A 9.5 mile loop around one of the most popular parts of the Lake District – Crinkle Crags and Bowfell above Langdale.

Stats: 9.5 miles, 3500 feet ascent, Grade 1 Scramble (Bad Step)

5 of us spent a weekend camping in the National Trust site at Great Langdale, and we wanted a challenging walk that we could do straight from the campsite. Its much nicer to come off the fells straight back into you tent and not have to drive. Even better is when the walk terminates at a great pub like the Old Dungeon Ghyll!

This route is well known – its on go4awalk and also described in detail here.

The weather was ideal – almost no wind, cloud was well below the tops and it was sunny at times.

The net result of this was just making it off the steep rocky stuff as the light failed, with a 2k walk in the dark to the pub. All hail the petzl headtorch!

Photos from the walk are either on flickr (from me and Craig) or or Nige’s spangly new gallery here.

[tags]walking, lake district[/tags]

Did an 8 1/2 mile walk round Pendle hill today.

Photo of pendle hill – clouds gone at the end of the walk!
Stats: 8.5 miles, 1690ft ascent.

The route was as described here – and was pretty enjoyable. The route takes in several of the many resivoirs around Pendle, as well as quite a bit of the plateau that make up the summit of Pendle Hill (557m or 1827ft). The only annoyance was the low cloud meaning we lost some of the fantastic views that are usually available of the surrounding areas, right over to the Yorkshire Dales. THe cloud was clearing as we descended – but we will be back!

The route starts from Barley – which has a large car park, toilets, cafe / visitor centre, maps and pubs. From the car park, you follow an access road past the Ogden resivoirs. At this point it was clear and sunny, with a pretty good temperature. I was happy in a LIFA baselayer and windshirt. We stopped several times for photos round here, the panorama at the bottom of this page is of the upper ogden resivoir.

From here you follow the stream which fills these 2 resivoirs, and comes down the side of Pendle Hill. Keep to the right of the stream and a fence for the first mile or so, walking on a path which is around 20m away from the water. We stuck too close to the stream and had an awkward mile or so of boggy ground to traverse. Eventually, the path crosses the stream and starts to climb away for a while, before returning to the stream again. Keep following the stream until you reach a wall, by this point the path has got pretty vague, and you may start to wonder if you are in the right place. Its less than half a mile from the path that leads off to your right through the gate so keep going. This brings you onto the plateau proper.

Follow this wall until you find a ladder stile, where apparently you will see wonderful views of the Yorksire dales. Instead we had panoramas of cloud, and stopped to add a fleece layer before continuing over the style, following the escarpment and on to a clear path. This path leads over another style to the summit and trig point at the top of pendle hill. We stopped for a well deserved lunch here .

Rejoin the path, and follow it until another path leads down the hill, almost doubling back. The clud was beggining to lift now and we got good views from here, stopping a few times on the way down. At the bottom, head towards the farm and pick up a hard track. Next head towards the Black Moss resvoirs over the fields.

After this, walk down the path to the farm, and pass over the bridge. Take a right onto the footpath marked Barley, and when you get there follow the path past the playground and back to your car.

Pendle hill is also listed as a Marilyin, with a prominence of 395m.

See all photos on flickr from this walk here: Pendle Hill Walk Photos

Saturday saw a lesiurely walk round the two small lakes of Grasmere and Rydal Water, with lunch at a rather nice cafe at Grasmere.

Stats: 5.75 miles, 1000ft ascent

Parked in small car park over a bridge,just south of Rydal Village. From there we walked round the lakes clockwise – climbing up a little to get some fantastic views over Rydal Water. On the way up, we found some caves, one needed about 10 foot of climbing to get into (I failed) and the other was very easy to get into over some stepping stones.

There are several paths above Rydal Water, and all seem to go roughly inthe ditrection we wanted to go. As we were with Will’s dad and friends, there was a tea stop part way through this stage , where we met a very tame robin that was clearly hungry, and actually flew up about a foot from me to investigate my snack. Got one good pic of him.

From here we took some Roads into Grasmere, dropping down to walk alongside the lake. This happily brought us to lunch time. While they finished lunch, I wandered over to Cotswold outdoor / Rock Bottom – and was pleased to find exactly what I was after on offer – a Montane Aero for £25. Another post coming up about this.

Out of Grasmere, and up a path past dove cottage and the Wordsworth centre. The path leads rount to Rydal Mount and House – but the gardens were closed. Finally after a couple of Pics of the water coming down the rocks, it was back to car, and a Quick Browse round Ambleside.

The first walk of many in 2006. This walk covered Hartsop Dodd, Caudale Moor (Stony Cove Pike), St Ravens Edge and Red Screes.

It was mostly intended to figure out how hard the walks were in a book I got for Christmas – “Walking the Wainwrights” and to test my fitness properly. Originally the route was to be longer, but curcumstaces didn’t allow, more on that later. A side aim was of course to take many pictures!

The route is 10 1/2 miles long, with 3500 feet of ascent and features 3 Wainwrights and a pub.

The Start
Starting from a car park just past Hartsop Village on the Kirkstone Pass (coming up from Ambleside) there was ample parking for this time of year – summer might be a problem. The intial stages simply invlove walking the short distance into Hartsop and heading towards Hartsop Dodd – which towers over the Village. THe footpaths here are pretty clear and its just a case of following them accross a small bridge over the stream. Note to self – take picture of hll before starting!

