After our rather lax approach to Wainwright bagging so far this year, we decided to squeeze in another day trip to the Lakes during the last weekend of August. The forecast looked great, and we picked out an 8 miler from our Walking the Wainwrights guide to get another 4 new summits in the bag. Unfortunately the weather nosedived a little bit in-between choosing the walk and setting off, but with it remaining dry even if not particularly sunny, we decided to plough on as planned and got ourselves over to the Lakes bright and early on the Sunday morning.
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Our route started from the Lake District national park car park at Cow Bridge (pay & display), which we arrived just after 8am and managed to nab the last space. I think though that a lot of the cars in there had been parked up overnight, so more spaces may have become available as the morning progressed. The walk starts with a nice easy flat section above the shore of Brothers Water, then branches off after a mile or two for a direct assault up the slopes of High Hartsop Dodd.
Much like our climb up the similarly named and nearby Hartsop Dodd on the Pasture Beck Round, the ascent was steep and unrelenting almost all the way to the top. Happily, there was a lovely view of Brothers Water down below to admire on our rest breaks, and it was over fairly quickly (the one plus side of steep climbs!).
As we climbed, the view became mistier and mistier, until we reached the summit cairn and our onward route to Little Hart Crag was basically walking into a cloud – also similar to our Pasture Beck Round experience! Although we didn’t get many views on the walk across to our second Wainwright, the going was at least much easier and we did get a peek at a nice view towards the Fairfield Horseshoe from time to time.
Unfortunately, the easy going ended after summiting Little Hart Crag, with a dreaded ‘go down to go back up again’ section required to reach our third and highest peak of the day, Red Screes. I’m not sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing that Red Screes was totally shrouded in cloud beyond the lower slopes: on the one hand we couldn’t be put off by the size, but on the other hand dragging ourselves up there felt like a right slog that would never end!
There’s a trig pillar at the summit of Red Screes and I suspect a lovely view down below the fell – unfortunately, I can’t say for sure whether that’s the case as we couldn’t see anything at all up there. After a brief debate over the right way to go, we were on our way and began the easy walk across to Middle Dodd, which is pretty much all steadily downhill.
We finally dropped out of the cloud while approaching the cairn on Middle Dodd, and got another good view of Brothers Water, this time from the other side of the horseshoe. It’s worth taking the time to enjoy the view, as the descent with tired legs was not particularly fun. The path is very steep and in many places, loose and slippery underfoot. We both had multiple near misses where only a strategically placed tussock of grass saved us from ending up on the floor!
After mincing my way down (much slower than Sam, who had to do a lot of waiting around) the jelly legs set in and I was very much looking forward to getting back to the car for a nap on the drive home (the benefits of being a passenger!). The path brings you out at the bottom of the track up High Hartsop Dodd which we took at the start, so the last few miles are simply a case of retracing the easy path through fields and along Brothers Water to the car park.
Dog friendly rating: 2.5/5. We kept out dogs on leads for the entirety of this walk, as there were sheep throughout and a few (chilled out) cows on the lower slopes of Middle Dodd. It’s also worth being aware of very steep drops off to the side as you walk across from Red Screes to Middle Dodd. There were a few puddles and a small tarn at the summit of Red Screes, but not much else in the way of water, so you may want to carry extra for your dog. There were no stiles on the walk.
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