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Hills named after their vegetation do not really stir the soul. So Ling Fell and Broom Fell are amongst my last Wainwrights. Gray Stones doesn't set the pulse racing either. String five together and you get a reasonably challenging walk.
I parked up on the Whinlatter Road. Whinlatter is best known as where fresh faced and enthusiastic Coast to Coast cyclists encounter their first serious hill. A few red faced puffing pedallers inched past as I booted up. Apart from a few passing motorists, these were the only people I met all day.
A long plod on the main road was lightened by rosebay willowherb and foxgloves in profusion as well as the welcome surprise of wild raspberries in the road verge. The fell road up to High Side was more pleasant, a narrow ribbon of tarmac with a mohican haircut of grass along the crown of the road as it winds up the hillside, in and out of small valleys and woodlands and farms.
I struck up the hillside and as I climbed, views of the Solway Firth and agricultural West Cumberland opened out. The top of Ling Fell was soon reached and there were views over to its puddingy twin Sale Fell and the toe of Bassenthwaite Lake.
Then down to Wythop Moss - Wainwright implies that this is some sort of Tolkeinesque morass but compared with the boggy extremes of the Pennines, it was nothing and soon crossed.
I climbed up to the forest fringe at Widows Hause, hit a path for the first time and followed it to Gray Stones.
The principal issue on Gray Stones is finding the top, there are three points of roughly equal height. Having hedged my bets and visited all three, I strode back along the ridge towards the fine cairn on Broom Fell (NB despite the evidence of the path and the cairn, this is not the top which is a nondescript grassy lump a little way to the east. I followed the path to the top of Lords Seat.
Here I picked up a forest track which made for pleasant and fast, if indirect, progress to the edge of the forest. From the stile, a faint path, little more than a sheep track, led to the top of Whinlatter with a fine view of Grizedale Pike in the evening light.
A steep descent into the Aitken Beck valley, fuelled by a few bilberries, an easy stride down the forest track and back to the car