Langdale Pikes

Our planned walk for today was the Langdale Pikes, a group of peaks on the North side of the Great Langdale Valley, about 8 miles West of Ambleside.


We set off on the walk at 08:45 and made our way to start of the footpath - following the obvious steep path alongside Stickle Ghyll all the way up until we reached Stickle Dam.

Steep path	Looking back down Great Langdale Valley
Pavey Ark directly ahead.	Stickle Tarn

We turned right at the tarn and followed Bright Beck until we came to the steep path named by Wainright as North Rake.  This route avoids Jacks Rake which is a Grade 1 scramble and after reading a few articles about accidents on that route (a couple of them fatal and both of them were unrelated incidents in June 2012) I decided it was probably best avoided - maybe another day.  North Rake was plenty steep enough for me, it was fairly well marked with cairns and it looked much worse than it actually was and I thought it was a really fun route to take once I got into it.

North Rake route

Pavey Ark was Wainright  #1 of the day and we celebrated with a slice of Chocolate Guinness Cake before continuing on our way.

Pavey Ark (2297ft)

From there, the 0.3 mile walk to Thunacar Knott was very straightforward albeit quite boggy underfoot and in very wet weather it would be tricky to take the direct route.  This was Wainwright #2 of the day and was also a Hewitt.

Thunacar Knott (2372ft)

The views and scenery were absolutely stunning, it was hard to take it all in, blue clear skies and warm sunshine, we've waited so long for days like this.

The climb up to Harrison Stickle was steep but a fairly easy climb on rocky steps.  The views were absolutely stunning!  This was Wainwright #3 of the day.  Spent ages admiring the views before continuing on the walk.

Harrison Stickle (2416ft)

The route back down from Harrison Stickle was very steep and rocky, it wasn't particularly difficult and Mark flew down it but I found it hard-going on my knees.  I had knee surgery some years ago on my right knee and just recently my left knee has been complaining, I'm going to do everything I can to avoid any surgery as it took such a long time to get back on my feet last time so I've been working on knee strengthening exercises to see if I can build up the muscle - so fingers crossed.

Route down Harrison Stickle

Loft Crag and Pike of Stickle next

Onward to Loft Crag - very soon we were climbing steeply up to the summit and were rewarded with  more fantastic views.  This walk is one of the best we've ever done.  No caches at all but then we didn't come here for those.  We hope to find a couple on the return leg on lower ground.

	Path to Loft Crag
Loft Crag summit (2232 ft)	Helicopter over Harrison Stickle from Loft Crag summit

Next stop Pike of Stickle.

Pick of Stickle

We could see the inviting steps up to the Pike of Stickle summit from Loft crag, before long we had made our way up the steps, eventually they ran out and we still had quite a steep climb to reach the summit.  We had a false start where the route was just too precarious so we returned to the path and found a better route.  Once at the top we got talking to a guy who had just found his 105th Wainwright, we enjoyed a chat with him about upcoming travel plans and then went off to find a sheltered spot to eat our lunch.  The views were simply stunning once again.

Pike of Stickle (2327 ft)

View from Pike of Stickle

We had a brief debate about which route to take back and decided the most scenic and possibly 'easier', although longer route would be to stick with our planned route via Stake Pass where we found our first cache of the day before joining up with the Cumbria Way.

The path is a long way down!

This was indeed a very long route with a fairly steep descent in places and by this time my knees were really feeling it. I was really put to shame when a small group of women came haring past, they must've been a good 20 years older than me too!  Hopefully that'll be me after a few more months of fell walking.  It was good to finally get down to the relatively flat path again.

At about the 9 mile mark, we found cache number two -  a nice quick find and we reapplied the sun cream before continuing on along the Cumbria Way.

We encountered a small group of cattle on a narrow stretch of the path on the Cumbria Way, there were a couple of heifers with their calves, luckily we were joined by a couple of lads just before we reached them, we had a joke about tackling one each and then cautiously walked past them without incident - well there was no way I was heading back the way we came.

Eek Cows up ahead

After a short (steep) detour to Dungeon Ghyll to find another cache it was back to the car.

A fantastic 11.2 mile walk, 9 hours, 5 Wainwrights, 4 caches, lots of laughs and no tears thankfully

NWCMM - Back in Business

The Bay Horse

We were really pleased to see a NWCMM event published near to home just after we'd moved in as it would be a great opportunity to meet our new set of local cachers. It was hosted by The Magna Defender a cacher we first met at a Piratemania event back in 2010.

Although we've cached in the area in the past on a number of occasions, a lot of the talk was of caches we weren't familiar with and made us realise that we really need to get stuck in to finding some of the local stuff. With the days getting longer all the time we should be able to make use of the evenings. The time whizzed by and all too soon it was time to go.  That's one of the great things about this hobby, we've moved to a new area and have already met a group of friends with lots to talk about. 

