High Stile Ridge

Our second walk with a full compliment of children, we aimed to do the other walk planned from the house, along the High Stile ridge.  It meant going up the path to Red Pike again, but this time turning left.  The weather looked similar to other days - cloudy up on top, with a chance of rain all day.

Difficulty: 6

Walkers: Tim, Caroline, Isabelle (16), Grace (14), Evie (10), Poppy (8)

10:02, 0.0km 0h00 0m, Start (134)

12:41, 5.5km 2h38 764m, Red Pike (Buttermere) (755, Wainwright, Hewitt)

13:13, 6.8km 3h11 857m, High Stile (806, Wainwright)

13:25, 7.1km 3h22 864m, High Stile (Grey Crag-High Stile) (807, Hewitt)

14:06, 8.8km 4h03 917m, High Crag (744, Wainwright, Hewitt)

16:57, 16.0km 6h54 1089m, End (135)

We were able to straight to the working bridge this time, but other than trying to get both the Wainwright and Hewitt at High Stile with very little visibility the route was fairly obvious.

Up the familiar path through the trees.

View back to Buttermere, with our house the white one at the right hand edge of the picture.

Red Pike, second visit for this holiday. 

High Stile, the Wainwright.

High Stile, the Hewitt.  Double rations all round. 

The view descending from High Stile down, before the climb back up for High Crag. 

Poppy at High Crag, admiring the awesome view down to Buttermere. 

Finally coming down out of the clouds, sitting around quite a while as the family was descending all at very different speeds.

The view from Scarth Gap, looking at Haystacks straight ahead.

Now going down from Scarth Gap towards Gatesgarth Farm.

Isabelle and Grace, showing they are not too old to scamper ahead and find hiding places. Grace's technique for coming back to safety was to shuffle on her bottom, wavering from side to side trying to balance and not fall in, and painfully negotiating the branches and tree stumps back to safety.  Isabelle's technique for coming back was to walk quickly and calmly back.  Age clearly wins!

Red Pike & the Boggy Valley

It was likely tomorrow was a day off, as we had to pick Grace up, so we opted for a longer walk despite the forecast heavier rain.  It was set to clear in the afternoon, but rather than go higher at the end of the walk to try and get a better view, we decided to stick to the plan and head high early to avoid walking down the steep route between Buttermere and Red Pike.

Difficulty: 6

Walkers: Tim, Caroline, Isabelle (16), Evie (10), Poppy (8)

9:55, 0.0km 0h00 0m, Start (134)

12:39, 5.8km 2h43 672m, Red Pike (Buttermere) (755, Wainwright, Hewitt)

13:37, 8.1km 3h41 750m, Starling Dodd (633, Hewitt, Wainwright)

14:24, 10.2km 4h29 865m, Great Borne (616, Wainwright, Hewitt)

17:41, 19.5km 7h46 984m, End (135)

We started and finished from the house, going up high to start with and then heading back through the boggy valley.  We set off around 50 behind the 'safe schedule to get back by sunset' point, lost a bit of time through an early diversion, but made up time on the second half of the walk to get home a few minutes inside the target.

We could see some of Red Pike from the house to start with, but not much.

View of the famous tree at the end of Buttermere.  Trying to explain to the girls why it was famous wasn't easy.  We passed two people who were staking out the tree (presumably all day) to get the perfect shot...

The bridge we were aiming for was out (due to be replaced, work starting June 2019), so we had to head back around and go over Scale Bridge and back to the start of the climb up Red Pike.

Going through the trees up to Red Pike.

The last(ish) view of Buttermere before we went too high into the clouds.

It was raining pretty constantly and pretty hard all morning.  Everyone got a bit cold and a bit wet.

Finally made it to the top of Red Pike, Evie not very impressed to have been made to climb all that way. 

From Red Pike we kept on going, so effectively turning right away from Buttermere.  Here is cloud lifted occasionally on the way to Starling Dodd.

At Starling Dodd, more sweets from Evie's bag, and the misty route forward to Great Borne.

Evie demanded her photo be taken on this rock.  It wasn't that special a rock, in my opinion.

Poppy at the top of Great Borne.

The steep but grassy way down the hillside.  We got to the bottom, found the toilets, had some chocolate.  Had some more chocolate.  And then Caroline got to the bottom.

Walking back down the boggy valley towards Crummock Water.  The last time we were here we'd managed to drop Poppy in a stream when trying to cross it.  This time we did try and avoid the stream, but turned back after reaching a fence with no style, but did manage to get everyone safely across. 

Looking towards Crummock Water.

At Scale Force, looking downstream (and avoiding the keen camera people staking out the falls).

Finally getting some patches of sun, looking at Crummock Water & Buttermere, with the village and our house inbetween.

At Scale Bridge, towards Crummock Water.

Scale Bridge, looking towards Buttermere.

Finally back to the house, looking back the way we had finished the walk.