Online Fellwalking Club - Ullock Pike

Ullock Pike - 12th October 2008

Written by David Leslie

Sunday, 26 October 2008

Member's Photographs:-

Saw Mill Tea Room

Because I don’t keep my visits to The Lakes secret, I just happened to mention to one or two OFC members that we were coming down and that this walk was planned. Because the OFC are a friendly lot, others asked if they could join the walk, a general announcement was made by email and James kindly published the walk on the calendar.
The Sunday dawned bright and clear, with not a cloud in the sky (isn’t it always like that in The Lakes?), and we arrived at the meeting point at about 10.40 a.m., this being the Old Sawmill Tearoom at Mirehouse, which was also to be the finishing point.

Sale Fell

Starting the walk were us (Dave, Ros and Douglas Leslie), Ann and Roger Hiley, Anne and Andrew Leaney, John Paterson, Terry Gargrave, Gary and Sheena Richardson, Jo Hall and Jayne Hill, with dogs Rosie, Holly, Harry, Bethan, Tim, Polly, Jodie and Abbey, making a grand total of 13 people and 8 dogs. Promptly, sometime after 11.00 a.m., we all decided to move off, following the roadside track through the woods towards the Ravenstone Hotel. We passed above the hotel and on to the Ullock Pike ridge.

Nearing the summit

Quite early on a set a pattern of stopping to take photo’s and bringing up the rear of the party, often at quite some distance. However several others hung back to offer moral support, whilst everybody else extended in a long line ahead, apparently chatting away quite happily, about diverse subjects as football, NHS provision, photography and websites and relocation and property prices. We started on the ridge above The watches, which unfortunately never came into sight, and Ros was quickly aware that my description of the walk (fairly benign, with a couple of steep bits) wasn’t quite as accurate as it might have been. That being said, I was carrying the rucksack with all the spare clothing etc., so Ros and Douglas weren’t that bothered.

The higher we got, the better the views, with Skiddaw slowly losing its slightly cloudy top. The views to the West and North slowly opened out, although Scotland seemed to be lost in the haze.

Skiddaw to the east

North along 'The Edge'

After passing over the top of Ullock Pike things became somewhat easier, so I was able to speed up a bit. Unfortunately so did everybody else, so I still didn’t catch up until lunchtime on Longside Edge.

Derwentwater

Most of us had brought some snacks for the dogs, which meant that we could keep our own lunches for ourselves, and it was a pleasant few minutes spent relaxing in the sun, but it was soon time to move on. I quickly assumed the position of tail end Charlie as we all headed towards Carlside, taking the lower path to Carlside Tarn, first. By this time it was apparent that we were having the best of the weather, as heavy cloud was now blanketing the area to the south of where we were.

Autumn colours

There was a slight kerfuffle as one of our doggy party took exception to sharing the fells with a dog belonging to a German tourist. That being said there wasn’t a cross word between any of our 8 dogs (or 13 people) all day, and this little bit of excitement was soon over.

From Carlside Tarn we passed over Carlside to start the steep path down to White Stones. Terry (and Abbey) were discussing doing Dodd, which was still on their list of places to go. Conveniently our path was to join the Dodd path not too far from its summit.

After short break at White Stones we carried on down to the join the path around Dodd. This being a narrow, slow path I was not the last down (hooray). There was a brief discussion about who was going to carry on to Dodd summit with Terry and Abbey (Abbey 100th Wainwright), but there was some concern that the Sawmill Tearoom would be closing, so in the end only Andrew Leaney carried on the extra mile with them.

The rest of us took the short route back down Dodd, through some nicely coloured trees.

We arrived back at the tearoom for refreshment whilst waiting for Andrew, Terry and Abbey. Fortunately for them the tearoom didn’t close for some time and they were also suitably refreshed when they rejoined us about 30 minutes later. And so ended a grand day out, in the best of company and with some of us achieving 3 new Wainwrights and Terry and Abbey 4.

I would like to thank everybody who came on the walk for making it such a great day and we are all looking forward to meeting you all again.

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