It looks as though these events are going to become a regular occurrence once again and before long it might be our turn to host one!

We'd better check out some of the local pubs....

The Greendale Horseshoe

The UK weather report at the beginning of the week said that this weekend was going to be hotter than Ibiza.... hmm found it hard to believe but decided to get a walk planned ready for Saturday anyway just in case.

We decided it would be a perfect day to head off to the Lake District again for a bit of Wainwright bagging and maybe a cache or two.  Today's chosen walk was in the Western Fells area. We are really enjoying being closer to Cumbria and love how we now have easy access to the Lake District.  Every cloud and all that.....

Lordy! Good job we're in the car!

After a rather winding route we eventually arrived at the parking spot which was a grassy verge in Greendale, just to the West of Wast Water.

Fun facts about Wast Water:

It's owned by the National Trust and is England's largest lake at almost 3 miles long and more than a third of a mile wide and is also England's deepest lake at nearly 260ft.

There is said to be a gnome garden at the bottom of the lake, the gnomes have been there for quite a few years.  After several deaths in the lake they were removed as it was thought they posed a risk for divers that went looking for them and got out of their depth but they were soon replaced and it is thought they are still there today.  Apparently many dive sites around the world have gnome gardens.  I'm not in a hurry to go and check on them though.

Back to Greendale... we set off up the road and walked for about 0.8 mile before leaving the road and taking the path at Gill Beck.  The path wasn't very well defined but we headed steadily up towards the summit of Buckbarrow.  This was a little steeper than I was expecting and even though it was early the heat of the sun was quite intense and before long I was sweltering.  I was a little concerned as it wasn't like I could peel off any extra layers as we were already only in T-shirts.  We're just not used to this heat, it's been so cold for so long the sunshine has come as a bit of a shock.  I stopped a couple of times on my way up to check the map (ok to get my breath back) and soon found our way to Buckbarrow, our first Wainwright of the day - brilliant!

Buckbarrow summit

Then we headed North towards the cairn on Glade How.  Glade How is actually listed as Birkett on the Hill Bagging website.

Glade How

From here we headed to the cairn on Cat Bields where we could clearly see the path up to Seatallan almost a mile away.

It was a bit of a slog but a steady climb which wasn't too gruelling, just a bit boggy underfoot in places.

The temperature had dropped and the wind got up at this point so this helped cool us down.

Seatallan

It was good to finally reach the trigpoint and bag another Wainwright.  Fabulous views from the top, we could clearly see Sellafield and the Irish Sea coast.  We found the nearby Seatallan cache and then sat in the shelter to eat our cake - this was one of 2 caches that we found on the 7 mile walk.  The cache on Seatallan doesn't get many visitors, only 53 in 8 years... make that 54..... but the funny thing is when I came to log it I noticed that it'd had another visitor today and we feel sure we passed them on our way back to the car but didn't see any GPSrs but their log fits with the time we saw them - what a coincidence!

Then it was time to move on to our third and final Wainwright of the day - Middle Fell.  The route wasn't very clear but before long we found our way and steadily climbed up to the cairn where we spent quite some time admiring the fabulous views of Scafell Pike and Wast Water.

Middle Fell

View of Wast Water and Scafell Pike

Then we started the steady descent down to the car.  The route then became a little busier and we passed a few people going in the opposite direction.

The path was very rocky so we carefully made our way along Greendale Gill until the path became a little easier and we could soon see the car.  We were glad that we'd had the mile long walk along the road at the beginning of the walk instead of the end.

We can see the car!

All in all a brilliant walk, we bagged 3 Wainwrights, a trigpoint and 2 caches and walked a little over 7 miles.

The route

We decided to spend the rest of the day in Ambleside which involved driving over Hardknott Pass!  For anyone not in the know... Hardknott Pass is the steepest road in England, a title it shares with Rosedale Bank in Yorkshire.

ha ha ha only 30%

It's been 6 years since we last drove over Hardknott pass and I distinctly remember passing a car that had skidded off the road and was well and truly stuck so I have always been a little nervous of this road. I took it steady and we stopped off half way to look for a cache we'd DNFd 6 years ago - found it straight away this time doh!  We were in my Fiesta today so I wasn't sure how it would fare but I just kept on going and made it over the pass thankfully without incident and my nerves intact.

Looks flat in the photo

Herdy

It was good to finally reach Ambleside.  We had hoped to go inside the Bridge House but we were too late, so we ate our chippy tea on the bench next to it and it's a good excuse to return to Ambleside another day when it's open.

The Bridge House

We've been so lucky with the weather today, the atmosphere in Ambleside was buzzing as everyone was relaxing and enjoying themselves in this long awaited sunny weather.  Let's hope it lasts...........

Now where shall we go next weekend?

The end of a perfect day