A weekend in the Lake District

Friday .

A last minute cancellation and some re-arranging of others means we can get away earlier than expected, meaning we can beat the conjestion north of Birmingham and so arrive in the Lake District late afternoon. This gives us a brief opportunity to visit the Leighton Moss nature Reserve close to where we are staying. Beautiful read beds, fantastic bird watching facilities - though most of the birds were black headed gulls. We may have seen a red start as well . ..

New growth

From there we carried on to Silverdale with enough time for a walk along the estuary. There are far more birds here than at Leighton Moss, including a huge flock of some sort of wading bird out on the exposed mud - most impressive

No idea what these birds are - we feel we should know

Saturday

The day of our big walk in the Langdales. As usual, I have had some trouble coming up with a route that is suitable for Linda, but I had high hopes that we would be able to add on a bit to a walk that we have done before up to Stickle Tarn below the Langdale Pikes themselves

At the start of our ascent - the stream by the New Dungeon Ghyll Hotel

A rare photo of me - Linda is not a keen camera operator

Pavey Ark - one of the finest cliff faces in the Lake District

Jake's Rake - a pretty scary way to ascend Pavey Ark, and a route that I last did in the early 1990s. Not at all suitable for Linda

Crossing a stream as we move round to the eastern ridge of Pavey Ark

An earlier plan for today had been to traverse to the west from Stickle Tarn and ascend Blea Rigg from where I would have been able to see Easedale Tarn, where dad's ashes are scattered. But progress is not quite fast enough I felt, so we skipped this and ascended Pavey Ark by the eastern ridge - the easiest way I thought.

It actually turned out to be a reasonable scramble, but luckily had no precipitous drops so Linda was just about ok on it.

Linda on the summit of Pavey Ark

Not many sheep on the hills yet

Descending Pavey Ark

And ascending Harrison Stickle, the highest of the Langdale Pikes, with Pavey Ark in the background

Linda doesn't quite make the summit of Harrison Stickle. Her hip is hurting her a little and the last scramble seems a bit too much. She did get to within 25 feet or so of the top though

Climbers on the face of Pavey Ark

Linda's unusual descending technique on tricky rocks

Tired at the end of the walk - back just above the hotel

We are back at the starting point by around 4:00 for a drink. The bar has copies of the Langdale and Ambleside Mountain Rescue Service review of 2010 which makes for some interesting reading.

Sunday

Another walk, this time just a couple of hours round Grisdale Forest

A much-recovered Linda with the Coniston fells in the far distance

One of the many sculptures in the forest

We always like forests . . .