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]

Tuesday 31 May 2016

Whitbarrow (SD441870; 215m)

Having arrived home late on Sunday evening, and with a plan forming in my mind to be off again this morning (Tuesday), my single day at home was spent doing exciting things such as laundry, shopping and cleaning Colin (particularly removing the remains of eight billion flies from his front end and windscreen). What I ran out of time for was planning, so my intended early departure this morning was pushed back a couple of hours so that I could spend some time flicking between maps, hill-bagging.co.uk and StreetView, and making notes. At a quarter past nine, as I climbed into Colin, the time had come to make some sort of decision as to how to order my hills and it seemed to me that the most obvious thing to do was to head for the nearest first.

Arriving in the south Lakes three and a bit hours later it was to find that my intended parking area (near Millside) would have had plenty of room if it hadn't been for the three cars parked there being evenly spaced at about 20 feet apart. It turned out to be in my favour as, whilst looking for somewhere to turn around, another parking area was found which was nearer to my chosen path.

I've not downloaded the gpx file yet, but I'm pretty sure that the waymarked permissive path that I followed bore little resemblance to any of the lines shown on the map, but that didn't matter as its direction was perfectly clear as it took me through pleasant woods, up onto the lovely limestone ridge and along to my objective.

image
Having made the decision to take this trip on Sunday night, it was a full 24 hours later that it occurred to me that it's a Bank Holiday week, and school holidays to boot, and thus not an ideal time (for one who has so few demands on her time) to be heading to one of the busiest holiday destinations in the country. The thing that convinced me to go ahead regardless was the good weather forecast and, as I made my way along this ridge in the sunshine, with clear views all around, I was certainly happy with where I was.



Half a dozen other walkers were seen as I made my way out and back, so it was hardly rammed up there either.

A little bit of a corner was cut as I made my way back through the woodland, which brought the whole outing in at 5 miles with (I would estimate) 900' of ascent.

There was another hill in my afternoon, but as it was such a special one it's going to get a post all of its own.

2 comments:

  1. One of my all time favourite venues. If you like limestone you certainly get your fill up there. I have been up loads of times. I used to run round the circuit, and I have explored many of its half secret paths.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This was one of quite a number of hills on this trip of which I thought: "Mick would like it up here." I can foresee a return visit at some point in the future.

      Delete