Eeee! That was such a good fun morning I had today! It left me drenched in very unladylike rivers of ‘glow’, and desperate for: a) a shower; and b) a few cups of rehydration drink; but I had an absolute ball.
In the interests of being relatively cool for as long as possible, it was only just gone 6.30am as I stepped out of Colin and headed out to do this circuit (I’m not sure ‘circuit’ is really the right word here; it’s more of a scribble!):
The hills visited, in the order I visited them, were:
1) Whiteless Pike (660m)
2) Wandope (772m)
3) Grasmoor (Marilyn – 852m)
4) Grisedale Pike (Marilyn – 791m)
5) Hopegill Head (770m)
6) Crag Hill (839m)
7) Sail (773m)
The day was fine and sunny as I made my way over the first three tops and down to Coledale Hause. Thanks to the early hour, I even got to enjoy the sight of an inversion a few valleys over, which hadn’t had time to burn off:
Grisedale Pike wasn’t meant to come fourth in my list, but once at Coledale Hause the whim took me to reverse the order of my next two hills, so that’s what I did. I met a chap up there who was worried about the weather and felt that rain was on its way, with the risk of thunder. I looked around at the few fluffy clouds and didn’t share his assessment of the immediate risk.
Atop Grisedale Pike. A few minutes earlier there had just been a few fluffy clouds around
A very short while later*, as I made my way up Hopegill Head, I noticed that suddenly there were bubbly clouds. A few minutes after that, as I reached that next summit, there was a big black ominously bubbly cloud sitting over me, which was also shrouding the summit of Grisedale Pike, making me glad of that whim which had made me reverse the order of these two.
Where’d all that cloud suddenly come from?
Looking back at Grisedale Pike from Hopegill Head, just before the cloud fully covered the summit
I’d hardly been going slowly until this point, but I certainly didn’t want to miss out on my last two tops due to the threat of lightning, so I put a bit of a spurt on even though it seemed pretty likely that, like yesterday, the cloud would drift away and thunder not be heard until much later in the day.
By my standards, I positively flew from Coledale Hause over my last two hills, opting to go the longer-but-gentler way to the top of Crag Hill, rather than making my way up the screes of the NW side.
Such a nice valley – if it wasn’t for the sodding flies!
From Sail Pass my route took me down to walk down the valley, up above Sail Beck. I might have paused for lunch somewhere along there, especially as the clouds were now looking far less ominous (with much blue developing again) except that I was being so bothered by big and nasty looking flies that I put even more of a spurt on to try (semi-successfully) to keep them at bay.
Based on yesterday’s stats, I’d expected this round (which came in at 13.5 miles with 5100’ of ascent) to take me all day – at least 7 hours. As it went (thanks to the flies, more than anything) I arrived back at Colin at 12.21, which was three minutes after it started sprinkling with rain. That rain proved short-lived and it was three hours later when great big blobs of rain started falling and distant thunder heard, by which time I was sitting with my feet up, watching out of the window.
So, another hugely enjoyable outing, in superb surroundings, with superb views, and on another super-hot day.
Bonus photo of the glorious lumpy-bumpiness
(*the downside of the current lack of wind is being attacked by flies every time you stop moving; my pause on the top was thus only a couple of minutes, during which time I had to knock lots of spiders off my legs, whilst I was doing the ‘midge slapping dance’ on the rest of my exposed skin. I suppose if I’d left the spiders to crawl over me they might eventually have dealt with some of the other flies…)
You'll be doing a Bob Graham next?
ReplyDeleteHahahahahaha! No.
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