Fairfield Horseshoe with kids

The forecast was looking good, so we decided to attempt a longer higher walk with the children and our friends.  Some early cloud covered the peaks, but by the time we'd got up to the main ridge and was climbing up high it had cleared.  The reason for doing this walk was that the other two times Caroline and I had been at Fairfield there had been no view, so I was really happy!

Difficulty: 6

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

9:55, 0.0km 0h00 0m, Start (65)

10:57, 2.5km 1h01 408m, Nab Scar (450, Wainwright)

11:49, 3.7km 1h54 562m, Heron Pike (612, Wainwright)

13:03, 6.1km 3h08 763m, Great Rigg (766, Wainwright, Hewitt)

13:33, 7.5km 3h38 906m, Fairfield (873, Wainwright, Hewitt)

14:26, 9.2km 4h31 960m, Hart Crag (822, Wainwright, Hewitt)

15:05, 10.3km 5h10 1005m, Dove Crag (792, Wainwright, Hewitt)

15:35, 12.0km 5h40 1005m, High Pike (Scandale) (656, Wainwright)

16:32, 13.2km 6h37 1017m, Low Pike (508, Wainwright)

18:42, 18.7km 8h47 1067m, End (63)

Fairly straightforward route, parking at the car park in Rydal, the south side of River Rothay, since the road up to Rydal Mount was full by the time we got there - not helped since lots of the road was coned off because the edges of the road surface had been worn away.

Rydal Water, with Windermere in the back left.

Top of Nab Scar, after the hour long burn up the path.

On to Heron Pike, and many stops for taking off and putting on layers, with the sun coming out and alternating shelter and exposure from the wind.

The view onwards, towards Great Rigg and Fairfield.

Great Rigg after a stop for lunch, now with both Windermere and Consiton visible.

Top of Fairfield, here looking first towards St Sunday Crag and then back south towards Windermere.

View from the head of the horseshoe, looking back down south, with Fairfield on the right and the route onwards to Hart Crag on the left.

On the way to Hart Crag, not quite the Beetles album cover...

Looking down the valley from Hart Crag.  I didn't particularly mention that we were only half way through at this point, given this was Wainwright 5 of 8.

Poppy not looking quite so excited to be at the top of Dove Crag.

High Pike, after walking with Grace ahead and then having to wait for 10 minutes for everyone else to catch up.  We were not quite sure what the cloud most looked like - we were thinking pig, but I think rat was the best suggestion.

Beautiful Grace, and beautiful view.

Looking back up from Low Pike towards High Pike and an array of stragglers.

Thankfully the dark clouds didn't drop any rain, but gave some beautiful views looking into the sun from High Sweden coppice. 

St Sunday to Red Screes

To be honest this was a walk that I didn't think we would be able to do in one go, and had planning this to cover 2 walks.  Driving back up the Kirkstone pass, the plan was to come back via the Kirkstone Pass Inn for a pre-dinner drink.  To be even more honest, I spent quite a bit of the second half of the walk thinking it would be sensible to cut it short, but Caroline was keen to do it all, the weather was warm but not too hot, and we could always skip our dinner reservation that evening...

Here's the list from this, our longest walk to date, at 29km in just over 9 and a half hours.

Difficulty: 11
Walkers: Tim, Caroline

9:53, 0.0km 0h00 0m, Start (161)

11:16, 4.3km 1h23 305m, Arnison Crag (433)
11:59, 6.3km 2h05 536m, Birks (622)
12:38, 8.2km 2h44 774m, St Sunday Crag (841)
13:36, 10.5km 3h42 987m, Fairfield (873)
14:07, 12.0km 4h13 1033m, Hart Crag (822)
15:03, 14.2km 5h09 1076m, Hartsop Above How (581)
16:11, 17.4km 6h17 1423m, Dove Crag (792)
16:45, 19.3km 6h51 1443m, Little Hart Crag (637)
17:05, 20.3km 7h11 1445m, High Hartsop Dodd (519)
17:58, 23.5km 8h04 1813m, Red Screes (776)
18:13, 24.5km 8h19 1827m, Middle Dodd (654)
19:32, 28.9km 9h38 1907m, End (162)

To start with we planned to find a route from the car park at Brothers Water around the valley and up to Arnison Crag, but ended up climbing up a fell opposite a farm without a clear track to avoid an extra mile or so.  Potentially not the best option to follow the path we took...  Still it meant that we approached Arnison Crag from the south, so only got the view of Ullswater when we were right at the top, which was great.

From here there was a fairly clear path which joined one wall to go to Birks and then followed a stream up a valley.  We were just about to strike up the hillside when Caroline spotted the actual path, following this wall up the hillside - much easier.

 This was our reward - great views, but mainly over the route to come to St Sunday Crag and the edge of the Fairfield horseshoe in the background.

