Pennine Way Day Eleven - Langdon Beck to Brampton

Distance: 15 miles
Ascent: 375m
Weather: warm and sunny
Kestrel, buzzard, wheatear
Discarded stuff: lettuce, one trainer on Rasp Hill
Mole gibbets
Red flag warning of danger sheep

Frog, horses, mice

Hat incidents: 1

Retracing our steps back to Saur Hill Bridge, we met a couple with bird spotting scopes and asked them if they recognised a bird that we'd seen yesterday and couldn't place. It turned out to be a young blackbird, which are strangely big, speckled brown birds with black beaks.

Along Widdy Bank we were joined by a lady who didn't want to walk through the herd of cows by herself. There was a big bull in the field but it and the cows were all very placid. The baby ones were cute and curly haired.

Around the bank, the slopes get more scree and boulder, and under Falcon Clints there was a bit of clambering to get over some. Duck boards had been put in in places, and some stone slabs but many of them were submerged. Appropriately, we saw a kestrel hovering above.

Around a corner you are confronted by the dramatic Cauldron Snout waterfall and a short scramble up the rocks to get to the track and bridge at the top.

The path stays high passed a farm at Birkdale, and then follows a newly laid stone track up on to Rasp Hill, where there was a red flag flying warning of Danger Sheep. Or more likely, the MOD firing range on the other side of the fell.

We stopped for lunch in the sunshine on some rocks near Dobson Mere Foot.

There is a fancy new bridge crossing the river here, previously one had to ford the river or, if the water was too high, take a long detour around the top of the valley to another bridge. We thought that today fording wouldn't have been difficult, but seeing as someone had gone to the trouble of building a bridge, it would be churlish not to use it.

A quick sock faff and we made good progress over the grassy High Cup Plain towards High Cup Nick, where we stood and stared for a minute.

We then had a bit of a reunion other Pennine Way Walkers who have met before on previous walks. Small world indeed.

There were vertigo inducing cliffs down into the Nick, and very worrying sheep running about on them. Once the path had moved onto gentler ground, we stopped for a short break on Peeping Hill to admire the views over to the Lake District.

A pretty track leads down into Dufton, and then we took a Green Lane to Brampton and The New Inn. The green lane started well but there was a lake that took some negotiating and a lot of muddy puddles.