Lake District Holiday Part Three: Two Walks Among the Heather. . .

Our fourth and fifth day of walking brought two of the hottest days. Lots of sun beating straight down so a lot of these photos are unfortunately very hazy.

Day Four:

We all wanted to do a walk that started from Keswick so we began by a visit to the famous Castlerigg Stone Circle which always impresses, but perhaps moreso in a different type of light. 

The sheep had the right idea.

 

We then decided to climb two smaller Wainwrights - Walla Crag and Bleaberry Fell. The Liverpud had done these before, but they were new to me. You can see the heat haze over Keswick as we were walking up.

The big surprise waiting for us on this walk was all the heather in bloom (sadly not looking its finest in these photos due to the intense sun).  We've always avoided the busy Lakes in August so I've never really associated the area with heather, but of course there's lots of moorland between the fells and this walk had it in abundance.

This is the famous view from the stony crop on top of Walla Crag, looking out over Derwent Water.

And you can see the trail leading off to the left towards  Bleaberry Fell.

And the view from the top of Bleaberry.  At this point, I'd had enough of the heat and so turned round the same way we'd come, and headed back to our accommodation while the boys went on to another fell.

Day Five:

We decided to drive about forty minutes to Crummock Water and start our walk from there. This is a very pretty part of the Lake District and often quite deserted but not today - if I'd aimed my camera to the left, you'd have seen lots of families on the beach.

This is Melbreak, our Wainwright for today.  We scaled it via a path on the right hand side. Very steep and the path had lots of loose shale on it, posing a bit of a technical climb.

Part way up, you can look back and see Loweswater.  We certainly got glimpses of most of the lakes during this holiday.

Heather was also in bloom alongside the path going up.

About a third from the top you could take a quick peek around the side. Crummock Water is directly below and that's Buttermere in the distance.

And now we're on top of the ridge heading towards the far side where we'll make our descent.

But first, the full view, as we enjoyed a very welcome breeze on the top.

The descent was very easy and gradual and at the bottom is Scale Force.

Then we skirted Melbreak and came back along the Crummock Water path.  You can walk entirely around this lake which I did several years ago (blogged here).  As I did then, we stopped for a break on that little spit of land you can see jutting out.

Here's the view from that spit. You can see how steep Melbreak is on the left. It was good to get the climbing out of the way early; the rest of the walk was a delight with wonderful views. 

 

I have really enjoyed tackling some of the lesser known hills on this holiday - you still get some wonderful surprises and you have them mostly all to yourselves.

But for our final day, we went on a big one and a popular one and it was a fantastic walk.  Back with that one soon.