Hartsop Dodd (618m)
The climb of Hartsop Dodd chosen was pretty much the steepest there is – from the village you can follow a wall steeply up until you branch left up a path to the summit. Its very steep and fairly hard going, but not technical and afforded specatacular views of the valley we were climbing out of. Once up there, you can see a huge amount of the surrounding area – Right accross to Helvellyn, as well as High Street, Rest Dodd and St Sunday Crag amongst others. More importantly, you can see the path to Caudale Moor / Stony Cove pike running along side a wall.

At this point I had stopped a couple of times to get my breath back, but the weather was good, no cloud and excellent visibility and the day was looking good. It took us about an hour from the car park to the top.

Caudale Moor / Stony Cove Pike (763m)
The second Wainwright of the day, a fairly easy walk along and up the ridge from Hartsop Dodd. The path runs along a large wall, so the route is sheltered and easy to follow.

This was an easy part, there was some ice and snow but it was not a problem. As soon as we set off along this route, the cloud closed in leaving us without any views, but not so much as to make navigation difficult. Once up to Caudale Moor, the top was hard to find, as there are so many cairns on such a large moor that its guess work, especially in reduced visibility.

An obvios path leads down gently to St Ravens Edge from here, which we followed.

St Ravens Edge (593m)
The path takes you through St Raven Edge, where you can either go over it or stay down a little lower. I stayed on the low path to save energy, some of the others ran off up it. How I hate people fitter than I! After St Ravens Edge, the path turns sharply down hill towards the Kirkstone Pass Inn. The descent is a little tricky in places, where I had to scramble a bit. Everything was still in cloud, but we arrived safley at the Inn, grabbed an outside table and got started on out lunches, with the help of Beer / Hot Chocolate.

Red Screes (776m)
Red Screes is big, and steep if you climb it from the Kirkstone Pass. Straight away the path turns into narrow rock steps whic are not great for the confidence in cold wet conditions. After about half way up, the footing was getting a little icy in places as well – which left me a little nervous. Soon after this, we took a right branch on the path and started to encounter some scrambling…..

The problem is I have never climbed before and might have a little bit of vertigo. 2000ft up the side of a cold mountain is not the best place to learn Scrambling, but there seemed to be no option! We found routes that allowed us to bypass some of the worst scree in the steep bits, but there was one section where I climbed some scree with the nagging thought that I was about to slip down the side of the mountain. These bits done, the last 10 mins of the ascent was a nice trek over some snow and ice to finr the large summit cairn and windbreak.

At this point the cloud lifted a little and I got some good shots in while the adrenaline faded away.

Now the problem was that our original route could not be completed before dark (2 more peaks and 13 miles overall) so we chose to descend down the Scandale pass to cut down to 10.5 miles and maybe get done before dark.

From the top of Red Screes we descended aiming to pick up a path which crossed the Scandale Pass.

Scandale Pass
The Scandale Pass led pretty much back to Hartsop, a fairly ok but rocky path. We tramped down this in the failing light trying to keep away from the icy pathces. We just made it to the flatter ground at the bottom as trhe light went, with about 1.5 miles of flat paths back to the car. These led us past the back of Brothers Water and to the car. From the moment we joined this my legs were causing severe pain – making this the least good part of the walk.

All in all a very tiring day, but satisfying. I think I dmaged my left thigh a bit on the climb up Red Screes as it hurt constantly all the way back after this. I lack flexibilty and tend to lean back when I am walking as well – neither of which helped, but both can be fixed with due attention.

Craig has also got a blog post on this walk here. Some of the pics are his as well – all pictures open in a new window on flickr.

I have decided to have a go at ‘bagging’ all the Wainwrights. Wainwrights are mountains / hills in the Lake District that A Wainwright wrote about in his famous pictorial guides.

There are 214 of them, and this is likely to take more than a year to do due to other commitments.

So in order to do this I have put together a list in Excel and posted it here as well. Maybe this will be of use to other potential peak baggers.

The list is in excel here or pdf here, otherwise feel free to rip the html table off this page. All these files are under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 England & Wales License.

The best place to start an ascent is Coniston Village – most of the shops there have a small pack of route maps which will set you back a couple of pounds and describe all the popular routes up. Theres also several good pubs, cafes and outdoor shops as well.

There are several ascents possible of this mountain. Both times I have started from a car park which is around 1 mile from Coniston Village. This car park is 300m above sea level – leaving a good 500m of vertical ascent to challenge you. From this car park there are 2 possible routes – so far I have only explored the most direct route, which takes you up the side of the Old Man pretty rapidly. The other route is more leisurely – and may be a better descent, I have yet to find out.

The start of this climb is a wide, gentle path that takes you about half a mile into the ascent. After this, the going starts to get tougher – the paths are quite steep and rocky. One of the most interesting aspects of this part of the climb is all the mining equipment. There are cables, towers and buildings as you climp up, all abandoned. The history of the mountain is revealed to you as you climb.

The mid point in terms of effort is Low Water – a small lake before the final climb to the summit. This is a lovely place to rest, and offers fantastic views.

The final climb is the kicker (for unfit people like me) its steep and unrelenting as you climb away from Low Water up the final part of the Old Man. The last few hundred yards is the steepest of all.

If you get up on a clear bay, the reward is fantasitc – you can see all the way to the sea as well as a fantastic panorama of the lake district. The Old Man is the highest thing for miles around, you can see Coniston, Winderemere and more.