Fawber 2009

Rather late in the day as we've been back for a week but here's a quick report on Fawber 2009.

We went for long weekend over the Bank Holiday and while the south of the country had lovely weather it rained in Yorkshire. A lot. Other than the day after Beth and I arrived, a day before the rest of the party, it rained every single day. Not all the time but enough to make the yard boggy and rein in our walking ambitions.

Despite that Beth and I got in two good walks.

The first was up Ingleborough on Thursday in good weather. We started at Clapham but used a different route¹ to the usual up and down again so we could do more of a loop. So we set off down a country lane towards Ingleton for a mile of so before using a footpath to get to Little Ingleborough. This was clearly very little used as there were only a few boot marks on it - such a contrast to the "highway" which is the usual route up Ingleborough from Clapham.

Looking back south as we climb Little Ingleborough

At the summit shelter on Ingleborough

The second was outside the national park on the other side of the A66 near Appleby. I'd seen photos of High Cup Nick in a copy of "Trail" some months before. It looked lovely so we went to take a look. We started at at Dufton² and took the Pennine Way path up.

It started pretty well although we could see low cloud rolling in from the south. Eventually that overwhelmed us leaving us walking in visibility of about 50' so Beth had to do some careful navigating with map and compass with occasional checks on my GPS. It's the first time I've found a line of cairns actually useful.

We got to the highest point, which isn't actually the end of the valley, and we debated whether to go all the way to the end as it seemed a bit pointless. But we went anyway. We stood there wondering if we were in the right place, checked on the GPS. We were. Oh well, time to head back.

And then a miracle! The cloud lifted just enough to see down the valley. Here's a couple of photos I took.

Looking down High Cup Nick

Beth also taking photos while another group admire the view

And then it all closed in again and never cleared. To see what it can look like on a nice day take a look on the Visit Cumbria web site.

There's also more photos of our trip here (although not of Steve's pants ...)