Hills: Red Screes, Middle Dodd, Little Hart Crag
Wainwrights: ditto
When: 23 May 2015
Who: self, Stuart and the mountaineering minion
Also present: Glorious sunshine – as a result, sunburn..
Post walk drink: wine flights/ beer flights (see below)
Post walk watering hole: The Salutation Hotel, followed by the Ambleside Inn
Another weekend, another trip to the Lake District… with an unexpectedly good forecast! Unfortunately, the forecast was combined with the threat of industrial action on the railways, which on the day before – and indeed the day of – our trip was causing a certain amount of tension. We were again travelling up on public transport (I don’t have a car in London at the moment), and whilst there would be no issues getting to the Lakes, it looked as though getting back would be a serious problem. Virgin Trains had announced that if the strike went ahead they would not be running any trains on the Monday, and probably wouldn’t run anything until late on Wednesday. Grrr! This was not ideal – to say the least – given that I had a couple of major deadlines coming up. Ultimately we took the decision to book a one way car hire back from the Lakes, which was surprisingly reasonably priced. Of course, they then cancelled the strike.. but at least this way we had a bit of flexibility. The trip up on the train on Thursday night was actually remarkably smooth, and we were at the Salutation Hotel at around 10pm on Thursday night – and found we had been upgraded to a balcony room! A good excuse for a drink on the balcony as we watched it go dark.
Unfortunately, Friday was pretty miserable – the promise of a nice afternoon didn’t materialise in reality and we binned our original idea of some of the lower fells around Grasmere in favour of chilling out in the hot tub at the Salutation and getting some much needed rest. The forecast for Saturday, however, was glorious – although the suggestion from MWIS that it might be 5 degrees c at 750m was slightly concerning. We laid plans to do a circuit of Scandale, starting from Ambleside up Red Screes and then taking it from there, hopefully extending on to the Eastern arm of the Fairfield Horseshoe and picking off Low Pike which I had inexplicably managed to miss when I did the full Fairfield Horseshoe the previous year. There were plenty of other options, though, depending on time, conditions and level of knackeredness.
For no particularly good reason neither of us slept well – no idea why as there was nothing to be nervous about regarding the route. Had breakfast and eventually got going up the minor road leading from Ambleside up to the Kirkstone Pass. I have to say I didn’t enjoy this bit at all – the road is quite busy and not ideal to be walking on, and it was a relief to turn off on the clear path which angles up onto the ridge to Red Screes. The sky was blue, the birds were singing… what could possibly go wrong? Continue reading