Place Fell and Ullswater

Distance: 13.6 km (8.45 mi)
Time: 4 hours 38
Average speed: 2.9 km/h (1.8 mph)

To get from Windermere to Patterdale were today's walk started I drove over Kirkstone Pass. You can get some pretty spectacular views there, but I had to stop looking and concentrate on driving. Luckily the rest of the day was not going t be short on views.

I managed to park over a large puddle, evidence of overnight rain, so I got my feet wet before I'd even changed into my boots. Still I had them dry as I set out.

It was a short and flat walk to the foot of Place Fell, then a long slog diagonally up the western side before looping back to the summit (path, then a bit of a scramble). I was rewarded with some stunning views of the surrounding fells, including Striding Edge up to Helvellyn, and down to Ullswater. It had been pretty tiring (and I was still 300m below the top of Helvellyn), but the hard part was over.

I came down from the top and followed the path all the other folks were taking. It was then that I realized I'd broken the rule about leaving nothing but footprints: the foot thingy on my walking pole was missing, probably sucked off by one of the boggy patches I'd negotiated. Not long after noticing that I spotted somebody else's foot thingy ahead of me and thanks to mass production it now sits on my walking pole.

It was as I was congratulating myself on that luck that I realized I was on the wrong path. The guide recommended a curving path that gave better views over Ullswater whereas I'd followed the direct path because everyone else was following it. That only works if everyone else is on the same route as you. And GPS units only work if you remember to look at them occasionally. No matter, the two paths soon joined up before splitting again and this time I took the right one and let everyone else go their own way.

Navigation error number 2 was ten or fifteen minutes later. The guide said that there was a path on the right down off he fell. I saw a grass track that looked a little steep to be usable with the damp grass. The route on the GPS said to go ahead, so I pushed on. The next time I checked the GPS I was well to the left of where I should have been, and was still up on the plateau instead of halfway down. When I'd entered the route last week I hadn't been able to see where the track split (the route was on 1:25000, my software only had the 1:50000) and the path I'd wanted only went steeply to the right for a short distance before being parallel with the upper route, although descending. Since I was still on a path and in roughly the right direction I pushed on. I ended up descending a steeper path than the once I rejected and although it was shorter I had to spend more time to go down whilst vertical.

Back on the route, the return part is alongside Ullswater. The guidebook promised "one of the most beautiful paths in the Lake District". Fair enough. I did stop plenty of times to take photos.

There was one obstacle on the final stretch, a tree that had fallen down over the path. There are more graceful ways to overcome that obstacle, but they all involve chainsaws.