We were up before eight and had a good breakfast and got our jobs done and were out of the hostel by 9.pp. Today we planned to do the ridge separating the two valleys of Ennerdale and Buttermere, ie Red Pike, High Stile, High Crag and Haystacks.
We made slow but steady progress up Red Pike and got to the top by 11.45. We were over at High Crag by lunch time and we perched on top for lunch with a beautiful birds eye view of Buttermere Lake, which was almost immediately below us.
After lunch we had a fairly steep descent into Scarth Pass down some pretty loose scree. However we made it down with maximum possible speed and minimum possible falling! It was now quite hot. On front of us we had a 500 foot ascent to Haystacks – one of Wainwrights favourite hills of which he said “it is a great place to go if you are worried by a nagging problem, it has surprises round every corner”. This we discovered to be exactly true. There were two paths on front of us one which seemed to be the main path but it had quite a nasty looking scree run on the way – and we weren’t quite ready for that! The other path seemed to be less used and disappeared over the first ridge.
We decided to avoid the scree run and take our chances on the “mystery” path!! The path led to the top ok but via an almost vertical rock climb for 20 feet – well it wasn’t really that hard – but very interesting. On top there was a tarn – well some might call it an overgrown bog hole but we decided that it was just a little more than that.
Tarn is the Lakeland word for lake. It’s one of a few Lakeland words e.g. “Beck” for stream and “Thwaite” for a townland or village. We found a few more tarns on the way down as Wainwright predicted. (Wainwright being the authority on all hills in the Lake District having published a series of seven guides to the Lakes; giving every route up and down every mountain.)
The path down to Buttermere was quite long and tiring – but maybe that was because we did it almost without a break. Once we were down in the valley we still had about 2 miles to go to the hostel. We also had to get bread for the sandwiches to-morrow. The walk along Buttermere Lake (just off the main road there is a lovely footpath) was really enjoyable. Especially at the point where the path goes through a tunnel in the rock. Into Buttermere “village” where we found 2 hostels and one snack bar, come shop and a farmhouse which sold fresh milk – but no bread! However we splashed out and bought 4 pints of milk (at 16p a pint!). We were glad to get our packs off our backs in the hostel. Martin worked another miracle manufacturing a meal out of nothing i.e. rice and veg and OXO! plus some cold ham. The verdict was – delicious.
After dinner we did some writing and took a walk down to Crumock water – a lovely sunset over the lake – we had stone skimming championships and then we went back to the hostel and bed. We are really looking forward to to-morrows walk since John Scragg and Sr Cecilia are coming out from Keswick to walk with us and we will send our rucksacks back by car.
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