The Road goes ever on and on; Down from the door where it began;
Now far ahead the Road has gone; And I must follow, if I can;
Pursuing it with eager feet; Until it joins some larger way;
Where many paths and errands met; And whither then? I cannot say.

[JRR Tolkien, Lord of the Rings]

Monday 31 August 2015

Cold Fell

Sunday 30 August

Cold Fell (SE of Brampton – NY606556)

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The RSPB car park at Clesketts isn’t designed for 6m long vehicles, but by holding a branch out of the way and reversing Colin into a bush we managed to squeeze in so as not to cause an obstruction. So, bright and early on Sunday morning off we set in the direction of Cold Fell, hoping that by the time we got there the low cloud would have lifted.

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Taken on our way back. That’s the way we’d been, but Cold Fell is out of sight from this vantage point.

The way up was soggy underfoot and a little longer than expected, as we opted to follow the trodden line (which skirted around the far side of the hill for a while before turning towards the summit) rather than yomping through heather, but it was straightforward and by the time we got to the top the cloud base was a short way above us:

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I read a trip log which described the cairn as being the shape of an American Hard Gum. A pretty accurate description, I’d say.

The last butteries of the trip were eaten in the excellent shelter (to the right of the trig in the snap above; notable for boasting better-than-average seating arrangements), before we started back down.

With the cloud now considerably lifted, the large cairns further along the ridge called to me, so we took a bit of a detour to include them in our route. What a soggy bit of ridge that was – and after I’d managed the previous couple of hills in dry boots.

They certainly like their large cairns in these parts:

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We arrived back in the car park just as people were arriving for the day, thus as I made a bee-line for the kettle Mick dived behind the wheel and suggested that we needed to leave immediately, pointing out that if another car arrived then we’d struggle to manoeuvre out of our tight space. 

Five point eight miles were covered in this final outing of the trip, with 1300’ of up. And then (via a layby for that omitted coffee and the final slice of homemade cake (no idea how we managed to make that last the best part of 3 weeks!)) we went home after a good and successful trip during which (on the whole) we enjoyed surprisingly good weather.

4 comments:

  1. Thanks for the grid reference. I did this one in February this year with snow about on a dreish day. My comment: "It lived up to its name".

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    1. We agreed on the way down that it wasn't appropriately named at all in our experience!

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  2. Wonderful stuff. How on earth did you manage to make a cake last three weeks?

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    1. It was actually two tea-loaves (so about 26 slices), but given that over a third of the first one had gone within the first day, it seems a miracle that the rest lasted out. Must have been all of the butteries we ate - I generally take one or the other out on the hill.

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