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| coming out of the cloud, Cat Bells and Derwent Water |
I pulled myself out of my January funk today with a nice little fell run. The plan had been to start at Dale Head with two cars but I ended up running on my own so altered my plans to a circular route. I parked at Rosthwaite then headed along the Cumbria Way path. I turned left over the bridge and picked out a, not very efficient, route towards the main path linking up Honister Pass with Grange. I turned left at the wall and climbed steeply to Rigghead Quarries. After a bit of poking around at the entrance to mine shafts and other peculiarities, I continued the climb, in dense cloud, to successfully pick out the prominent cairn of High Spy. From here it was a nice run down and over Maiden Moor to Hause Gate, where I took the steep pitched path down to the road. I carried on along the road to Grange, through the woods past Dalton's Cave and back to Rosthwaite. Nine miles in total.
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| 3d route map |
I had decided the night before that I was going for a run no matter what. This morning, it was raining heavily and there was a lot of low cloud. When I got to Rosthwaite, it wasn't much different. Still, I had a waterproof jacket, waterproof gloves and waterproof socks. I was all set.
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| Rosthwaite |
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| Borrowdale - I'm heading up there on the left |
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| At Rigghead Quarries - climbing hut |
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| lots of other ruins, part of it has been made into a barbecue |
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| looking across Borrowdale |
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| lots of old mine shafts too |
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| some very big ones |
From the top of the quarry path, I joined a fence which pointed me towards the summit of High Spy. The cloud was thick here but there was a fairly clear path and I knew if I kept climbing eventually I would get there.
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| High Spy summit cairn |
There was no view today. From High Spy there is a clear path down over Maiden Moor to Cat Bells. I stopped for a drink and some food. I'm trying out baby food pouches. They are much less sweet that gels. I picked a sweetish one today to sort of ease myself into it. The pouches have a nice resealable lid, meaning that you don't have to neck it all at once like most gels. It seemed to work well today (they are cheaper than gels too).
I put the map away and ran through the cloud on the wide path. Once I started dropping down a bit, the cloud cleared.
Rather than carrying on to Cat Bells, I dropped down at Hause Gate and ran along the road to Grange.
From Grange, I picked up the path along the West Side of the river, through the woods where Dalton's Cave is situated.
On the other side of the woods, I stopped to look at the climb I started the run with, up through Rigghead Quarries. Even though I've been over these fells many times, it has always been via some sort of Newlands Horseshoe variation. It was really nice to find a new way up.
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| quarry buildings just visible on the left above the wall |
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