Walking on Wednesday 28/10

Pete plans to lead a Classic "A" walk on Wednesday 28/10 starting from the Moot Hall in Keswick at 0900hr, price will be £12.50 each.

Transport will be arranged from there to Mosedale (back o'Skiddaw) and the route will be a traverse of the Northern Fells, starting with Carrock Fell, then Great Lingy; over to Knott and on to Great Calva, then down to Skiddaw House and back to Keswick by the Glenderaterra valley.

The walk is not part of the published programme which finished on Friday with a very successful but wet walk over Dale Head; Hindscarth and Robinson.

If you'd like to come on Pete's Wednesday walk please let me know by email, telephone or even knock on the door.

Bella is keen, and will be sporting her new coat unlike the piccie below which shows her before she was stripped out!  She is much smarter now and she knows it.....

Sunny day in September

September 10 dawned warm and sunny and stayed that way for Cath's Scafell Pike walk. Here the lads are ascending The Band, just below the top of Great End and high above Styhead Tarn below in the distance.

Summit of Scafell Pike, top of England, 3210ft. The group seem pleased to have the place to themselves though I doubt it; perhaps Cath just chose her moment to take the picture well.



On the return along the Corridor Route there's an awkward rocky step to negotiate. It's quite alarming to see it looming ahead on a wild and windy day with the mist down. Today however the mood is benign, merely an upward turn of the rocky footpath leading to Styhead Tarn.

Tough and remote

It seems when you head into the Cairngorms as if you will never reach that remote summit, they are such a long way away and after the Lakes it is always a bit of an ordeal to even contemplate the distances you need to walk before you are even at the foot of the 3000 foot hill.... This is me trying hard not to think about it and concentrating on the beautiful scenery on Monday 5th October as we made our way towards our goal which you can just see covered in snow to the left of my head. This is after a mountain bike ride up from the Linn of Dee to Derry Lodge which saved at least a 70 minute tedious walk along the estate road.  So the idea is always to cut down on the dreary walk ins if you can.

This is later in the day when we had climbed most of the way to the summit but the snow line was now in evidence and it is a bit of a shock after leaving Cumbria to find Scotland has entered winter early, or at least the Cairngorms have.....Freezing fog, snow and ice on the tors was our environment that day.

But Scotland is unpredictable in the Autumn and it is always a challenge to complete the summit of another Munro. This was our 2nd summit on the 8th October and it is a better day and a magnificent view looking North from Beinn Dearg above Glen Bruar.

We did eventually do 3 Munros which were all very remote and each one was only attainable by using a mountain bike to avoid really long days which you do not attempt at this time of year if you have any sense.

All said and done, it was a change and that, they claim, is as good as a rest.

Its been a while but.....our Broadband limit ran out

The trouble with Broadband is that you have an upload limit set by how much you can be made to pay each month by your provider and ours is a small limit.  So post about 10 piccies and update the blog say 3 times in a month and that uses it up very fast, because of course you also need to collect emails and use the internet.....Well the upshot is that sometimes we can't post even if we want to because we don't have the broad band capacity. So now its into October we can post again and I want to thank you for your patience because I know some of you faithfully follow this blog and look most days for new stuff and of course there wasn't any. I hope you will forgive us when these glitches occur, and speaking of trials and tribulations....

What an October it looks like being too if today was anything to go by. Gales, heavy showers, sun peeped through a couple of times and then back to lashing rain again...Luckily for our leaders, no one had a walk today because it would have been difficult seeing, walking and enjoying anything above 1000 feet.

But the sun does shine and I have some piccies from Cathy Colam to prove it. First up though you must meet her new doggie... This is a lovely photo of our new canine team member called Skye...He is pictured on Causey Pike and Cathy says this is his first walk up a proper mountain.

Next up she sent a photo of a group of you on top of Dollywagon Pike on 13th September when you walked over Helvellyn as well. I do not have a list of names but you know who you are... I see kira though..and I think I have walked with the man on the extreme right, he has a terrier too I think. Send me a comment if you can and let me know if my memory serves me right.

Now we have one last piccie today and this was the same walk showing a superb vista including Blencathra and Skiddaw taken from the Whiteside descent.

Pete and I are off to Braemar tomorrow for a sortie on a Munro or 2 or maybe more!  So until we are back, enjoy the hills and if you want to send comments or photos they will all be welcome. Cathy and David will be taking the next few walks out from the Moot Hall.