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Usually I love being back in Cumbria, but current sad circumstances mean it's not a holiday this time. Most of the morning was spent making phonecalls, most of the evening was spent answering calls, but I had no hospital or care home visits today, so with perfect weather suddenly appearing after cloud and rain of recent days, I nipped out to do my first hill walk in weeks (a couple of km up Binsey aside). I thought I'd do the ridge up Ullock Pike, Long Side and Carl Side, then descend via Dodd and the forestry paths, a walk that would fit in nicely in an afternoon given the shorter daylight hours. Got to Carl Side in plenty time though, so changed plan and continued on up Skiddaw, then descended to the north to take in Bakestall, adding another Wainwright to the tally.
- View back down the gentle start on a path through fields
- Binsey was in view for a lot of this walk
- Skiddaw in bright sun
- Once on to the ridge, it's a clear path to follow (view back)
- Aiming for the peak of Ullock Pike
- Looking back down the ridge, north end of Bassenthwaite
- Ullock Pike summit, south end of Bassenthwaite
- Continuing along the ridge to Long Side
- Long Side summit (Skiddaw on left, grassy dome of Carl Side on right)
- Long Side summit back to Ullock Pike
- Carl Side summit back to Long Side
- Heading down from Carl Side to start the ascent up the scree slopes of Skiddaw (I took the path going up diagonally on the left rather than the one in the middle of the pic)
- Looking back over to Long Side and Ullock Pike from the path up Skiddaw
- I could see several people were at the summit when I got on to the summit plateau...
- ...but they all passed me the other way as I walked to it, so I had it to myself when I got there
- Roughly west to the ridge I'd walked up today
- Looking back along the summit plateau - but today I wasn't going back that way; instead I was continuing N/NW towards Bakestall
- On reaching Bakestall, I wasn't quite sure if the summit was marked by this pile of cairns by the fence corner ...
- ...or the similar sized cairn which lay other there, in the direction I'd be going anyway. So I visited them both.
- I've still to do the fells to the north, they were never really on my radar until I was looking at them from here
- Descending from Bakestall to Cockup (Binsey in the background)
- Cockup looking back to Bakestall. With hindsight, I probably should have continued more to the left on my descent, instead of taking the branch which went off to Cockup. I think the other branch continued on to meet the path marked on my OS map which I'd been intending to take...
- ...instead, I headed down Cockup's NW slope which was very steep (the photo does it no justice - I walked backwards for most of it to save my knees from the killer angle)
- Despite knowing the route I really wanted required me to veer over to the left some distance, I continued straight down as I could see a gate and knew once I'd gone through the field beyond I'd hit a track to take me back to the minor road. Unfortunately it turned out it wasn't an actual moving gate, just something tied to the wall and fence there to block the gap, so I had to climb over the wall and fence anyway.
- Nearly back to the road, it was a nice view back up the track to the hills in the late afternoon sunshine (Cockup on the left)
- On the walk along the minor road back to the parking area, I got this panoramic view of today's route (starting from the right with the slope up to Ullock Pike, Skiddaw in the middle, coming down on the left here)