High Spy, Maiden Moore and Cat Bells from Borrowdale

[lauramacn]

For my second day in the Lakes I wanted to climb the popular Cat Bells. I was staying in Borrowdale Hostel and as the distance wasn't too great, I fancied a wee circular walk.
Leaving the Hostel I managed to pick up Tongue Gill and had a fairly steep ascent to get onto the ridge and towards the summit of High Spy. The climb up Tongue Gill was fascinating as there were disused quarries along the way so my mind was distracted from the steep slog.

Tongue Gill

It was pretty windy when I reached the top so I kept making progress to keep warm from the wind. Impressive views surrounded me from the cairn on the top of High Spy.

High Spy Cairn

I followed the path towards Cat Bells and passed over Maiden Moore, almost without realising.
The approach to Cat Bells was notable for being decidedly busier than the hills I'd come from. I scrambled to the top to enjoy the view and managed to find a bit of shelter to hunker down out of the wind and have my packed lunch.

Cat Bells

I then retraced my steps to the junction in the path where a steep decline took me back towards the lakeside and I followed the low level path back towards Grange and finally alongside the river and back to the Hostel.

All in all a very pleasant, if blustery, day with wonderful views all around.

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[Sgurr]

Nice report. It looked pretty deserted to me! Maybe you deliberately got shots with nobody in them.

Cat Bells was busier than the others the day we visited too.A whole lot of Non-British guys with perfect English were doing their DOE gold. When we asked where they had done their silver it was Senegal, and Bronze "In the desert somewhere". It turned out that they all came from the English School in Qatar, though their homes were scattered across the Middle East and North Africa.When we asked what they wanted to do when they left school, with only one exception who wanted to be a doctor, they all wanted to be engineers. Can't imagine getting the same reply from a British Scout group..