Walk 84 round the foot of Ullswater

Bonscale Tower and its view of the foot of Ullswater.

In my opinion Ullswater is the most beautiful of the District’s lakes, and on walk 84 I spent a few hours in its vicinity, taking the boat to Howtown and then walking back to Pooley Bridge at the lake’s outflow.

This walk took me to two of the remaining Outlying Fells, Heughscar Hill and Dunmallet, but also to three of the summits in Wainwright’s volume 2, namely Bonscale Pike, Loadpot Hill and Arthur’s Pike. I am now keeping a proper tab on all those summits I have reached twice, because I might as well start thinking about a second round of the full 330. So on those fell pages you can now see proper records of when each fell has been done more than once. So far there have been 8 of this second round of 330.

View from the Ullswater boat. Catstycam is unmistakeable in the background.

However, the first round is still going on — and will be for at least another 18 months I reckon, as despite all my efforts over the last 13 months I’m still not yet halfway through volume 8. As of today I have bagged 262 of the 330 Wainwrights, thus have 68 to go. My next walk will be on 19th July, pretty much rain or shine, as that will be the exact 5th anniversary of my first walk. And no, I still haven’t used a car.

An international walk — Preikestolen, Norway

Preikestolen, with the Lysefjord behind.\

I’ve been working in Norway this week but before heading home had booked today (Thursday 19th June) in as a day off months ago, specifically to do the walk to Preikestolen, ‘The Pulpit Rock”. This granite platform rises nearly 2,000 feet directly above the Lysefjord below, and has been named one of the World’s Top 10 Views by the Lonely Planet guide. Although the walk was crowded with people, it was certainly worth doing, as I hope this photo shows. I have therefore added Preikestolen to the list of “international walks” which I’ve been maintaining as a kind of sideline to the main Lake District project pages — so do have a look at the new page if you’re interested.

Next LD walk before about 2nd July, I hope….

On arrival at the top of the rock things were shrouded in mist for a few minutes — adding a mystique to the other qualities