Jerry’s Citroen BX had been having trouble with its suspension - big money, so he swapped it for an old Audi 100 turbo diesel estate, which was big enough for all of us. Bill also decided to come in spring rather than autumn.
We set off a bit late as Mark was held up. (He’s also got a new car - Seat Ibiza ??). We had a very good journey; the Audi was excellent on the M-way, although with not much in the way of acceleration.
We had a pint in the Keswick Lodge, which we thought was a bit disappointing and then did our shopping in the Lakeside supermarket (another break with tradition) and settled in at the house.

We tried to avoid the weekend crowds by doing Carrock Fell, High Pike etc. We parked north of Mosedale. The first thing Jerry did after getting out of the car was to take one step and fall over. As soon as we had got our boots on it started to rain, so we put on our waterproofs straight away, and then just as we finally set off a large party of geriatrics walkers arrived and got ahead of us. They eventually waited on the very steep and loose bit for us to go past. Unfortunately they were on the path, and the path was the only real way up this bit! We managed to scramble past them however.
The others crossed the stream to take the easier looking detour while I set off straight up the steeper gully (as Bill Birkett says to do) and beat them up to the easier ground above. The rest of the climb was fairly easy but a bit of a slog. The rain suddenly increased as we approached the summit, driven by a gale force wind, and then calmed down a bit on the other side. The walk down and up to High Pike was easy over grass. On top there was a memorial seat made of slate slabs, apparently replacing (1960?) an earlier wrought iron garden seat in which sheep got their horns stuck. We walked across the summit plateau to the shelter overlooking the low country round Cockermouth. Here the Lake District ended, and Scotland was visible across the Solway Firth.
It started to rain again as we descended to the main path and then climbed gradually to Great Lingy Hill. We couldn't be bothered with Knott, instead turning left to descend Comb height to Swineside. The descent was by a very steep, narrow, muddy path in heather, and was quite difficult to negotiate at times. The weather had improved temendously, and it was warm and sunny we trudged back along the road to the car.

I woke up at 3am with a feeling that something was amiss. I had the shits. Every half hour until 6:30. I also had a temperature and felt wobbly. Flu? After breakfast (which I didn't have) Bill popped into town to buy me some Immodium, and I sent the others off to do Skiddaw from Barkbethdale, returning over Longside and Ullock Pike. When they had gone I went back to bed, and slept for most of the day. I also didn't go to the pub that evening- must have been ill!

I felt reasonably OK when I got up, so I had some breakfast and with some trepidation visited the ablutions. Still OK! We decided to do a relatively gentle one, so we walked round Crummock Water. We parked at Cinderdale, climbed up from the road (it started to rain - waterproofs on), down Rannerdale to Nab Point (stopped raining - waterproofs off) and managed to avoid the road as much as possible until the final couple of hundred yards into Buttermere village, from where we followed the path across the fields to Buttermere Dubs, where we stopped to watch a lamb trying to negotiate a gateway.
The sheep and its lamb walked down the field alongside the wall, and the sheep went round the open gate and into the other field. Not so the lamb! It tried desperately for some ten minutes to push its way through the gate, encouraged by its mother, who watched it anxiously. When it eventually managed to find its way round the gate, more by luck than judgement, another sheep and its lamb wandered down the field. Guess what? It's a wonder any of them survive into adulthood; you would expect every gateway in the Lake District to be blocked by huge piles of dead lambs!
When the entertainment was over, we walked across a boggy piece of ground to Scale Beck, and stopped just across the stream in the shade of some trees. Bill found a comfortable horizontal branch upon which he lay down and promptly dozed offf, doing a passable impersonation of a giant sloth.
We kept as high as possible along the shore of Crummock Water to avoid boggy ground until we rounded the end of the lake. I hadn’t realised that Crummock was used for drinking water, but there was a concrete weir and a fine victorian pumping station as well as a fish ladder. A few drops of rain fell, but it soon stopped as we walked along the lake shore and back to the road and the car. A very pleasant walk, and no disasters in the nether regions! We returned to Keswick over Honister.

We intended to do Burnbank Fell and Blake Fell,so we parked by the church at Lamplugh and walked across the fields to the double gate that Bill Birkett mentions, but where we were supposed to bear left up hill towards the forest a signpost pointed us right. We walked across the fields to Dockray Nook, ( where I rescued a lamb which had got trapped between the wall and barbed wire fence, tearing my best walking shirt in the process) but the right of way obviously lead nowhere near where we wanted to go. We retraced our steps across the field to the gate and went uphill, but after a hundred yards a large sign said Private Land No Right of Way Keep Out etc. The farmer had obviously withdrawn his permission, so we headed back to the car and did a Last of the Summer Wine impression on the bench outside the church.
The others had never been to Ennerdale, and I hadn't been there for some twenty five years, so because we were as close as we were ever likely to get without going there on purpose, we decided to visit it. We parked in the Forestry car park and set off on one of the marked trails which led us to Char Dub, where we stopped for lunch and admired the view back down the lake. It was still quite early, so we decided to carry on and do the full circuit of the lake. It was a very pleasant walk, and the scramble across Anglers Crag was nowhere near as bad as it looked from the other side of the lake, although we did meet a couple on mountain bikes who must have carried them across.

Jerry was frantic to get a tick, so we decided to find the correct path out of Troutdale and up Kings How (We had tried this some years earlier, but instead of going to the end of the valley we had taken the well trodden climbers path which led only to the foot of Black Crag). We parked in the Bowder Stone car park, and eventually found the correct ‘stile in the top corner of the car park’. Why do we always get lost a few yards from the car? I’m fine when I’m on the open fellside! We went up and then down into the head of Troutdale and started the ascent. Wainwright describes it as ‘a golden ladder to heaven’. It’s certainly a ladder, and may very well be golden in the autumn. The rest of the ascent was much easier to the summit of King's How, passing the commemorative plaque on the way.
From the summit we descended in the direction of Brund Fell, skirting it on the right to drop down to and cross the Watendlath to Rosthaite path and head in the direction of Dock Tarn, picking up the main path as it crosses the bog on stepping stones. Where the path goes through a wall next to a stream, there is an old iron bedstead, which was there when Wainwright wrote his book over forty years ago.
We left the path at its highest point and scrambled up a heathery slope on the right to the summit of Great Crag. We retraced our steps to the Rosthwaite path and followed it down until a track branched off right through the woods to the Bowder Stone. Half way down Bill’s knee gave out, which affected our plans for the next day.

All week the weather forecast had predicted that Friday would be the best day of the week, and so we had pencilled in the Langdale Pikes, which oddly enough we have never done. Bill, however, decided that his knee wasn't up to it. Rather than have him be the only one to miss out, I volunteered to stay behind and accompany him on a gentle low-level walk while Mark and Jerry did something else.
Eventually we persuaded Jerry to do St Sunday Crag, the highest unticked one in his book, while Bill and I walked round Newlands. We left the house and went across the fields to Portinscale and then to Hawse End, where we took the path across the lower slopes of Catbells to the old mine workings above Little Town. From Little Town we followed the road to Swinside and then walked alongside Newlands Beck back to Portinscale. It was a glorious day, and a most enjoyable walk, despite not reaching an elevation of more than a couple of hundred feet.

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