Johnnie Bulldog Lonning

So we parked in Carlisle's Tesco car park, followed a footpath sign and found ourselves on an old track right behind the supermarket - Johnnie Bulldog Lonning. Named after Johnnie, who once lived at the entrance to the path, and yes of course . . . he had a bulldog!

I watched a TV programme a week or so ago 'Secret Lake District' or something like that. I didn't think it was a good programme. As is so often the case nowadays, it was more about the exploits of the presenters than the actual places - why did she have to arrive in a helicopter for example? However, there was a guy on there talking about Lonnings. I recognised the name - Alan Cleaver, as the person who did the research for the book on Holy Wells of Cumbria that I used in February. I sent for his book on Lonnings of Cumbria - fascinating.
 
He says a Lonning is a path between two places and quite distinct from any other road, footpath, track or lane. But he does not say exactly what this distinction is - he says you have to walk them to find out.
 
So we walked this one. It meanders between trees and hedges for a while and the extra picture shows where it gets to - the River Eden with the M6 in the distance. So of course this tells you that, during the floods, this path was completely underwater, as was Tesco and the car park. The amount of debris around is evidence of how high the water was at one point.
  
We came across a guy who was looking up into a tree - he pointed out a Tawny Owl. It just sat there above us, staring at us, but not moving. It was quite high up and hidden in the leaves, so it was hard to get a photograph (see extra). High Pike got a much better picture, however he seems to think we were behind Asda - we weren't we were behind Tesco! 

What a sight! This guy was local, knew the lonning and its name and told us about other footpaths around. Great how you meet people like this when you are exploring.