It got colder than we expected overnight with ice on the tent but it did warm up by the time we got up and the ice was gone. The clocks went forward so we lost an hour overnight and we didn't get up until 7.28. We had our breakfast and were away by 9.05 though.
Cloud over Mellbreak and the Loweswater Fells
Leave no trace
Where the MSR had been, just flattened grass and nothing else.
The steep descent from Graystones
We walked down the grass next to the fence on the left, easier going for a while until lumps of slate are reached.
It gets even steeper
We escaped into the Darling How Plantation ignoring the signs saying there was forestry work going on. I had emailed Whinlatter to ask if there were any closed forest paths and roads and got no response. There was nobody working in the forest, we'd been looking and listening for vehicles and people yesterday so we knew we would be ok. I've still not had any response from Whinlatter.
On the forest path through Darling How
We turned right at junction of forest roads to get to the start of the Spout Force footpath. The forest road has become very overgrown here and we had to squeeze through the trees. It also meant we had more of the steep descent to finish at the bottom of the Graystones path when we got to the end of the forest.
Spout Force
We were an hour and 15 minutes later than I thought we would be when we got to Spout Force with the slow descent and fight through the trees
Looking up the little valley of Spout Force
We'd stopped to have some lunch out of the wind and realised we didn't have time to get to the Whinlatter Centre on foot and we thought we would catch the bus at Scawgill Bridge instead. We were feeling tired with the tough route, not much mileage but not easy terrain.
Scawgill Bridge from the Spout Force path
We walked back up Aiken Beck toward Spout Force from our lunch spot near Scawgill Bridge while we waited for the bus.
A shot of the route we came down
Well we actually avoided this bottom bit by veering off to the right on the other side of the wall on the descent. Still horribly loose stones and very steep.
Beefy at the footbridges over Aiken Beck
We got the Honister Rambler bus at Scawgill Bridge back to Keswick. What a great weekend, we hope the weather is as good for the Easter weekend. Our route was Kirk Fell - Darling How Plantation - Spout Force - Scawgill Bridge - a bit of an explore of the Spout Force area 6.75km with 100m ascent.
@ Pleb. There is no need to reply with Deja vu