Monday 30 March 2015

Hard Knott in the snow

The forecast promised more bad weather, and after the previous day journey around Wast Water in the cloud we weren't immediately keen on another long walk.  So we planned to visit Hardknott Fort and then, assuming the weather wasn't too horrible, to make a shorter trip from the pass up to Hard Knott itself.

Difficulty: 1
Walkers: Tim, Caroline, Isabelle (12), Grace (10), Evie (7), Poppy (4 1/2)
14:47, 0.0km 0h00 0m, Start (392)
15:25, 1.3km 0h37 155m, Hard Knott (549)
15:58, 2.5km 1h10 160m, End (392)


So the first objective was to visit the Roman Fort at the west end of the pass.  It was really quite impressive - thinking of the perseverance of building a large site in this location, although you did wonder just how creative or faithful the various rebuilding was.

Emboldened by the conditions and the thought of an short work we drove a little way further up the pass, found the right spot to leave the car, and headed up the slope.  It really was only a modest walk, but was made more interesting by the snow and wind.  Apart from trying minimise the depth of any bog walked through, sometimes incurring large diversions from the obvious route, I think the real fun of this walk came on the way down, where we got split up - I had most of the girls with me, and Caroline had taken an alternative path down with at least one of them.  We had quite a fun time (not) making sure that we didn't lose anyone else in the bad visibility, but did manage to find them a little further down the path.  Still, another peak knocked off, and a welcome shelter to get back to the car and finally back to the house after tackling the downhill section of the Hardknott Pass.



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