Holme Fell

A bit of a disaster in the morning meant that I'd injured my back - I'm blaming having to get out of bed to turn off an alarm on an iPod, but the problem was more caused by unhealthly lifestyle caused by too much work - at this point I was most of the way through my 2 year EMBA course.

Anyhow, I really couldn't walk without being in quite a lot of pain, and I suspect I wasn't too kind to the rest of the house, so it wasn't very conducive for a long walk.  It was also forecast quite a bit of rain that day.  Still, getting out and active is better than nothing, so we picked the nearest short low walk to do.

Difficulty: 2
Walkers: Tim, Caroline, Isabelle (12), Grace (10), Evie (7), Poppy (4)
10:10, 0.0km 0h00 0m, Start (99)
11:27, 1.8km 1h16 226m, Holme Fell (317)
12:46, 4.2km 2h35 278m, End (108)

We parked in the car park just off the road north from Coniston, just past Yew Tree Farm, once owned by Beatrix Potter and one of the places we stayed on honeymoon.  We started walking along the road to the farm, and then going up the track to the right of the farm.

Climbing up the hillside you get a good view of Yew Tree Tarn.

This wasn't our most challenging walk, although I felt it was challenging enough to keep putting one foot in front of the other.  With another couple of years experience with a bad back I think this is actually the best thing to do - be active, but it feel really crap at the time.  Anyhow I think everyone else was trying to stay away from me - this was a photo look back down the hill, with most of the family visible...

 And this photo was taken seconds later showing impatient Grace already miles ahead.

Not much view to speak of either.

Unsurprisingly Grace got to the top miles before anyone else, and at least got a nice rest with Coniston Water appearing out of the cloud.

At last everyone made it to the top, Caroline pleased to get some reception at last.  Still at least it didn't really rain, so we made it back fairly dry.  Caroline was so unimpressed by our efforts that morning that she and Grace went for an extra walk that afternoon, from the house going some way around Coniston Water - of course getting very rained on in the process.