free to be able to rate and comment on reports (as well as access 1:25000 mapping).
Another weekend and another decision, I asked my colleagues north or south, big hills or wee hills. They both opted for a trip south and wee hills. It was my turn to drive so I opted for one of the longer drives south to pick off a couple of Marilyns not far from the Border, both have good tracks Larriston for the majority of the walk & Roan for the whole of the walk.
Both hills were repeats for me but I still enjoy the wee hills, it is funny how time clouds your memory a wee bit, this was the case for Larriston. I remember the lack of path from the mast and thought it was maybe 400-800m, as it turned out it was much more and far tougher than I recollect!!
I uplifted George from the local park & ride at 7.30am and we then headed to Sheriffhall to uplift Parminder, then it was down the A68 until the Satnav took over.
Larriston Fell - 3hrs 15mins, 11.55km, 417m of ascent
The way ahead
The road looking east
Road looking west
We are heading for the mast in the distance
The way ahead
The top of the gate nicely frosted
Quite a few yards from and buildings
My colleagues
Almost black and white
Very picturesque
Sun about appear
Looking back - we are going to get inversions
The track uphill, a nice gradual incline
North west - inversion
Different angle
A wee video looking north
North west
The mast we were aiming for, next the fun begins. I don't remember the walk from the mast to the trig being so tough or quite so far
George opting for a slightly different route - there is no path
Knee deep heather and tufty grass
Looking back to the mast
Northish again
The mast again, looks quite a long way now
Parminder preparing for his obligatory trig photo
Note the technique
We opted to try and avoid the heather & grass by following a faint path that took us SW via the cairns
We had a few patches of deforested area to trample over
Great view of the inversion
Roan Fell - 2hrs 55mins, 11.69km, 392m
Parking area, leaving plenty of room for farm vehicles
The way ahead
Looking back
Photo from my last visit in 2018 of the dogs - the noise was deafening
The cage / home for the dogs, this was taken on the way back, so they must have been put to bed, they certainly greeted us on the way in
Do we cross via the ford or the small bridge in the distance
Looking back
The way ahead
The way ahead. good path
Looking back
Large stalactite, plenty more higher up to follow
Small circle for livestock?
Looking back downhill
Looking back from much higher up
The path goes all the way to the summit of Roan Fell
Looking back, the track can be seen
More stalactites
Looking north
Bit of cloud suddenly appeared
North
Arty shot of George about to go over the horizon
The track wriggles across the peat hags to and past the summit of Roan Fell
Sun starting to set
The large summit area of Roan Fell, great if you love peat hags
Roan Fell summit cairn
NE, one of the Eildon's in the distance, the wee pointy one
Plenty of peat hags
We opted to continue along the track to Millstone Edge in the hope that Parminder could photo the trig. We had a bit of a navigational hiccup, Locus (the app we use to download the GPX file onto) had the trig on the east side of the track so we headed off onto the peat hags.
Camera photo, the trig we didn't reach zoomed
Sun setting and we had to get a wiggle on
Stalactites taken on the descent
Stalactites again
We opted not to utilise this bridge to cross the burn
Parminder about to cross the burn
Turned out to be another superb day, the weather was almost perfect, no wind and only minus four when we started. As Santa's big day approaches our chances of getting a few more walks in before the end of the year are pretty slim and the way the weather is behaving we will be heading south again.
