I suspect once you will get some benefit from your field but not a lot. Once you have got the map the right way up and identified features, both near and far, and taken bearings on them, that will be it I would have thought, especially given the size of the fields in Appleby.
Do not get too hung up on pacing and bearings. Boxing on Holme Fell would probably get you into more trouble in that kind of terrain (bog, slope, rocks and bracken). Walking on a bearing, pacing etc are more techniques for bad visibility, crossing relatively featureless terrain and going off piste. As such you need to know them but first you need to be able to read a map to follow a route and work out where you are along it. This is a piece of cake with gps but you still need to be able to do it without one, if only to appreciate what your gps display is telling you.
If you want to start simple, there are some physically easy walks in the area where you can map read your way along to gain confidence in your abilities. After all, you have already said you can map read to some extent. Perhaps the text book has overcomplicated things for you. Take a walk down Smardale for example. It is a railway walk so you can’t get lost and you can concentrate on fixing your position and thumb your way along it. It has good features like bridges, buildings, water features and field boundaries. The landscape also changes considerably as you go along it so you can also start contour reading.
The Gaythorne Plain takes it to the next level. The fixing features are there but more subtle, apart from the line of the paths and their intersections but the area is bounded by roads so you cannot stray too far.