Brant Fell

[nigheandonn]

Sunday was always a bit undecided in the plan - a morning in Kendal before the first train, and then either a quick trip over Scout Scar, or a muddle of little hills above Windermere which I wasn't feeling very enthusiastic about. For a week or so beforehand it was forecast to pour with rain all day, which only added to the dilemma - should I waste a nice hill on an awful day, or spend longer in the wet - but having missed out Whitbarrow the day before, so that it would make most sense to join it to Scout Scar as a longer trip, a last minute forecast for a dryish morning saw me heading for Windermere on a morning bus rather than waiting for a train.

From the station I started on the long trudge down the main road to Bowness - a place I'm not all that keen on at the best of times, because it never seems to be anything but Rio - boats and trippers. This morning it was inhabited only by people with nothing to do, walking slowly up and down the road and looking unhappy about it.

To be fair to them, the new forecast didn't seem to have reached Bowness and it was a dismal morning, halfway between rain and snow and with all the world in dull shades of grey.

Bowness gloom

I had walked right down to the lakeside to find a place where I could sit down under shelter, and had to retrace my steps a bit to find Brantfell Road. Things improved a bit as I started to climb - either the day was getting colder, or the extra height was making a difference, because I now had real snow falling on me. The first field, with its Dales Way sign showing 81 miles to Ilkley, was doing a fair imitation of a winter wonderland.

Winter wonderland

At the top of the field a track led along between trees to the National Trust's field at Post Knott.

Road through the woods

Brant Fell itself had a proper covering of snow, and sledgers were making good use of it. There was a sign telling me to follow cairns, but I couldn't see any, and just took a sensible route that wouldn't get me run down, keeping to the higher ground to the left.

Brant Fell with sledgers

A pair of old gateposts, with no gate and no fence, marked the highest point around, but I'd reached it so quickly that I didn't really believe at first that it was the summit, and that there wasn't some other higher place hiding in the general whiteness.

Old gateposts

The true summit was a sloping line of rock with the remains of metal fence posts sticking from it. In less slippery weather it would have been easy to climb onto, but I tried, slid off and banged my elbow, and contented myself with touching the top of it.

Brant Fell summit

There was probably a good view if I could have seen it, but between haze and falling snow there really wasn't much visible - obviously the theme of the weekend.

Although I'd kind of decided by now that I couldn't be bothered with the cross country expedition to School Knott and Grandsire, I didn't really want to repeat the trek along the main road back to Windermere station, so descended north towards Brantfell Farm to pick up the paths skirting the edge of the town. I was quite surprised that the tiny reservoir was still visible as a landmark.

Descent to the reservoir

My way back wiggled round above the houses and through the top end of the town, with the snow beginning to turn to rain again. I failed slightly in my aim to come out at the station without touching the main road, and came out on the main street in Windermere by the co-op, but it was still a more pleasant way back.

I was pretty wet by this point, and it was lunchtime, so I decided that going to find some soup was a better plan than going on walking. I was still considering Orrest Head, but it seemed a shame not to leave it for a better day - or maybe that was just the excuse for being tired of the combination of rain and mud, having started to warm up a bit. So instead I went to Burneside to look at a slightly comedy monument, built to celebrate Napoleon's imprisonment on Elba but not completed before he had escaped again.

Elba monument

I didn't necessarily get any less wet doing that, but it probably was less muddy - and I saw my first snowdrops of the year, sheltering under a tree in the Burneside churchyard.

Snowdrops

Back to Kendal and a prowl around before a while of killing time in the hostel lounge, and a beer, and the train north - and finally a warm bath!

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