Pete's long weekend (Charlotte and the girls away!).
Friday 14th: Mountain biking in the Peaks. Found this 50km route on the web to put my bike through its paces.
Saturday 15th: Drove up to Keswick in my hire car for some peak-bagging on the North of Skiddaw group.
The forecast was for low cloud and rain, so I concentrated on ticking off as
many "Wainwrights" as I could in a day.
The whole morning was spent in a cold wet cloud, so when it eventually
cleared I was so surprised I somehow missed out one of the peaks on my route (Longlands
Fell).
By the time I realised my mistake it would have added an hour to my walk - I'd
have to go back to it another day.
View from Great Calva.
This heather-covered slope was fun to run down.
Sunday 16th: Borrowdale fell race route. 17 miles, 6,500ft of
ascent. To be eligible for the race you have to have done more
fell-running than I have,
but I know the area well enough to be confident of finding the way - it would be
interesting to see how my time compared with the race times.
Navigation was tricky early on with a low cloud base. My progress wasn't helped by unnecessarily adding Rosthwaite Fell summit to the route - well, I've not done that one before! I did draw the line at making the larger detour to Seathwaite Fell later though, as it was more important to me at that stage to complete the course.
On top of Scafell Pike. Cold and wet again!
At long last, a view! Looking down on Buttermere.
Haystacks.
I took the wrong route off Brandreth, but by then I was way behind the slowest runners in the official race - I would have been 'timed out' at the Honister checkpoint. Too many food stops! As there was plenty of daylight left and I still felt reasonably energetic, and as there were no race stewards to stop me, I decided to finish the course anyway. I was back in Rosthwaite in a time of 7h30.
Monday 17th: A couple of sprints up 2 more minor peaks then home. First Longlands Fell (the one I missed on Saturday).
Then Binsey.
