Green Gable and Great Gable

All this messing about in the lower reaches of the Pennines with the rangering stuff had me pining for the rocky bits, so early this morning, I had the dog saddled up and orf we jolly well went to the Lake district, parking very prettily down the lane at Seathwaite.

We climbed very slowly and laboriously through all those closely drawn contours up by Sour Milk Gill into the beautiful corrie of Gillercombe. This is a very fine place for a camp, I have to say. And the beck is deep enough for a very cold swim.

But no swimming was done. Onwards and upwards through the corrie to bag the outlying top of Base Brown, followed by the green and rocky lump of Green Gable, where we rested not but pushed on through down to Wind Gap and up through the scrambly bit for a lazy lunch on the top of Great Gable, which was Great.

We managed to find a place behind a boulder overlooking Wasdale and with a fine view of Scafell and Scafell Pike and over there, on the far horizon, way out over the Irish Sea, a thin blue line of hills that could only be the North Wales coast.  We got behind the boulder, by the way, because it was perishing cold. It was sunny, but there was a nithering wind creeping down from somewhere just left of Bergen. Brrr…… autumn…….

And so, after a cheese and pickle butty and some ginger cake, coffee and chocolate, none of which was enjoyed or shared with Bruno, by the way, oh yes, and a bit of a snooze…  we descended the long slope down to the stretcher box at Sty Head, where it was a bit warmer, so another snooze was had here. This is a long way down on an uncomfortable pitched path. In fact, its more than 1500 feet, for anybody foolishly considering slugging their way up by this route. The views are good, though.

Bruno had a paddle and a bark… bark.. bark (echo) and retrieved a burnt stick a few times but it was soon time to leave and we descended by the Stockley Bridge route back to the knipemobile which was still there with all it’s tyres still on and the headlights off. This was good news, so we went home.

Great Gable was a busy hill today. I guess there’s a lot of people having their holidays. Good day for this sort of thing, though.

We managed just the seven of your Earth miles and 3180 of your Earth feet of upness. I’ve put more pics in the blog post than normal, cos it was such a nice day.