I surveyed this path from the Toppin Rays end, where is leaves the lane just north of Toppin Rays Farm, from where it rises over the hill to Low Scathwaite. The finger post where It leaves the lane (up a farm track) has half its finger missing, but it’s still just about readable as saying “Public Footpath”.

At the end of the track it reaches a field gate with a pedestrian gate at the side. This pedestrian gate opens reasobaly easily, but it has dropped a little and now catches against the top of the central metal gatepost and needs a bit of force to get it to open and close.

After that the path climbs over a hill and drops down to a ladder stile over a dry stone wall, with a metal field gate through the same wall a short distance away.

This ladder stile is badly broken and dangerous. The Toppins Ray (south-east) side of it has a missing step, a step that’s loose on the right and part-rotted side rails. The top platform planks are mostly loose, and the Low Scathwaite side of it has even more missing / loose steps, plus the side rails on that side are even more rotted, so PQ feels this existing ladder stile is beyond repair and dangerous. The best temporary solution would be to remove the ladder stile and put waymark signs on the field gate, which is openable and needs to be kept that way. In due course, if the land owner does not want walkers using the field gate, or if diverting the ROW through that gate is deemed unsatisfactory, then a new ladder stile could be erected over the dry stone wall and the waymark signs moved to that new ladder stile.

This is the metal field gate near that dangerous ladder stile.

After that the path passes north of Low Scathwaite Farm to a wooden field gate into a short track that leads to the lane by Low Scathwaite Farm. This wooden gate is very old and hangs from a single top hinge (top left in photo, whioch is viewed from the lane side), so it dangles worryingly when opened and walkers proba bly worry that it is going to fall off or collapse when they open it.