Ascent: 1050m
Weather: bright and sunny, little cloudier on the tops
Hordes: many
Mountain marathon runners: many
Weasels: 2
Wainwrights ticked off: 2
Remaining: 21
The day after one of the wettest days in one of the wettest summers on record, we decided to go for a walk in one of the wettest places in the country. Borrowdale averages 120 inches of rain a year, compared to 50 inches in Keswick, just a few miles away.
It was warm and dry as we set off from Seathwaite at about 9:30am, where plenty of cars were already parked up by the side of the road. Our path lead up towards Styhead Tarn, but we turned off right just before the footbridge and made our way up the hillside to Seathwaite Fell, where we visited the two peaks and a bog.
We skirted around the wet, rocky edge down to Sprinkling Tarn, where there were loads of little fish, along to Esk Hause and up underneath Great End. There were A LOT of people having their lunch here. We went over a boulder field near Ill Crag and then over Broad Crag (this seems to be popular route for people doing the Three Peaks Challange, which may explain, if not excuse, the presence of a couple of smurfs and Captain Jack Sparrow) which is a boulder field and then down a very steep, scree-y path at Broadcrag Coll to then head up again to Lingmell. We had Lingmell to ourselves, with clear views of the train of people heading up and down Scafell Pike.
Coming down to Lingmell Coll we started looking for somewhere to sit and have second lunch, but the wind was quite strong all the way around to Styhead Tarn. We kept on down until just after the footbridge and stopped for a while by the stream and then headed down, admiring the water falls and views into Borrowdale. As we approached the farm in Seathwaite, a couple of girls asked us if we'd seen a big group of people who would have been coming down from Scafell Pike - why yes, yes we have.
Photo gallery from the walk here
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