We had expected Thursday to dawn fine and bright, but it didn’t. The air clarity of the previous day was gone and it was decidedly overcast. Still, it was dry (save for a few spots of drizzle) so it wasn’t a bad day to visit more tops, this time in the Forest of Bowland. It’s an area that has now, finally, moved off my ‘must go there’ list!
Longridge Fell came first and it hadn’t struck me, from its representation on paper, that it would be a popular place, but I was wrong. There were other cars in the car park we chose, and a large handful of other people were seen on the hill.
It was such a shame that the views were curtailed, because from what we could see, they were worth seeing. It was also a shame that it wasn’t a tiny weeny bit colder, as the semi-frozen bogs would have better tackled when fully frozen!
It was another very modest outing (2.7 miles; 300’ of up), but there were other hills on our list for the day, so off we headed for the next one.
Easington Fell was another modest outing, but rather damper underfoot than Longridge Fell had been. Again, the bogginess was semi-frozen, but this ground was far more extensively wet.
It didn’t take us long to reach the pile of stones which marks the top, where I snapped Mick, just to prove that he is with me on this trip:
Standing there on the top, we both agreed that a nearby top, Waddington Fell, looked higher. A check of the map showed it to be lower, but as there was only 1 metre in it (moreover, as by now we were really cutting it too fine to be able to get to our next objective and walk the full circuit I had intended within the hours of daylight remaining), we decided that we may just as well go and visit it. We considered it to be insurance, in case any future survey should show it to be the taller of the two after all! Here’s a snap of Waddington Fell (the one with a mast on top), taken from Easington Fell:
The huge quarry around which we walked to get there was a point of interest and before we knew it the trig point was before us, from where Easington Fell looked to be higher. Not bad views to the west:
Those to the east required you to look past the mast (and the two grinning fools in the foreground):
Our intended descent route was scuppered by the wall you see behind us in the photo above. With no crossing point within our sight, we opted for an about turn.
A whole 3 miles had been walked, with (between the two hills) 300’ of ascent!
Off we then went to our chosen car park for our next hill, where (as expected) we arrived too late to walk the hill that day. So, we settled in for the night, perfectly positioned to tackle it on the morrow.
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