A good short days walk today in some pretty wild weather as we climbed Loadpot Hill from Pooley Bridge, snow, hail, strong winds and sunshine were the order of the day.
We met on the lane heading out of Pooley Bridge above the Howe Hill campsite and headed up the track towards The Cockpit stone circle, it looked like weatherwise we were going to get a little bit of everything today, driving over had been a mixture of sun and hail and clinging the track towards The Cockpit we seemed to have a few minutes of everything carried along in quite a strong wind.
From The Cockpit we took the path to the south towards Little Mossy Beck, trying to get a little shelter from the winds on this side of the ridge, it worked pretty well and it wasn't until we climbed to join the High Street Roman Road near The Castle that we walked back into the worst of the wind.
We followed the Roman Road up towards Loadpot Hill, into a thin layer of snow, the small stone circle below the path was easy to pick out in the snow today, when the bracken is up it can be quite a challenge to find, as anyone who has been on one of our navigation courses up here will have experienced!
When we reached Lambert Lad, one of the many boundary stones up here we turned off to the left, leaving the High Street Roman Road and heading up towards the summit of Loadpot Hill.
The final path up to the summit of Loadpot Hill had turned a little icy overnight, it was far easier walking to the side of it on the longer grass to the side.
It always surprises me how much of a summit plateau there is on Loadpot Hill, once the gradient eases off it is still a few hundred metres to the trig point on the summit.
We didn't hang around too long on the summit today and after a few photos we were pressing on, dropping down to the north from Loadpot Hill, crossing the High Street Roman Road again and dropping down onto the path above White Knotts to the summit of Bonscale Pike.
As we reached the summit of Bonscale Pike the wind started gusting a little, making for hard walking, but now we were back in the sunshine, another quick photo on the summit of Bonscale Pike and we were off, looking for somewhere to stop for lunch, we aimed for the ruined building on Swarth Beck, finding good shelter behind the wall for a short stop before taking the track up towards Arthur's Pike.
From Arthur's Pike we followed the track down over Barton Fell, crossing Aik Beck and taking the path across Elder Beck to meet the track back by the cars.
A good short day in testing conditions.
