I had a few days off work so I decided to head for the Lake District to climb some of the Wainwrights that I hadn't climbed. I decided to base myself at a Youth Hostel for a few days and just drive from there to do some hills each day. I decided to get up early and head to Mosedale and then Mungrisedale to walk 5 hills as the starting points for the 2 walks were only a couple of miles apart, ( Click here to read about my walk from Mungrisdale ). The place to park the car just after Mosedale is on a road that goes through moorland, the wide grassy verges had quite a few cars on it by the time I got there. The road is part of the walk so it didn't really matter where I parked.
I left the car and started the gentle downhill walk along the road, the first hill for the day Carrock Fell looked quite large to the right hand side of me, a steep path through ferns and scree was visible from the road. After a short time, I left the road and headed up the grassy path through the ferns that gradually got steeper, the ferns overgrowing the path at times so you had to watch your step as the ferns were not actually on the path. This section soon had my legs warmed up, along with the rest of me and the fleece came off and my convertible trousers made into shorts. This made things a lot more comfortable but it was slow going as the path zig zagged steeply upwards. After a while, the ferns disapeared and the path got a bit more gentle and revealled the second hill of the day (High Pike) in the background.
On the left of me were the hills that I'd be walking up later and also in the distance were the Skiddaw hills. It wasn't long before I was at the summit and looking at the easy path between the 2 hills, not much climbing until the last section. It was fast walking from the summit but High Pike summit was now covered in cloud but it didn't look like it would be there for long. The path from Carrock Fell aimed towards the ridge below the summit and was fast going on the downhill grassy section. The summit had now appeared again out of the clouds and I saw a couple sitting on a bench at the summit, I was hoping they would leave before I got there as I quite fancied a comfy seat and a break.
Either they were mind readers or they saw me coming and didn't want to have to talk to me but they left just before I got to the summit so I grabbed the opportunity to have a break even though I hadn't done much mileage, I can never resist a nice seat or bench. From the summit the path would basically just be heading downwards until it met the road that I'd parked the car on. There were a few paths heading downwards and I kept moving over across the moorland until I found the one that I wanted. By now I could see my car, and there were a lot more than when I'd left a couple of hours earlier so I just headed down and eventually it brought me to the road. A short downhill walk along the road and I was back at my car and ready to have my lunch before moving on to Mungrisdale and my second walk of the day and 3 more hills.