It was a fair climb up, although it didn't get too steep to slow us down too much.  We were hopeful of a much better visit to Fairfield than earlier when it was all encased in cloud.

 This was the view walking to Fairfield, with Grisedale Tarn to the right, somewhere I was hopeful of visiting the following day.

After Fairfield (which is a pretty boring top) we walked down to Hart Crag, again being really impressed we could see anything this time.

This is the ridge out to Hartsop Above How, showing the ridge to the left with Arnison Crag at the end, and the farm at the bottom where we walked up to start the walk.

This the the top of High Hartsop Dodd, which was about the point I really started to worry about whether we could finish the walk.  The main concern was that I couldn't see any paths down from Middle Dodd, the next ridge along, which would have meant quite a backtrack to come down Scandale Pass.  This photo is looking back towards Hartsop Above How, with the ridge behind St Sunday Crag.

So we committed to climbing back up another 250m to Red Screes, and both really pushed up the pass next to the wall - taking about 10min for each 100m of ascent.  At the end of the day this felt quite hard, The photo capture the end of the hard section, looking down to Scandale Pass and Little Hart Crag - the rocky lump to the right.

We met a fell runner at the top of Red Screes, who agreed that we needed to get a move on to make dinner that evening!  This was the view - well worth it, looking down the way onwards to Middle Dodd and Brothers Water beyond.

The view from Middle Dodd - from which we could see pretty much every peak we had walked that day.

Caroline was motivated to be faster than normal on the descent, but as it turned out my fears were not grounded, there was quite a good path and not too many steep sections.  This was looking back up to Middle Dodd, showing the way we took.  We never got our pre-dinner pub stop, but we made dinner and thankfully (for the other guests) even had time to shower first!

Fairfield Horseshoe

This seemed the ideal walk - challenging, fairly close to where we were staying, and covering quite a few peaks.  The weather wasn't going to be great, but better than the continual rain from the day before.  We set off early to make sure we got a parking space on the up hill road next to Rydal Church - as it turned out there was plenty of space when we arrived.

Difficulty: 7
Walkers: Tim, Caroline
9:37, 0.0km 0h00 0m, Start (75)
10:27, 1.9km 0h50 394m, Nab Scar (450)
10:56, 3.1km 1h18 550m, Heron Pike (612)
11:58, 6.2km 2h20 670m, Stone Arthur (504)
12:32, 7.8km 2h55 930m, Great Rigg (766)
12:58, 9.2km 3h21 1071m, Fairfield (873)
13:50, 10.6km 4h13 1117m, Hart Crag (822)
14:15, 11.6km 4h37 1162m, Dove Crag (792)
14:46, 13.3km 5h08 1165m, High Pike (Scandale) (656)
15:29, 14.4km 5h52 1179m, Low Pike (508)
17:27, 19.4km 7h49 1218m, End (73)

The route from Rydal is fairly straight forward - upwards and onwards.

Early morning sun as we climbed out of Rydal, looking back towards Windermere.

The gate and the path leading up Nab Scar, this didn't require my finest navigation skills to work out the right way to go.

Beautiful views looking down towards Rydal Water, great reflections, scattered clouds and the grass really was that green.

Now at Nab Scar, looking back the way we had come.

Now at Heron Pike, and from here the horseshoe comes into view - all along the ridge in front to Fairfield, then turn right at the head of the valley and back along the other side.

Now with a proper view back to Windermere.  Quite impressive to see the cloudscape matching the mountainsides for awe.

However, since all was going really well, we put in a slight detour to go back down the hill to Stone Arthur.  You either get to it now, or it deserves a walk in its own right, so as we were almost there it seemed rude not to.  However, you end up losing a lot of height that you have to gain back straight away...

All the way back again to the main horseshoe walk, and up to Great Rigg.  Caroline still smiling!

However, the weather was looking more ominous, our path up to Fairfield rapidly vanishing into the clouds.  Still, at least route finding was still fairly obvious.

So this is the top of Fairfield.  Really not much to see apart from a fairly flat expanse of lots of rocks.  When visiting Fairfield again around four years later it was much better weather, but there still wasn't much to see, so we didn't really miss out.

Hart Crag, and still not much to see other than rocks.  At least this time they were slightly interestingly arranged.

Now to Dove Crag.  The view is arguably getting better, but really not much.

Finally coming back out of the clouds, down towards High Pike.  By this point I was feeling some pain in my knee, I later worked out that I was always using the same leg stepping down from rocks, however this was too late to matter much for this trip.  Since then I've become a little OCD at making sure I step downwards the same number of times on each leg...

Finally at High Pike, worth taking some pictures here.

Now at Low Pike, looking back towards High Pike and the clouds.  The 9th Wainwright of the day, even despite walking through clouds it really had been a great walk.

The final descent took a while, having to come quite south of the car before turning back and finding our way through the last couple of fields as it was getting dark.  Still, we were treated to some excellent views of the sunset.