Despite a very unpromising weather forecast*, I met Mike from Go4awalk again for this little trundle around mallerstang Edge
*Actually, the forecast was very promising - it promised to rain all day....
Anyway, we set off from a little parking area at the Northern end of lady Anne's Highway. This is a road/bridleway which was part of the route which links up the Cliffords castles in Skipton, Pendragon and Penrith - as used by Lady Anne Clifford just after the English civil war. Anyway she was this posh bint wot owned a few castles wot Oliver Cromwell had knocked about a bit...
end of history lesson...
Its quite a good route towards Appersett anyway and leads up onto a small limestone ledge on the hillside where there's a sculpture which , I think is supposed to represent the River Eden, but may well be intended to have a double meaning... and then to Hell Gill Bridge - over the very deep and scary Hell Gill.
From there we followed the gill upstream for a bit and then up onto Abbotside Common aka Ure Head aka Sails, aka Little Fell.... this hill has so many aliases...
We then followed the vague, cairn-festooned ridge Northwards over Hugh Seat, Archy Styrigg and High Seat - and you may have read in the account of the walk around Harwood Common that Mike went up to the naughty parts in a bog. He did it again. The moors are extremely soggy at the moment and there are some very deep bogs of floating grass. Somebody could come a real cropper. My advice is to let your walking partner go first.
The descent from High Seat is marked by a cairn on the Western edge of the hill and is very steep, but fairly short. This leads down to the hamlet of Outhwaite and a riverside path took us back to the start.
Its about 9 miles and 1900 feet of uphill. It rained gently most of the day but the hills stayed clear of hill fog.
