Walk Description

As it it had been my birthday earlier in the week, we had arranged to meet up with Les and Kev on the Friday for a long weekend at Caldbeck as a birthday treat.  This is the last of three walks in the Back 'o' Skidda area. 


We hadn't planned to do a long walk today as I wasn't sure how I would be feeling after the long walk yesterday.  However as I didn't feel too tired we decided to walk to High Pike.  We left the car on the small car park near Calebreck and followed the old mine path over West Fell towards High Pike.  We stopped for a while at Driggith Mine and looked at the different types of rocks in some of the mine spoil.  Whilst we were there we wondered why the sheep were running down the fellside.  The answer quickly appeared ... two quad bikes and a number of sheep dogs were rounding up the sheep from the open fell and driving them down into the valley.  It wasn't long before we reached the summit of High Pike.  High Pike's summit has a trig point with an interesting troposcope, it was design to celebrate the millennium and has a curlew in its centre.  The old wrought iron seat is long gone.  It was replaced in 1960 by slate seat.

As it was a glorious day, it seemed a shame to end the weekend so soon and therefore we decided to carry on walking along the ridge to Carrock Fell.  We enjoyed looking at the Caldbeck Fells through new eyes and recognising where we had walked during the previous two days.  As we walked over Miton Hill towards Carrock Fell a group of parascenders appeared, their brights colours brought an added interest to today's views. At one point I think we counted over 20 parascenders in the sky.  It wasn't long before we reached Carrock Fell, there were no strange buzzing sounds today.  The summit wasn't quiet though, as we walked around to the entrance to the sheltered, we were greated by a couple of excited cairn terriers and some of their friends.  There was just enough room left in the shelter for me to squeeze in and eat my lunch.

After studying the map we decided not to descend via the north slope down to Carrock Beck, which we did on our previous visit, but to go to the east peak and then find the gully that leads down to Rake Trod.  Route finding was easy but the path was very steep in places.  I felt a lot happier when I reached Rake Trod, even though we still seemed to be a long way above the valley floor.  Once we reached the valley floor we still had about a mile of road walking to do before we got back to the car.

We were still very reluctant to leave Cumbria on such a lovely day and so we decided to drive home via Ullswater.  On the way to the main A66 we stopped near High Row so that we could have a closer view of the fell ponies.  The ponies were very interested in Steve or was it just the apples they were after?  Once all the apples had been eaten we drove over to Ullswater.  There had been an art display on Ullswater the previous weekend and we were lucky enough to see a couple of the large umbrella displays before they wee dismantled.

It was now time to go home.  It had been a thoroughly good weekend of walks.  The weather had been kind to us and the accomodation and food had been excellent.  However the weekend just wouldn't have been the same without Steve, Les, Kev and of course Megan.

 

Route & Planning

Details and Route Map

Photo Opportunities

Walk Profile

The route map shown here should not be used as a replacement for the appropriate map(s). Before attempting the walk you should check the suitability of this route in relation to your capabilities and experience.