We could not believe our luck when
we woke up to our last day of walking for this holiday, only to
find that, again, the weather was lovely.
For our final walk, we chosethe Wasdale Red Pike and Scoat Fell,
making the walk into a mini Mosedale (or should that be Bowderdale?)
Horseshoe by ascending via Over Beck and descending via Nether Beck.
Just after the bridge at Over Beck, there is a National Trust Car
Park, and from here we started our walk along a path following Over
Beck skirting along the steep slopes of Yewbarrow. |
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OverBeck Bridge from
the car Park |
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Yewbarrow from the over beck path |
We got some wonderful views back
to Wast Water and the Screes from the slopes of Yewbarrow. |
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Wast Water from Yewbarrow's slopes |
| We followed Over Beck for quite a
while, gradually climbing all the time. As is so often the case, the
summit we could see ahead on the horizon was not Red Pike itself,
but its lower outcrop, which I believe is named "The Chair". |
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Over Beck - the outlying crag in
front of the actual summit of red pike can be seen in the background |
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Unidentified caterpillar being rescued
from the path |
| At Dropping Crag, the path crosses
Over Beck, with a small footbridge making this easy work. |
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view towards red pike's outlying
crag from near Dropping Crag |
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Footbridge Across Over Beck |
| As we got near Brimfull Beck, we could
see Dore Head's "other side", which is by no means as impressive,
but no doubt much easier to negotiate. Today, however, we were not
going there, but intended to cut across to Low Tarn, which seemed
a very suitable spot for a lunch break. |
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Dore Head's other side with Yewbarrow to the right
|
| Having climbed over the shoulder alongside
Blackbeck Knotts, Low Tarn came into view. We walked round it, then
perched on a suitable boulder a little higher up, where we were able
to enjoy watching a pair of Mallards swimming about happily on the
tarn, with a Grey Heron standing perfectly still, fishing, at the
far end. The Wast Water Screes formed a scenic back-drop to all this
while we ate our sandwiches. |
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Low Tarn with the Wast Water Screes
Behind |
| The rounded, grassy slopes on this
side of Red Pike are a complete contrast to the sheer face we had
observed from Pillar a couple of days ago, and we took advantage of
this as we made our way up the final ascent, past Scoat Tarn. |
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Scoat Tarn with Haycock behind |
The views today were, if anything,
even clearer than we had enjoyed all week, with the Isle of Man
clearly visible in the distance beyond Seatallan. |
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Seatallan with the Isle of Man in
the far distance |
The route we chose bypassed "The
Chair", which in one way was a shame, as we would have liked
to see the chair-shaped cairn that I understand it is named after,
but our (well, mine were, anyway - David was not admitting to anything)
legs were tired from the week's walking, and we thought it best
to keep to the plan and not start adding additional distance to
our journey.
On the positive side, the route took us to the ridge just by Red
Pike's summit. This is not a place to get too carried away by the
views, as the summit cairn is right on the edge, with a sheer drop
below. |
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David at Red Pike's Summit |
| Today we were able to stand and look
back at Pillar across Wind Gap to the same spot where we had been
looking across to today's summit two days earlier. |
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Pillar from Red Pike's Summit |
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Kirk Fell and Mosedale with the
scafells behind from Red PIke's summit |
From Red Pike's summit, we took
the direct route to Scoat Fell, which is very close by, but surrounded
by a field of boulders, which we took a while to cross.
As we walked along a fair number of fell-runners passed us. We
have often seen an occasional fell-runner on our walks, but this
seemed to be a very popular route, judging by the volume of fell-running
traffic.
The true summit of Scoat Fell is on the top of the wall, which
runs all the way from here to Caw Fell and beyond, but in addition
to a small cairn on top of the wall at its highest point, another
cairn has been built on the other side of the wall, so we chose
the spot in between for the summit photo. |
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David at Scoat fell by the cairn on the wall at the
point generally recognised to be the true summit, with steeple to
the right in the background |
| From Scoat Fell, we could clearly
see the summit of Red Pike with the cairn on the very edge of the
ridge. |
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The bouldery summit of Scoat Fell, looking back towards
Red Pike |
| As we followed the wall, we were sorely
tempted to "nip" out to Steeple, which seemed tantalisingly
close, but with tired legs and a long way back to the car, common
sence prevailed, and we decided to stick with our original plan, which
is to climb it from Ennerdale. |
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STeeple from Scoat Fell |
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Steeple again... |
| From Scoat Fell, all we had to do
was follow the wall towards Haycock until we reached the col, and
then turn left (no GPS needed here!). |
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Following the wall towards Haycock with caw fell in
the background to the right |
| It is not possible to see Scoat Tarn
from the wall, so we did make a slight detour in order to get a better
view of it. |
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Scoat Tarn from near the path to Haycock |
| Back on the path, we had some excellent
views of Ennerdale Water and some of the outlying fells beyond Caw
Fell. |
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Ennerdale Water from the Path towards Haycock |
When we reached the col, we turned
left to the upper reaches of Nether Beck, where we again had extensive
views of the by now familiar Wast Water Screes.
After we turned off to Nether Beck, we did not see another soul
until we were nearly in the valley, even though the path by the
wall between Scoat Fell and Haycock had been fairly busy.
It was, nevertheless, a very pleasant descent route, with a clear
path and gradual slopes. |
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Nether Beck, with Middle Fell and Seatallan on the
right |
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David taking a break by the side
of the path along Nether Beck on the way down |
| It is a long walk along Nether Beck,
and the closer we got to the valley, the more breaks I needed (to
take in the view!!), but we got there in the end, and from Netherbeck
Bridge it was only a short walk back to the car park. |
