Derwent Fells

Today's hike was advertised as 9 miles, 3300 feet of ascent. Except it was 11.5 miles and more than 3300. It was the number 3 hike, the hardest, and was harder than many of us expected. It started innocently enough.

The description: "We venture out to Buttermere and then embark on a fantastic journey across some of the most beautiful fells in the Lake District. The walk takes in Whiteless Pike, Wandope, Eel Crag, Sail and finally Barrow before dropping into the valley and walking back to the house."

The hike involved a knife edge cull, or saddle, and one of our group didn't fancy that section, so we took a different route, skipping Sail and Barrow and instead climbing Grasmoor, which is higher than Whiteless Pike.

We were in and out of mists and the rain came and went, sometimes quite windy. So not always easy going and not ideal weather for photos.

But it was lovely. I enjoyed it despite the sometimes poor weather.

Here we are huddled at the top of Grasmoor in a rockwall horseshoe that offered some shelter.

We descended on a miner's track that had lots of noisy burbling streams. Which recalled Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem Inversnaid:

This darksome burn, horseback brown

His rollrock highroad roaring down,

In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam

Flutes and low to the lake falls home.

And a mine.

The mine recalls the last stanza of Inversnaid:

What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

Graphite was mined in these parts in the 1500s. At the time it was the most valuable material on earth. The term black market came from illegal trading of graphite and lead, including right here in Keswick. I learned this from our guide without even visiting Keswick's Pencil Museum. Where one will see tiny maps and compasses secreted inside pencils given to British soldiers in German prisons during WW2.

Nepalese flags on a bridge:

The part of the hike I didn't enjoy was the last few miles. My legs were wrecked, my feet hurt, I thought we'd never get home. Heavy rains were forecast so our trip leader marched us home at a quick pace with no breaks for the last hour and a half. My fellow hikers called it a 'take no prisoners' approach.

11 July