Knott

Second walk of the week, still with strong winds.  It was time to head upwards and discover how much snow was still around.  We parked just off the road at Longlands, space for a couple of cars, but only one other around when we arrived.  After the mistakes of the day before, I was quite keen on navigating this walk as planned, and I'm pleased to say that it all went well.

Difficulty: 5

Walkers: Tim, Caroline, Isabelle (15), Grace (13), Evie (10), Poppy (7)

10:02, 0.0km 0h00 0m, Start (218)

10:51, 2.3km 0h49 252m, Longlands Fell (483, Wainwright)

11:44, 4.8km 1h41 408m, Brae Fell (586, Wainwright)

12:31, 6.4km 2h29 496m, Great Sca Fell (651, Wainwright)

12:56, 7.5km 2h54 570m, Knott (710, Wainwright, Hewitt)

13:39, 9.3km 3h37 594m, Meal Fell (550, Wainwright)

14:17, 10.6km 4h15 678m, Great Cockup (526, Wainwright)

15:29, 14.6km 5h27 718m, End (219)

We gave ourselves 6 hours of day light to complete the walk and were right on track, until the last few km home when we were able to speed up quite a bit...  Still, having an easy end was a comforting thought if we were late back and had to use torches.

After following the track round, we set off up the hill to Longlands Fell.

Evie at the top of Longlands Fell, looking back north the way we had come.

Grace finding it quite windy, still at Longlands Fell but this time looking south towards Lowthwaite Fell.

After crossing Lowthwaite Fell, we headed up and to the left to reach Brae Fell, our second Wainwright of the day.

The girls were very happy to find this shelter, less happy to learn it was only Little Sca Fell, and there was still an extra 30m of climbing in the strong winds to get to our next destination.  Still, it made a good place to stop for some sandwiches.

At the top of Great Sca Fell we met another group of walkers, so we able to take group pictures of each other.  Here's a rare shot of all 6 of us.

The route to Knott was fairly obvious, even in the thick cloud cover, but really windy and thick snow to walk through.  At the top it was flat but icy, so standing up was really quite hard.

In this photo Knott is top right, Great Sca is top left, and we'd come down the path between Grace and Caroline.  This path was snowy and springy heather, so we had great fun running down (Grace, Evie, Poppy & me), or tobogganing down on our bottoms (Grace & Evie).  Part of the fun was getting out of the wind and snow down to Meal Fell.

Caroline, ever focused on the goal, makes off towards our final Wainwright of the day. 

Isabelle was noticeable this week for liking to be at the back of the group, making her way up to Great Cockup.

Evie was very happy at this point, and was making New Year's resolutions never to walk up another hill.  Here at Great Cockup, looking over to Skiddaw. 

Still at Great Cockup, looking west towards Bassenthwaite.