Saturday, 14 February 2015

Walla Crag & Latrigg

Distance: 13 miles
Ascent: 700m
Weather: blue skies, quite warm, chill breeze at times.
Chaffinches and wood pigeons, honky geese, robins, buzzards, rare sheep and less rare sheep.
Odd flying machines 1
Stone circles 1
Odd people on odd cycles 2
Tempting styles 1
Locked gates 1

After a gupping big breakfast, complete with croissants and pastries,  we got packed up and headed off through Keswick through the park to the lakeshore path to Gobbler's Knob Bishop's Knob Friars Crag. 


The path leads round to Calfclose Bay, where we headed up, crossing the road and up a track into the woods. The path comes out with fine views over the lake and contours around to near Ashness Bridge, where we joined another path that lead up to Falcon Crag and on to Walla Crag.
Crossing a style by a patch of mud, the paths were more grassy, leading down to farmland and a lane down to Castlerigg. We followed the path to the stone circle, which was being much photographed, with buzzards circling overhead.

An underpass goes under the busy main road and the path heads down to the old railway line path, which we were in for a very short time, over the bridge and then away up a lane and up the ridge towards Latrigg. We had lunch with views over the valley towards the Helvellyn range. It was a bit sheepy.

We came down a steep grassy path to a big notice board saying there were wild boars here (300 years ago) and into the Cumbria Way path, which was very greasy and muddy. It was also muddy through Brundleholme Woods. We stopped midway to consider taking a new path, with very impressive new style, which involved us downloading new maps to see where the new path might go. After all this,  the gate was locked.

We came out of the woods back onto the railway line path, which leads directly back to the hotel.