Black Fell

After a gap of 18 months, waiting for Poppy to grow from the size you can manage in a carrier to a size where she can walk up proper hills, we were back!  Staying in a house on the edge of Coniston over the New Year, we'd tried to bring enough warm gear to survive the week.  We started fairly gently for the week, mainly to see how much Poppy would be capable of, but also conscious of the likely weather.  We started off by visiting Tarn Hows, but with designs on the fairly low Black Fell.

Difficulty: 2
Walkers: Tim, Caroline, Isabelle (12), Grace (10), Evie (7), Poppy (4)
10:34, 0.0km 0h00 0m, Start (211)
12:44, 3.6km 2h10 171m, Black Fell (323)
15:13, 8.1km 4h39 250m, End (210)

The route started from the car park at Tarn Hows, skirted around the left hand edge, but just before the head of the lake taking a left and striking out.  There was a very obvious farm track where you turn right, and follow that for a while before turning left and making north for Black Fell.

Firstly, a walk around the edge of the lake in brilliant sunshine.

Poppy demonstrating our best small child walking coat - does up at the back, has a great hood and is really warm.

However, it was warm enough to trip off!  Grace obligingly carrying Poppy's shed layers, and showing her the way after Isabelle successfully navigated us to 'not Black Fell', but the closest piece of high ground.

Now at the top of Black Fell.

Time for some lunch, and unusually for us we've even put the food in boxes, rather than just using the nearest plastic bag that comes to hand.  They are actually a bit of a pain, harder to pack and taking up more room when empty, so a bundle of sandwiches in a plastic bag does make some sense.

Moving off after lunch, and we pause to take some pictures of each other, otherwise clearly the walk didn't happen.  Evie has her photocall...

Isabelle, too cool for school.

I even relent.

Grace and Poppy once more.  Grace's gloves were great, although not so much in the wet, so I think they didn't get used every day.  Grace's fleece neck warmer was superb.

Back to Tarn Hows to complete our circumnavigation of the lake.

Still part frozen, and not too far some sunset.

All in all, quite a good warm up and the first Wainwright of the week conquered.  

Smarties Surprise Birthday Cake

I made this cake for Evie's 6th birthday.  Who doesn't like smarties...

Start with the cake, 2 7-8inch cakes, using 3 & 4 egg Victoria sponge recipe, with different food colouring. Dangerous thing, trimming cakes when children are up. Wandering hands tend to congregate.

Slice in half

Bottom three layers, hollow out the middle. Funnily enough, all the bits of cake from the middle seem to have disappeared. 

Make up about 1kg of buttercream, sandwich the bottom three layers, and add about 200g of M&Ms.  Yes, despite the title I wasn't particular brand loyal...

Finish off the buttercream, cursing that you haven't made quite enough (as it traditional).

Then decorate, using up some of the other 3 bags of M&Ms. Caroline Hendry was very disparaging of my pattern. Or just not surprised in my attention to order.

The cake cut open for the world to see.  Given by the serving, I think the loose sweets got eaten first,

Sodden fell above Thirlmere

On the last day we picked out a likely looking lowish walk since the weather was pretty foul.  However we hadn't really considered what the ground would be like under foot, a fairly simple school boy error.

Difficulty: 6
Walkers: Tim, Caroline
10:16, 0.0km 0h00 0m, Start (266)
13:24, 8.9km 3h08 629m, Raven Crag (461)
14:49, 12.5km 4h33 864m, Bleaberry Fell (590)
15:37, 14.5km 5h20 944m, High Seat (608)
16:08, 16.4km 5h51 965m, High Tove (515)
16:40, 17.9km 6h23 965m, End (266)

So we set off early to make sure we'd get a spot in the car park.  The minor road/track leading to the car park was quite interesting to drive, I suspect in a Land Rover it would be trivial...  It looks like we just about made it in time.

Climbing up, and looking back to the car.  It was dry inside the car.

Up here, however, it was ever so slightly waterlogged.

We thought this was Armboth Fell, but without GPS confirmation at the time we'd just gone a little short, so that's saved for another day.

From here, we descended to Thirlmere, to walk along the lake before heading back up at the north end.

Quite impressive engineering.

We climbed back up to Raven Crag, a fairly short but direct climb up.

And from there to Bleaberry Fell, the north end of this ridge.  This is another fine example of the benefits of cairns for seeking shelter from horizontal hail.

Looking north, past Derwent Water.

I have a sustaining memory of a long slog through waterlogged fell, where every step of the way I was testing just how waterproof my boots were.  Anyway, the end (or at least High Seat) eventually came in side.

And from High Seat, back to High Tove where we had first come up to the ridge.

By this point we had the nice downhill to look forward to, before the drive back to Birmingham in the dark and rain.  At least we warmed up, and several days later had dried out as well!

Half a Dale Head round

We were kind of aiming to do the Dale Head round, setting off from the small car park just below Little Town.  However, the weather was pretty terrible - very windy and raining, with some hail storms just to keep your interest.

Difficulty: 4
Walkers: Tim, Caroline
11:19, 0.0km 0h00 0m, Start (137)
12:29, 3.1km 1h10 436m, Maiden Moor (575)
13:07, 5.3km 1h47 532m, High Spy (653)
15:23, 11.3km 4h04 574m, End (137)

Having already walked up Catbells, the next summit to the left, it was geat to walk this way and piece together another part of the lakes.

Me at the top of Maiden Moor, with Catbell directly behind.  Derwent Water is on the right, with Keswick just about visible in the far distance.  Remember that most of these photos were taken in the brief intervals between rain...

At the top of High Spy, taking shelter in the cairn. It really wasn't great to be exposed up high, so I called a halt and said we would take the valley path down rather than climb up higher to Dale Head.  That was to be left for another walk, a few years later.

The valley path back to Little Town, slightly waterlogged.

Rosthwaite Fell in the rain

Myself and Caroline had a weekend in the lakes, and drove up on Saturday morning. We only had time for a short walk before dinner.

Difficulty: 2
Walkers: Tim, Caroline
15:02, 0.0km 0h00 0m, Start (120)
16:18, 3.0km 1h15 431m, Rosthwaite Fell (551)
17:36, 6.4km 2h33 461m, End (121)

We started from the car park on the way into Seatoller, started back down the road before turning up the far side towards Rosthwaite Fell.

 

Starting to gain some height, always great to get the first views of a trip.

Finally reached the top, Rosthwaite Fell (or Bessyboot).

Caroline joins me at the top.  From this point it mainly rained all the way back.

Dog Birthday Cake

I made this cake for Grace's 9th birthday.  She wanted another dog cake but I didn't have much time so did a much more simple cake than the previous dalmation cake.   One of Grace's presents was sponsorship of a guide dog. He's called Truffles, is a puppy a few months old, and (thankfully) doesn't look much like this cake. Hopefully the same number of eyes, eyes and feet, and is approaching the same colour.