(N.B. Hover your mouse over the pictures for captions)
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This was the day I was dreading. One of our longest days, and so near the start of the walk: the climb up Loft Beck looks nearly vertical in the guidebook. And that's after a 9 mile walk up Ennerdale! Still, if I can get through today, then I'm pretty sure I can finish the walk. Only the climb to Kidsty Pike looks tougher, and by that time I should be getting fitter (or exhausted). |
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Mind you, the walk up Ennerdale Water should be easy shouldn't it? After all lakes are flat aren't they? After that the climb up through the forest should be fairly gradual. |
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Unfortunately, it turns out that lakes aren't flat in the Lake District. Well at least the lakeside paths aren't. They seem to go up and down all the time, and the paths are stony. As a result, this part was harder than expected. However the scenery was very beautiful and there was plenty of time spent in the taking of photographs and the like. |
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I got a little confused around Robin Hood’s chair, where the path is supposed to split into low and high level routes. I was expecting a bit of a scramble round the low level path but the path seemed to climb steeply up for a bit. Maybe this was the higher level path - but it didn't look possible to be any lower down without a boat! |
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Finally, we got to the end of the lake and crossed the valley to the forest road. Once on the road we could get up a turn of speed. Due to more tree felling, we had to cross over onto the south side of the river.
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The road here was just as good as on the north side and we arrived at the ford in time for a badly needed lunch stop. |
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The ford looked just a little deep to cross without getting the feet wet, so we carried on and crossed the river by a footbridge. Well Kath and I did. Viv and Phil crossed by a plank bridge holding on to a cable! |
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Finally we climbed up to Loft Beck. It’s lucky that the scenery is good here, because I spent a long time looking at it whilst summoning up enough energy for the next few feet of climb! |
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After a while we got to the top and sat down for a drink, before climbing up to Moses Trod and then the Drum House. The scenery on the top was wonderful, with views over the Buttermere valley.
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From the Drum House, we made a surprisingly steep descent to the Honister Pass road. |
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By now my feet were hurting and so I tightened the laces for the descent. This made things a lot easier and we descended on the old toll road to Seatoller. |
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By now it was about ten past seven. Since we had booked an evening meal in our bed and breakfast, we thought we should ring ahead to let them know that we were coming. It turned out that dinner had been at seven o'clock, and we were already late. We zoomed along the final couple of miles to Stonethwaite, the bit through Johnny's Wood in particular being very pleasant. It included a short stretch where you had to hold onto a wire whilst traversing some slippery rocks just above the stream! We arrived at Knotts View, Stonethwaite at about a quarter to eight, and were ushered almost straight away into a splendid three-course meal - Cumberland sausage again. My feet were still hurting, and upon examination, I found that I had a blister on my right foot, and another smaller one coming up on the left foot. Curiously, these were on the side of the heel, caused, I think, by the stony nature of the paths rocking the foot from side to side. After a couple of pints in the pub almost opposite, it was time for sleep - I was exhausted. |
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