Whinlatter Birkett Baggings

Bruno recently pointed out that I had somehow missed a couple of Birketts in the Whinlatter area – one Graystones – the Birkett top, not the Wainwright top (there’s a difference) and Seat How. I think I remember trying to find Seat How once and failing in deep, deep heather, midgies, blackfly, horseflies, bog and trees…..

So, it was with a determined and jutting chin, that we turned up at Spout Force car park with lots of pretty light s flashing on the knipemobile (due for a service – the one about the brake linings was a bit worrying, what with the speeds on the A66 an all that…). I liked the one which says “Service!” .It  was probably a catering van in a previous life, I expect.

Anyway, the route up to Graystones (Birkett not Wainwright top) is a huge heave from the beck . It took me ages. Bruno was first to the summit cairn… Thigh muscles ached and burned at the same time…

And then we had a nice, if sloppy in parts, wander over Broom Fell and to the top of Lord’s Seat. Everything going well so far, and the ragged undersides of today’s clouds made everything look a bit bigger than it actually is. But nice – everything was nice -note clever use of a dash there – I’m just trying out dashes on recommendation – see the comments on the previous blog post – the one about raising spondoolies by blagging extra stuff from gear companies – but I digress – as I say [I’m getting a bit fed up of dashes, now by the way] – as I say, everything was good till this point.

I seem to remember, one sultry August day some years ago, trying to find Seat How from here. I seem to remember a debacle of insect bites, dripping skin and sweaty pants and failure to identify anything that looked vaguely like it might be Seat How. This time there was a new path heading in roughly the right direction. Bruno was confident. We embarked.

After a while, it seemed that the path had abandoned it’s quest to lead us to Seat How and was now heading in the approximate direction of Glasgow. We abandoned the path for a more basic, muddier one, heading in the rough direction of Penrith – a more Seat-Howish direction, in point of fact.

Suddenly, it started going downhill quite steeply. This was wrong. We contoured on a made path and found a line of muddy footprints heading back uphill. Baggers prints. All a we needed was some bagger spoor as evidence that we were on to something. We reached a kind of top hidden behind a tree. There was a small cairn. The excitement was almost detectable.  This was Seat How. No, really, it was. Honest. I’m having the bloody tick anyway.

We made our way towards the Whinlatter Visitor Centre, only going wrong twice and, ultimately, attracted by the sound of kids playing, dogs barking and traffic…  er……? trafficking (?)
Anyway, we got there eventually and followed National Cycle Route 71 and the main road back to the start.
It was about 9 miles, depending on exactly where we went, which is a bit vague at the moment…