Friday 25 April 2014

A Misty Friday in the Eastern Lakeland Fells

Friday 4th April 2014

A circular walk up High Street from Troutbeck 

Distance: 24km; Ascent: 1290m; Misty with light winds; with Martin

It had been a while since I'd last been walking in the Lake District, so I made plans to head up to the Eastern Fells today in the company of Martin.  We set off walking from Church Bridge shortly before 10:30am and navigated (mainly successfully!) our way through a holiday park to reach a bridlepath, which ran roughly parallel to the main road on the other side of Trout Beck.  After a number of kilometres of reasonably level walking, we crossed Hagg Gill and ascended steeply into the mist to reach the summit of Troutbeck Tongue (Wainwright, Birkett).

Jesus Church, Troutbeck
Cairn on Troutbeck Tongue
A reasonably level ridge led northwards for around a kilometre and a half, before we picked up the line of the old High Street Roman Road and soon became to ascend steeply.   Around half way up the 500m ascent we took a short break for lunch in the mist before continuing on up to the summit of Thornthwaite Crag (Nuttall, Wainwright, Birkett).

We decided to detour northwards to visit the trigpoint on the summit of High Street (Nuttall, Marilyn, Wainwright, Birkett), before following the wall back in a SSW direction.

Thornthwaite Crag beacon
On the summit of Thornthwaite Crag
By the trig point on High Street
By the trig point on High Street
After almost re-ascending Thornthwaite Crag, we followed the ridge southwards in the mist to reach the summit of Froswick (Nuttall, Wainwright, Birkett).  It was relatively quiet on the fells today and so far we had only seen a handful of other walkers.  We stopped for a quick break on Froswick before continuing on to the twin cairns on the summit of Ill Bell (Nuttall, HuMP, Wainwright, Birkett).

Cairn on Ill Bell
Now we just had one 2000ft peak left for the day, and we soon reached the summit of Yoke (Nuttall, Wainwright, Birkett).

On the summit of Yoke
Descending the south slopes of Yoke we soon dropped out of the cloud :-)  We estimated that the cloud base was now at around 500m, having risen from below 300m when we set off walking this morning.  A pleasant walk across the Garburn Pass brought us to the summit of our next hill: Sallows (Dewey, Wainwright, Birkett).

Looking south towards Sallows
On the summit of Sallows
We followed a wall around the head of the Wardless coire with good views back to the cloud covered eastern fells.

Looking back north towards the High Street fells
Heading for Sour Howes
After a slippery stile crossing we reached the summit of Capple Howe (Birkett), our penultimate hill of the day.  A walk of a few hundred metres NW brought us to our last summit of the day: Sour Howes (Wainwright, Birkett).

On the summit of Sour Howes
Windermere from Sour Howes
We descended across Applethwaite Common with good views over Windermere to reach the Garburn Road, which we followed back down to the main road, emerging a short distance to the south of Church Bridge.

On the Garburn Road
It had been a good day's walking despite the low cloud.  Many thanks to Martin for the company; his somewhat more prompt account of today's walk can be found here.

4 comments:

  1. You're going to be as fit as a flea for the Challenge!
    Nice one, Alistair.
    :-)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Alan. That's the idea anyway :-)

      Delete
  2. Nice one Alistair, I hope you've enjoyed catching up with your entries. Swaledale looks like a pleasantly bright interlude...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Martin :-) Swaledale was indeed bright and sunny.

      Delete