Arnside Knott could well be the most climbed hill in the district. It is not the highest though. That accolade goes to Warton Crag which is all of four metres higher.
Interestingly when you stand by either of the two triangulation points, you are offered little or no view due to the proximity of dense vegetation. You have to move away slightly to find a spot where a photograph is worth taking.
Arnside Knott has a prominent bench, one which seems to bend and bow lower in the middle every time I see it. It’s a great place to have your lunch whilst admiring the glorious panorama and maybe a quick pic. In fact there are quite a few benches dotted around the upper slopes although none quite as grandiose as this one.
Slightly further down and towards the west there is an official viewing point complete with engraved metal plaques labelling the Lake District fells. If you have a clear enough day to pick them all out you can count yourself fortunate. Whatever the weather a photograph will probably be taken.
The focus of this post can be found roughly midway between the viewing point and the summit. It is where you will find the knotted larch trees, now sadly devoid of any growth. To say they are a shadow of their former self would be an understatement.
Some people fondly call this natural sculpture the 'Giraffe Tree'. It's not far off the height of a young giraffe to be sure. There are also tales explaining how they came to be so entwined. The one most people seem to quote is that they were tied together as saplings by a sailor and his bride on their honeymoon around 1860.
However did you know that originally there were a pair of knotted trees side by side?
John Caldwell a member of Cartmel Fell and District Local History Society recalls his days at Arnside in the 1930s:
We lived in a large house on the Promenade — now ‘Heron Syke’ — and had our lessons and playtime at Ashmeadow at the far end of the Promenade.
These were happy days, despite — or perhaps because of — the very strict school discipline.
Good memories include walks up onto Arnside Knott, where near the top of the hill, a large stony area we called ‘Bunnyvilla’, was a favourite place to stop.
Lower down the Knott, overlooking a small golf course, now long disused, stood the two ‘knotted trees’.
Someone, years before, must have twisted two pairs of saplings into two knots; so the trees grew up into the special shapes, good for climbing, which many old Knott lovers still remember.
And tree-climbing by schoolboys on Arnside Knott, mercifully was not ‘risk assessed’ in those happy days long ago!
One thing is for sure the large arches were the most novel of picture frames for thousands of photographs. Above are two young ladies in the 1950s posing for a quick snap on a kodak camera perhaps?
And so to today. Just one of the two survives, the larger one.
If you haven't had your photograph taken in between the legs of the 'Giraffe Tree' then maybe you should before it too keels over and is a relic from the past.
