Ennerdale in the Rain

Distance: 10 miles
Ascent: 250m - today we climbed about 90 floors, 10% of which were in the hotel.
Weather: rain, rain, rain
Seen: a jay, a deer, water
Plans: abandoned
Today we were going to climb Pillar from Ennerdale. We headed off early with a hearty breakfast inside and the promise of a fine day. We parked up in the car park down in Ennerdale valley and set off at about 10am. At about 10:05 am it started raining, and didn't stop for the next three hours. We are used to rain, but this was pretty serious rain.
The forest tracks were overflowing and High Beck, which, according to the fell guide book, we should "gingerly ford" was a raging torrent of water down the hillside.
We stopped under the non-existent shelter of some pine trees and took stock, deciding to abort our high level walk in favour of a walk around the valley. Ennerdale is beautiful, even in the wet.
About 3/4 of the way around, it stopped raining but the tops were always in cloud. We saw a deer and then, when the sun had come out a bit, we saw a lot of people. Most of them were dry.
We are going to attempt Pillar again next weekend, this time from from Honister, and Rob has declared we are going to the top, whatever the weather.

Around Great Gable

Distance: 13 miles
Ascent: about 1300m
Weather: Cloudy, a few showers, a few sunny moments, quite warm
Wainwrights: six down, six to go
Anxious moments: a couple

Today's walk took longer than might be expected, given that it wasn't particularly long or particularly high - however it was pretty blumming steep going up in places and quite alarmingly steep coming down in others.

We parked at the NT car park behind the YHA at Honister, and crossed the mine yard to the gate leading up to Grey Knott. It didn't seem to take long to reach the summit, helped by the fact the car park sits at 330m. There are a few tops, so we visited some of them, before heading off over the plateau top to Brandreth, congratulating ourselves on having a day out on the Fells rather than being at work.

From Brandreth, we headed part of the way up Green Gable, then veered off down to Base Brown and back up, where we seemed to meet up with some crowds for a while. I didn't really notice the summit of Green Gable, as it is completely overshadowed by the looming mass of Great Gable behind, and there were a few people sitting on it. A short scree slope heads down to Windy Gap (where it didn't seem overly windy) and then up the rocky slopes of Great Gable. A fun scramble brings you up near the top and we stopped to have some lunch sitting on a rock in the sunshine with views of Crummock Water.

The descent of Great Gable is probably best glossed over, especially if you turn off the path too soon and end up on a scree slope of steepness and screeness that was a times ok and at time horrendous. I know scree running is a thing, but it's definitely not my thing. We had a sit on a rock at the bottom, some time later, and washed the dirt off my hands and had some more lunch.

After we'd calmed down a bit, we set off up Kirk Fell. Kirk Fell sits quite low and squat with very steep sides, and a rocky path heads up and then across the fell top, complete with the very creatively named Kirk Fell Tarn.
From the summit cairn, we followed the line of the fence posts down to the rocky paths that heads down. I had a slight wibble at the first step down off the edge, as it was quite a big step, plus I think I'd been more unnerved by the last descent than I'd thought, but we made our way down slowly and carefully and it was fine.

The return path was narrow and rocky to begin, but got wider and easier as we went along. It skirts back around under Kirk Fell back to near where we came down off Great Gable where we got to walk up a bit more scree (that was fine) and then the path contours round under the mounds of Great Gable and Green Gable.

The easy path took us over the grassy hillsides back to the Honister mine, where a well maintained path leads back down to the car park.

I had to sit on my coat in the car because the seat of my trousers was so dusty.

Caldbeck Fells

Distance: 13 miles
Ascent: 1000m
Weather: Sunny, a little breezy on the tops
Summits: Carrock Fell, High Pike, Knott, Great Calva
Brown feet: 2 a few hours apart, both Rob's

We filled up with a lovely big breakfast at The Mill Inn in Mungrisedale and, after putting on some sun cream and watching Ed McKeever winning gold in the kayaking, set off for today's walk around the Caldbeck Fells.

It was warm and sunny, and has been fairly dry lately so we set off in trail shoes rather than waterproof boots, our feet did get wet during the day, but they stayed cool and dried out fairly quickly after any dunking. Rob's feet, however, are now an interesting shade of brown.

We parked up by the side of the lane under Carrock Fell (649m) and took a path up the fellside that was quite steep and hard going in places, I'm quite glad we chose to go up that route rather than down at the end of the day. But it soon levels out and becomes much easier (apart from a boggy hole that snuck up on Rob's foot)  towards Carrock Fell, where there is an Iron Age fort, and some more modern looking sheep folds and shelters. The path leads straight to Hare Stones on the Cumbria Way path, and we took a turn to go up High Pike (658m) and then back to the track. After a short way, there was a sheep trod heading off right in a fairly straight line to Great Lingy Hill from where indistinct paths lead all over the place, through the heather and occasionally boggy ground. We made our way through the rough around Little Lingy Hill and up the hillside to Knott (710m) managing to keep our feet relatively dry.

We had a lunch stop (including bad cheese / dairy product jokes) in the sunshine on Great Calva (690m) and then followed the path down to meet the Cumbria Way path where it crosses Wiley Gill. Here Rob found another boggy puddle and we had a good view of a peregrine falcon having a sit on a fence.

The easy track leads back into Mosedale along the river and then we followed the lane to our starting point.

Wainwrights ticked off today: 3
Remaining: 12