Sallows

Sallows and Sour Howes form a horseshoe of rough upland with its open end to the south east, on the high ground between Troutbeck and Kentmere known as Kentmere Park or Applethwaite Common. Park Beck drains the hollow in between. Sallows is the higher and more northerly of the pair, just south of Garburn Pass.

Garburn Pass is the way in from either side. It's an old trade route for walkers and packhorses between Troutbeck and Kentmere, now a restricted byway. From Troutbeck village, walk up the Garburn Road, a rough track, and either go straight up to the pass or turn off first for Sour Howes and follow the wall across to Sallows. From Kentmere the pass is a steady climb from the village, but parking there is very limited, with room for only a handful of cars by the village hall. There is also a quarry track on the Kentmere side.

The going is grass and heather, and the link between the two tops can be tussocky and wet. There is no scrambling. The south flank is smooth grass apart from an old quarry, while the east side has a couple of low crags, the biggest on Scour Rigg.

The summit is a short curving ridge of shale, about ten metres long, with a small cairn among the grass and heather. The view west runs to the Scafells and the Coniston fells, and east to the Kentmere Horseshoe, with Black Combe and the Pennines on a clear day.

Kentmere Tarn, in the valley to the east, was drained for farmland in the 1830s. Diatomite was dug from the old tarn bed from the 1930s until 1971, and the workings left the tarn you see there now.