A very windy day today climbing Helvellyn from Wythburn with a few hail showers on top, just for a bit of added entertainment!

We set off to climb Helvellyn from Wythburn at 10am and headed up the track through the woods and out into the comb above Comb Gill.

Here the path turns up to the right climbing above Comb Crags and up onto Birk Side. As we climbed up over Comb Crags we caught our first shower of the day, nothing too bad and it had soon passed over.

Once we were up on Birk Side we got our first great views of the day, north across Skiddaw to Crifell in Scotland and south past the Coniston Fells to Morecambe Bay with only the tops of Scafell Range and Bowfell in the cloud.

As we climbed the zig-zags above High Crags the wind started to get up a bit and some heavy showers started to come in from the west, the wind was on our backs though so could have been much worse.

We were soon up to Swallow Scarth and admiring the views across to Striding Edge, although it didn't look like a good day to be on Stiriding Edge today, the wind was now very strong and there were heavy hail showers coming across us in quite quick succession.

From Swallow Scarth it didn't take us long to get up to the top of Helvellyn and a well earned break in the wind shelter.

We decided that instead of heading south along the ridge over Nethermost Pike and Dollywaggon Pike we would instead head north over White Side and Raise, walking in this direction would keep the strong winds on our backs.

We crossed the summit of Helvellyn, passing the summit cairn and then the Trig Point before descending and crossing the top of Helvellyn Lower Man and descending the ridge above Brown Cove.

Looking down at the col between us and Whiteside we watched two walkers coming towards us, obviously struggling in a strong wind and eventually deciding to turn back towards Glenridding, so we new that there was a very windy section coming up, but that it would only last about 100m.

We were soon in the strong wind, taking our time, making good progress between the gusts but almost grinding to a halt when the gusts caught us.

We were soon across the col and climbing the slope towards the summit of White Side out of the worst of the wind, from the summit of White Side the path to Raise turns a little to the north east so now the wind really was on our backs and much more pleasant, we were soon on the summit of Raise, admiring a wonderful view back towards Helvellyn and plotting our route down towards Thirlmere.

We decided that it would be best to descend west from Raise, down the grassy slopes to the south of Brund Gill, getting some shelter from the north western shoulder of White Side before descending to Brown Crag.

We stopped out of the wind just below Brown Crag to eat our lunches watching a wonderful rainbow above St Johns in the Vale.

After lunch we descended west dropping down to cross the new fence and meet a steep path descending towards Thirlspot and picking up the main path below taking us down to Swirls.

From Swirls we picked up the forest track, stopping in the trees to watch a Roe Deer staring at us from a few metres away before turning and running.

We followed the forrest track back above Thirlmere to meet the path down through the trees to Wythburn Church and our cars.