Lake District Adventures

Over Half term myself and Danny spent three days enjoying some fine winter weather in the Lake District. Day 1 took in Grasmere, Helm Crag, Greenup Edge and Eagle crag, before stopping at Rosthwaite camping barn for the night.
Day 2 was a big climb out of the valley up High Spy and a lovely ridge run down to Cat Bells. This was followed by a brief dip in a chilly Derwent water and a nice warm bed (compared to the previous night) in Keswick Youth Hostel. Day three was up onto the ridge on the eastern side of Derwent Water taking in Bleaberry fell, High Seat and High Tove before dropping down to Harrop Tarn and the car park below to finish. All in all a cold, tiring few days which were enjoyed immensely and will no doubt be followed by more adventures in the future (I hope). Below is a selection of the best pictures:
For Dan's slant on the 3 days click on Dan's fell running blog on the PFO website/in the right hand column of this webpage.

Greenup Edge Ice!!
Blencathra and Derwent Water
Borrowdale
Harrop Tarn

Winter Wonderland!!

Well winter has arrived in style wilth several inches of snow across Rossendale. After a later than usual start we made it up Cowpe (not bothering to actually reach the summit), through the quarries and over towards the wind turbines. Quote of the day goes to Danny with this offering "Head to the one with wings on it". Reffering of course to a wind turbine at the time- badly affected by snow blindness at the time I hope. Some pictures are below...

The frozen waterfall!

Danny's Bit:

Ever warming British winters are making snow a bit of a rarity in Lancashire. This morning however, we were shocked to see around 10cm of snow in the valleys and up to 50cm on the hills. The hills were calling, but so was the Lancashire Schools XC at Witton Park. After much deliberation, we eventually decided to try the roads only to reach the car park after the race had started. So we got our snowy hill run in the end...





Running over Cowpe Moss was tough going as underneath the snow and the tussocks were frozen bogs, incredibly energy sapping; not nice at all!

Frozen Waterfalls en route, we were considering starting the Lancashire Ice Climbing Club:




All in all, a very good 7.8 miles which took slightly longer than expected due to repeated immature endeavours mainly involving snow balls and yellow snow. Snow makes children out of us all you know.

The Pennine Bridleway above Cowpe Reservoir:



Ironically, by the amount of car tracks seen today, people with gas guzzling Chelsea tractors seem to enjoy driving on the gravel tracks in the snow, but it's mainly them who are making snowy winters a thing of the past in Britain.