles; the tides come right up to the shore and move quickly, leaving lots of wet sand and mud behind as they retreat – so although sand is present, this is a location more focussed on the ecosystem than the typical Blackpool beach experience.
As we approach the cove, we notice a cave entrance in the face of the limestone. When the tide is out the cave is accessible – should you wish to explore, please be aware that it’s considered much easier to get into than out of, as the limestone can be slippery when wet, and the footholds that were obvious on the way in may not be visible.
From the beach at the cove, we head uphill, using the minor track toward Elmslack, and after climbing gently for 120m arrive at a road junction where we go left. This is a quiet road, but as always, take extra care when on the road. We soon pass the cricket club on the left, and then as the road veers left, just past the sign welcoming us to Cumbria, we see a footpath sign on the right taking us into a caravan park.
As we enter, we see a neat swimming pool complex just to our left, and we walk past that toward a fingerpost offering a choice of onward routes.
We take the route into the trees (rather than the metalled road through the site) and soon emerge back into open fields with the estuary again visible. The path is clearly visible, and well walked, taking us northwest again until 250m later, we arrive back at the road we left to enter the caravan park.
We turn right on the road, passing a GR (King George V; 1910 – 1936) post-box, and look to the left to find a track up to Hollins Farm. As we approach the farm buildings, we see the path passing to the left of the farm and up a narrow track to a gate where we are welcomed by a National Trust Heathwaite sign.
From here onward we are presented with a bewildering number of paths – the one shown as a right of way on the OS map, and the one we take today, tracks up the drystone wall to the right for the next 400m, but there are clear signs of informal paths in many other directions. This pattern continues for much of the remainder of our route, so to avoid getting lost, we recommend following our downloadable GPX trail on a suitable device. If you do get lost, don’t worry too much though – although this enchanting National Landscape (the new name for Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty) may feel vast – you are never more than a few hundred meters from a road. So more misplaced than lost.
We climb for a little while now heading toward a bench at the top end of the enclosure ahead. This is a great place to pause for a brew as it affords a good view back toward Silverdale and Morecambe Bay – with the power station at Heysham clearly visible.
If you need to top up your five a day whilst enjoying a break, it might be worth foraging in the area to the right of the path – even this early in the season, there were plenty of wild strawberries to be found. Whilst photographing these, we met a group of botanists who were cataloguing orchids growing on Heathwaite – their particular interest on the day was a broad-leaved Helleborine, not yet in flower, so not particularly noteworthy to the untrained eye. For a definitive list of the orchids growing in this area click here.
Just above the bench, we meet an intersection of paths – we ignore the one crossing the route we have taken so far and continue uphill on a broad track. This soon swings round to the left and climbs more steeply before making a sharp turn to the right again and rising relentlessly toward the top of the ridge ahead.
We are now heading northeast, and 100m after the right angled turn there is a path off to a viewpoint on the left. Feel free to visit that but come back to this path to continue. As we progress, we see a number of rather strange, stunted trees, including the “giraffe tree” that is seen in so many photos from this area. To some extent these gnarled trees are a natural consequence of the poor quality shallow soil overlying limestone pavement that characterises Arnside Knott Wood.
This particular tree is now dead, and is in an advanced state of decay, so may not last much longer. It is thought that it was a Larch and formed from two saplings which intertwined either naturally or by intervention, resulting in a process known as “pleaching” where two tree merge into one.
Just beyond this strange tree we find a bench with great views over toward Arnside and the Kent Viaduct where the Grange-over-Sands railway line crosses the estuary. From there the path we will take bears slightly left and down to a gate through a drystone wall – on the day, we took the opportunity to take the path up toward the top of the Knott first, where there is a trig point at 159m.
We head back down toward the wall, and once through, find a rather lovely tree with an art installation celebrating Arnside Knott. The accompanying bench is a great place to enjoy lunch.
Click here to see a panorama shot of the view from this location.
To finish the walk, we retrace back to the gate in the drystone wall and head left going slightly downhill through woodland, and never more than 10m from the wall. Throughout this section of the woodland we are in a rare fragment of what was once the dominant ecosystem for the wet western coast of northern England – the temperate rainforest. Ironically, we are all probably more aware of tropical rainforests than the corresponding rainforests in Europe. Temperate rainforests occur in mid-latitude, temperate zones, in places which receive heavy rainfall due to an “oceanic” climate.
Put more simply: temperate rainforests are very damp woodlands – so damp that plants grow on other plants. These second-layer plants are known as epiphytes. So, a key indicator is an abundance of mosses, lichens and polypody ferns within and upon the branches and trunks of trees. Much greater awareness of this important habitat has been created in recent years, and works are now underway to protect and regenerate these special places. We are lucky that the Lakes and the Forest of Bowland also harbour many of the UK’s remaining sites.
After about 120m, we find ourselves at a corner where two walls meet, and we head right here so that we remain within a few metres of the wall, still heading downhill.
After a further 100m we arrive at another corner – this time near a minor road. We turn sharp left here, staying within Arnside Knott Wood for a further 150m until the path forks. We keep left such that we stay adjacent to the road, and then 100m later arrive at a gate onto that road opposite Arnside Tower, where we follow “Footpath to Silverdale”.
The path takes the track down toward Arnside Tower Farm, then skirts the farmyard to arrive at a path up to the tower which was built in the 14th or 15th century as a “Pele tower” – essentially a defensive structure where the population would shelter during times of attack. This one is unusual in that it is free standing – most are attached to the property of the landowner. Originally thought to be four or five storeys tall, systematic dismantling and the inevitable weathering mean that it is now without a roof or floors.
Records show that the tower was severely fire damaged in 1602 but was repaired and then occupied as a dwelling. Between 1684 and 1690, further dismantling occurred, with building materials being removed to Beetham and Knowsley.
In 1884, what remained of the tower was subjected to a particularly severe storm, which resulted in the destruction of most of the southwest angle of the cross wall, with the South wall also being damaged. As a result, the tower is now virtually split in two, with one portion containing the four storeys with domestic rooms, and the other portion containing the five storeys with the garderobe and the taller part of the tower.
Beyond the tower, we head to the field corner where we see a lane and a smaller path up into the woods. It is the smaller path that we take via a stile (ignore a disused ladder stile here), we are now heading in a southerly direction.
After a brief climb through the woods, we find another caravan park, with clear way markers to follow until we exit again into the woods to track gently uphill to a dry stone wall and a stile. Beyond this we follow a clear track, heading SE and contouring around the base of the hill. This is King William’s Hill. We keep to the clear track until we arrive at Elmslack where the path merges with the access lane to a number of small traditional cottages.
We follow that lane round and down to the metalled road where we go right for just 50m then pick up a track on the left between houses, then just 100m later we arrive at the main road through Silverdale – Emesgate Lane.
We could simply follow this to the right and walk back to the village centre and our cars. However, we opted to take a quieter route through the side roads and did this by crossing Emesgate Lane to find the lane that goes behind St John’s Church. This brings us to a junction where we go hard right which brings us (after 100m) back to Emesgate Lane.
Again, we avoid the road by going left onto another path which takes us past the Silverdale Village Institute and onto Spring Bank – which we follow for 300m down to Stankelt Road. We turn right here and soon find the cars: Our walk is complete.
Bentham Footpath Group walks are classified according to total distance and elevation change – this walk is considered “Easy”. We noted no particular challenges on the way round,other than the potential for limstone pavement areas to be slippery when wet.
