A good day today climbing Blake Fell and the Loweswater Fells from Cogra Moss, a little bit of everything weatherwise from beautiful sunshine to snow.
We set off from the Felldyke Car Park a little after 10am and followed the track up towards Cogra Moss, following the track along the southern shore of the water with great views of Blake Fell above the treeline.
We spotted a heron and a couple of ducks that were probably goldeneye on the far side of the water this morning.
We took the forest track around the far side of the water, climbing up behind High Hows and eventually emerging from the trees below Sharp Knott.
A small path took us from Sharp Knott, contouring to the north to meet the fence just below the stile and path leading up towards the summit of Burnbank Fell. There were good views over the Solway this morning but many of the high fells were in the cloud at the moment.
We followed the path along the fenceline south, crossing the stile and climbing up to the summit of Blake Fell, the highest of the Loweswater Fells and a great viewpoint.
It was a little cool in the breeze today so we made use of the small wind shelter for our lunch. As we got up from lunch we noticed that the sky behind us had darkened and there was some heavier weather on it's way.
We walked over to the nearby viewpoint over Cogra Moss and then got on our way, taking the path to the south east from Blake Fell dropping down the grassy slope towards Fothergill Head and the short climb up to the summit of Gavel Fell.
As we climbed towards Gavel Fell the weather caught up with us, for a while it was snowing quite heavily. We were soon on a white summit of Gavel Fell.
As we descended from Gavel Fell the snow eased off again, we dropped back down to Fothergill Head, taking the path up over High Pen.
As we followed the ridge between High Pen and Low Pen the clouds broke giving us some wonderful views, particularly back over Fothergill Head to a snowy Grasmoor in the sun, and from Low Pen we watched the clouds break over Pillar Rock before dropping down off the ridge below Knock Murton, back to Cogra Moss and the path back to Felldyke.
