Archive for the ‘Walking’ tag
Scafell – Borrowdale route
Scafell Pike is the highest mountain in England at 974 metres. By world standards not that high but a sizeable days walk nonetheless and one well worth doing as in clear weather the views are extensive across the north west of England and even north Wales.
I’d been up Scafell once before via the shortest (and supposedly least scenic) Wasdale Head route so this time Liz and I fancied the Borrowdale via Sty Head route starting at Seathwaite farm. As you can see from the photos we had amazingly good weather and all of my additional layers stayed firmly in the ruck sack.
We also decided to use the famous Wainwright book for route finding which we found fun and certainly adequate (we backed it up with the OS Explorer 6 map).
I’d recommend the Borrowdale route – it was varied in terms of view and type of walking. Wainwright does give an alternative route from the summit via Broad Crag Col which we followed on our descent. However, though this is a shorter distance we found the scree very loose and found progress descending it slow and difficult so we’d probably have preferred to descend the way we we came up – via Lingmell col. If you are looking for a different route for the whole way back (and a slightly tougher challenge) try the following circular route and let me know how you get on!
West Highland Way
In early September, I travelled to Scotland to walk the West Highland Way with my good friend Michael and I moblogged it! Go here to see all my posts from my mobile on the trip (up to 4 a day). It wasn’t our first walking adventure together – check out the last time we went on a long distance walk along the coast of Cornwall.
As for the West Highland Way, the official route is 95 miles – we added on 10 miles from Glasgow to the start at Milngavie, an ascent of Ben Loman and an ascent of Ben Nevis. Our longest day was a 20 mile walk. Including travel to and from London the whole trip took 12 days.
Note: My blog posts are mostly interesting anecdotes and pictures from the trip. If you want actual information about walking the West Highland Way, try the official site.
