Our second walk this weekend turned out somewhat different to what we had planned. Before returning to the Lake District, we had bought a couple of walking books and also a few walking magazines, and in one of the magazines we found a walk description for a "Coniston Circuit", taking in Coniston Old Man, Brim Fell, Swirl How and Wetherlam.

So we set out with a copy of this and our map, starting from the parking area at the Walna Scar Road. Having passed Boo Tarn, we showed our ignorance of mountain map reading by not being sure of the turn off for Goats Water, but we were helped on the right track by another fell-walker, who happened to be leading a group of scouts towards Dow Crag.

We also soon found out from reading the walk description that what we consider a clearly defined path on the South Coast differs quite remarkably from what the authors of Lakeland walking guides mean by the term. Once we realised this, we started making a lot more progress, no longer stopping to look for the elusive "clear" path, and settling instead for the small track which could just about be made out ahead as it disappeared into the mist!

By the time we reached Goats Water the visibility was very bad, which was a shame, because I was hoping to see the impressive Dow Crag.

Whilst having a bite to eat and a drink, we looked at our map and the route ahead, and decided that, given the time taken to get this far (over 2 hours), and given the weather conditions, we did not have time to complete the circuit as planned. We asked the others, who were going on to Dow Crag, and they thought that the 6 hours given in the Walk Description was overly optimistic, which clinched our decision. As we were walking back, we got chatting to another couple, who were going to do the circuit, but by then we had made up our minds that we were simply walking too slowly. Unfortunately, whilst talking, we had completely bypassed the cairn which marked the descent to Goats Hause. We said goodbye and started walking back.

At this point things started to go wrong. We could hardly see our hands in front of our faces, let alone distinguish one cairn from another, and by now there was not another soul in sight. We walked up and down a few times, and had just decided that the only safe thing to do was to retrace our steps back to the summit and then set out again, this time concentrating on our route, when we saw what appeared to be the right cairn with a path leading in the right direction. We started our descent and were soon back at Goats Hause.

The view from the descent across Torver Common is a stark contrast to the rough Coniston Fells to the north of Walna Scar Road, as the landscape there is quite flat and boggy.

Just as had happened on our two previous walks, by the time we got back to the car the mist had lifted and it was a glorious day. We decided that we needed to re-think our walking strategy for next year as we seemed to always miss out by being to concerned about getting back down in plenty of time, and yet again we were back at the car just after lunch, the descent obviously being much quicker than the ascent. So it was back to the drawing board...