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.
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