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Cold Pike
| Date of Walk: |
23/6/2002 |
| Mountains Climbed: |
Cold Pike |
| Length of Walk: |
3 miles |
| Starting Point: |
Three Shire Stone, Wrynose Pass |
Grid Ref: NY 277027 |
| Route: |
Three Shire Stone, Towards Red Tarn, Cold Pike, Three
Shire Stone |
As keen walkers, we started many
years ago taking an interest in the wildlife and flora we were seeing
around us on our walks, and in order to learn more about this aspect
have become members of various natural history societies. One of
these is Butterfly Conservation, and while reading an events list
for their Cumbria branch, we noticed they were doing a field trip
to Cold Pike to search for the very rare Mountain Ringlet on David's
birthday.
The Mountain Ringlet is not found anywhere in
England outside of Cumbria, and there it is only found in a handful
of places. It is not easy to see, flying only at around 2,000 feet
and then only in sun when the temperature is at least 15°C.
Now, how often does that happen?
Anyway, undeterred by this, it was a very good
excuse for another holiday in the Lake District, and with Cold Pike
being a top 100 peak, it seemed a nice way to celebrate David's
birthday. We had hoped to go back to the Grasmere Hotel this time,
but they were fully booked and so we found were most other hotels
we tried. In the end, we managed to get one of the best rooms at
the Bridge House Hotel in the centre of Grasmere, and when we got
there we found it to be a very nice hotel, though maybe not with
the same personal, yet professional, touch of the Grasmere Hotel,
but the standard of the room was a little better, and they were
also more flexible with the time for the evening meal, which suited
us fine.
Having settled in at the hotel, we went for a
walk along the River Rothay to stretch our legs after the long drive.
There was a lot of interesting flora along the path. |
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Wood Cranesbill |
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Marsh Thistle |
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Bush Vetch |
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Orange HAwkweed |
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Foxglove |
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River Rothay |
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Maidenhair Spleenwort growing out of the wall by the
bridge over the river Rothay |
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Red-breasted Merganser by the River Rothay |
| The Sunday morning was very pleasant,
though windy, so we were not sure if we were going to be in luck with
finding our Mountain Ringlets as we drove over Red Bank towards Great
Langdale, stopping to photograph the lovely valley. |
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Great Langdale and the Langdale Pikes |
| The last time we had been on Wrynose
Pass by car the mist had been very dense and we could hardly see over
the bonnet of the car, but today the visibility was very good, and
navigating the pass was a much easier matter. |
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Warning at the start of wrynose Pass |
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View from Wrynose Pass |
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Bloody-nosed Beetle |
The field meeting started from
the Three Shire Stone, where we found a number of people waiting,
including Steve Doyle, the Chairman of the Cumbrian Branch of Butterfly
Conservation, and we found him to be very knowledgeable on his subject
and very helpful with advice on where to see butterflies in Cumbria.
The Three Shire Stone is at nearly 1,300 feet,
and up here it was a lot cooler and windier and the cloud, although
high, kept obscuring the sun so our chances of seeing the elusive
Mountain Ringlet were dwindling by the minute.
We set off towards Red Tarn, then cut across
to the lower slopes of Cold Pike, where we searched in vain for
about an hour and a half. |
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The Coniston Fells from Cold Pike |
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On Cold Pike |
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Cold Pike and Little Stand |
| From the slopes of Cold Pike, we could
quite clearly see Pike O'Blisco, which we had intended to climb, had
the conditions been unsuitable for finding the Mountain Ringlet. However,
with the current conditions, while unlikely, it was just possible
we might find the butterfly, so we decided to leave Pike O'Blisco
for another day. |
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Looking towards pike o'blisco |
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Red tarn with pike o'blisco behind |
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and again... |
| Whilst not finding any Mountain Ringlets
yet, we were rewarded with excellent views all round. |
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Looking towards great langdale |
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The Eastern Fells from Cold Pike |
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Cold Pike |
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wetherlam from cold pike |
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Wetherlam, Swirl How and Great Carrs from cold pike |
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Great Carrs and Grey Friar from Cold Pike |
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Tormentil |
| After a couple of hours of searching
in vain, we decided to sneak off to the summit and "bag"
Cold Pike. The others on the field trip were not really fellwalkers,
so they were more interested in stopping for lunch than reaching the
summit. |
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David at the summit of cold pike |
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Crinkle crags and bowfell in cloud from Cold Pike's
Summit |
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Looking towards Skiddaw from Cold Pike's summit |
| When we got back to the rest of the
party, several of them had gone home, and the rest were giving up
hope of finding any Mountain Ringlets, so we thanked Steve Doyle for
leading an otherwise informative and successful field trip and we
set off back to Wrynose Pass and our car, with one less peak left
to do for our Top 100. |
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Red Tarn |
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