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Birks Fell, Plover Hill and Pen-y-ghent

PostPosted: Sat Apr 20, 2013 3:07 am
by andy63
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The car's been in the garage most of this week,so I had to use public transport for this. one. This made it a long day- it took 2 trains and a long bus ride to get to Buckden, and another 2 trains to get back from Horton in Ribblesdale.But it also meant I didn't have to do a circular walk to get back to the car.

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Path up to Birks Fell from Redmire farm


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snow on Buckden Pike


Rather than follow the bridleway up to the top and then walk along the ridge, I decided to take a more direct route straight up the hill.This was a bit steep in places, but not too difficult.
Before long I was at what I hope was the summit cairn of Birks Fell- it was hard to tell because the ridge is very flat.

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Birks Fell summit


From here, I followed the wall along the ridge for a couple of miles.I had to use the map and compass a few times to figure out which wall I wanted to follow. The ground was very wet and boggy, probably because of the melting snow and the rain we've had recently.Unfortunately, the boots I had on weren't waterproof enough and I ended up with wet feet. :(

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Eventually I came to another summit cairn. This is called Sugar Loaf and is just under 2000 feet.It used to be classed as a Marilyn until someone did a survey and found out that Birks fell is higher.

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Sugar Loaf summit; Plover Hill and Pen-y-ghent in the background.


A little further along the ridge there's a good path which leads down to the valley near Halton Gill and Foxup.
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Foxup


From Foxup there's afootpath towards Horton in Ribblesdale.About a mile and a half along this there's a signpost pointing the way up Plover Hill.The path goes up past some steep cliffs, but the summit itself is flat.There's a small summit cairn but it was on the wrong side of a wall, with no stile, and the wall was too high to easily climb over.

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Ascent of Plover Hill


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Top of Plover Hill


I headed down towards Pen-y-ghent and found a break in the wall which allowed me to go back up and get a wonky shot of the summit:

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Plover summit cairn


The path between Plover Hill and Pen-y-ghent was also very boggy.
I didn't need to bag Pen-y-ghent because I'd ben there before, but it wasn't much of a detour and it was the nicest summit of the day, and there's a well made path along the Pennine Way to Horton in Ribblesdale where I caught the train home.

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Pen-y-ghent summit


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Pen-y-ghent from Horton station

Re: Birks Fell, Plover Hill and Pen-y-ghent

PostPosted: Sun Apr 21, 2013 7:56 pm
by colgregg
A good walk that one. Like you I assumed the picture of Birks was the top as I could find nothing higher along the ridge. Even the trig further East is at a lower level. I agree it is a very squelchy walk to the top of Horsehead pass.