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Dodd walk Sunday 18th January 2015
Me and Deb parked at the Old Sawmill Forestry commission car park opposite Mirehouse marked on the OS map.
Little winge about the £4.80 to park for four hours!
This was not even the charge for the full day. The tea rooms weren’t even open this time of year and I feel that this is an extortionate amount. No wonder there were people parked alongside the main road nearby. OK winge over, back to the walk.
The path is well marked with posts (funded by the car park I suppose, OK, ok -I’ll stop it now) with four different walks on offer; we wanted the Dodd summit walk. There was a nice sprinkling of snow on the ground and it was quite bright with good views. Not so much on the way up though as you are amongst the trees.
This was another of the Northern fells I needed to mop up. The path is good all the way and takes you gradually up and around the back of the hill, and then up to the top. As we got higher the snow got thicker although it was only ever a few inches deep and presented no problems. There were quite a few others doing this walk as it is a pleasant stroll with excellent views from the summit.
first view of summit
view south to Helvellyn range
At the top there is an attractive piece of stone with dedications on one side and a plate marking the summit of the hill.
north west view
Keswick
a wet Derwent valley
We stopped part of the way down to have some lunch and had a guest. We didn’t follow the way markings for the walk down, as I wanted to make the most of the views. We headed around the south side of Dodd. It was still fairly straightforward to find the path back to the carpark.
Guest
views on path down
nearly back
It took us about 1 ½ hours to get to the top at a leisurely pace and about one hour back down, not including the lunch stop. Nice easy paths all the way.