The Dodds

[Phooooey]

Stybarrow Dodd - Watson's Dodd - Great Dodd - Clough Head

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A week in the planning for this walk and even as we set off from Barrow my colleage John and I did not know which way round we were going to approach it. Do we take the pain of Sticks Pass first or walk down the valley and climb up to Clough Head first ??
The answer came when we parked up in the church hall car park at Legburthwaite after initially trying the car park further up the road and not having enough change for the meter. They were charging £5 for a few hours and we had £15 in notes but only £4.50 change. We drove back down the road to find some change at the Lodge and stumbled across our car new home for the day with a £2 honesty box ... Woo Hoo !
This car park was about 5 metres away from the base of Sticks Pass so up we went ... and up and up. It's pretty steep at the start and towards the top of the pass!

Our route up - Sticks Pass

John climbing Sticks Pass

View north to Blencathra

Western view from Sticks Pass

From here we headed left onto Stybarrow, Watson's and Great Dodds over lush green fields with great views north to Blencathra & Skiddaw and south towards Hellvelyn. To the East lies Ullswater and looks over Gowbarrow where we had visited a couple of weeks previous when we survived the day just below the cloud level. A much better day today afforded better views.

Great Dodd

On the tops

Ullswater

From Great Dodd we headed down the crescent shaped descent and up Clough Head where we carried straight on with the cliff face on our left to descend the steep grassy bank down to the Old Coach Road and left through the disused quarry.

Clough Head summit

A very nice lunch was interupted by the farmer passing on his quad and politely requesting we lift our backsides off his haybail that we had been using as a most comfortable seat.
The very same fella had also padlocked a gate which was our planned route down so we were forced to walk down towards his farm and back up a very muddy cow track to get back to ou desired location. At reaching the next disused quarry we dropped back onto the road for the mile or so walk back to the car park.
A pint of Red Bull Terrier at the Badgers Bar at Rydal was a perfect finish to a long but lovely day out.