With another opportunity to get out into the hills this weekend we decided to collect a few more of Mr Wainwrights outliers.
At the end of January we had an unsuccessful attempt to walk the fells above the Wet Sleddale Reservoir near Shap, we had a bit of a route finding issue which took time resolving (if I'd looked at the map it would have been easy to sort
out ) the weather was closing in and we didn't fancy finding our way around in windy rainy conditions so we aborted the walk and promised ourselves a re-visit in the spring

Looking at the forecast for the 7th May it looked like a re-visit was on the cards, I looked at the map again, refreshed my memory and made the decision to head up to Shap and spend the day in the wild fells above the reservoir.

We set off from home at just after 07.00, for us it's motorway all the way off the M6 at junction 39 then on the A6 towards Shap, we arrived at the dam after a 1hr 20min drive and were walking by 08.45, the morning was bright, there were some breaks in the cloud so it looked like we were going to have a much better day than on our first attempt







From the car park we headed along the track running along the southern edge of the reservoir, an easy start to the walk with some nice views across the water towards our intended fells.

Our Fells today are:

Great Ladstones
Langhowe Pike
Seat Robert
High Wether Howe
Fewling Stones

We followed the track to a footbridge at NY540110, (something we'd not done last time, we tried crossing the
Sleddale Beck at NY543112, not possible in spate as it was back then so we wasted time by not looking at
the map )



we continued along the track to Sleddale Hall where we followed the path running steeply up above a small ravine to the right of the Hall, over a stile at the top, good view to the reservoir



through a gate then continued along the fence to a gate at NY538116 went through this and onto the open Fells.





There is a path marked on the map here but it's not too obvious on the ground, we started following it wanting to reach the track on the map at around NY529119, it's very wet and tussocky up here so we had to keep looking for it, we lost it a couple of times, following sheep tracks and quad tracks but eventually arrived on the track at around NY530120 which was ok because we were closer to our first objective Great Ladstones

We could see the cairn on the top of GL so decided to follow the track for a short way then go directly uphill to the top, we arrived on the top just as the sun was breaking through the clouds, the views were good, we could see our next objective Langhowe Pike, it looked miles away but in reality not that far away, we had a break then set off back down to the track to start the walk over to LP.







It's very wet up here, the soft spongy terrain made it feel like walking in snow, we were hopping over the very wet bits aiming for the more tussocky dryer stuff, it was quite tiring but we were making fairly good time the going was rough but easy to progress, we were at the cairn on LP about half an hour after leaving GL and the views were better than
those from Great Ladstones, well worth the effort



back to Great Ladstones


Lakes








We had a short break then set off retracing our steps rather than going to Rowantree Crag as originally planned, it was so soggy underfoot we thought we'd better not go off piste, it was bad enough on the dryer sections

Back on the track our next port of call was Seat Robert,



we followed the track crossing the path we were supposed to be on earlier at NY529119, its like a motorway, how we lost THAT is a mystery carried on along the track and left it at a suitable point to tackle Seat Robert.

It's a short steep pull to the summit, on the top there's a large cairn and a fairly well built shelter which provided suitable seating arrangements out of the cooling breeze



and gave some nice views of our surroundings, we could make out our next objectives, the sun was shining throwing shadows over the fellsides, it feels very remote, the Skylarks and Meadow Pippetts were twittering away, it felt just brilliant to be out, these fells may not be very high but the feeling of wide open space is fantastic, as the saying goes, size, really, doesn't matter





We followed a path off the summit heading SW, this led us to a gate at NY521109 we'd be going through this later to get back to the reservoir. We followed the fence towards High Wether Howe, and left it at around NY515109 for the very short climb to the summit.



The views from the top were good, we were getting better views to the Lakes and views back to
Seat Robert, we could just make out our last lump Fewling Stones away to the north, that was going to be our lunch spot so after a few photo's and a rest we set off towards our final top of the day.







Again, distances are deceptive on these fells, what looked far off was just a 20 minute walk







on the top the views were, in my opinion, the best we'd had all day, we could see down to Swindale and across to Selside with the dramatic looking crags on its northern side, it was quite a contrast from earlier views, we saw a group of four walkers descending into Swindale from Nabs Moor, the air was so still here we could hear them talking we had a long lunch break absorbing the views, the sun was out, it was warm, we could feel the summer isn't that far off,
it felt great.









After lunch, talk of our next day out and many photo's we set off back to High Wether Howe and the fence that would take us back to the gate.



At the gate we went through it and set off down the path to meet the track back to the reservoir. We turned left on the track and continued on it as far as NY535113 where it starts a zig zagging descent heading for Sleddale Hall.









At the Hall we picked up our outward track back over the bridge where there's a nice little waterfall in the beck below,
more photo's



and continued, rather wearily back to the car, our tussocky adventure had taken its toll on our knees but we are in good spirits even though we were tripping over just about every stone and boulder available on that track, we are looking forward to our holiday in Scotland and we'd had a good day out, no boulder was going to take that away from us