Mud, wind and rain
Posted by Sam Harrison on February 19, 2011 at 16:05.
haweswater lake district parbold
What a weekend!
Saturday - Parbold Hill Race
I decided on a spur midweek to sign up for Parbold Hill Race on the Saturday, with a group of guys from the Running Club at uni. I'm very glad I did as it was a fantastic race. A great course, on a mix of road, track and muddy fields, with the odd stream thrown in there. The organisers have done a brilliant job of picking an exciting and fun route which made sure - especially with the recent rainfall - that we all returned caked in mud. I was very pleased with my result, 47th out of around 450 and in a time of 50 minutes. Next month I'm in the Edale Skyline Fell Race so this acted as a bit of a warm up (albeit a very small warm up) to that.
Sunday - Haweswater
On the Sunday I went up to Haweswater with the Hiking Club, an area I really haven't been to much. The reservoir sits in the valley of Mardale and its controversial construction saw the flooding of the two farming villages of Measand and Mardale Green. In times of drought when the water levels in the reservoir are at a low, the remains of the village can still be seen.
The original plan was to walk the whole ridge from Harter Fell up to Wether Hill but no one else wanted to come on my walk so I tagged along with a group with the intention of Harter Fell and High Street. We headed up the Gatescarth Pass before branching off over Harter Fell and down to the Nan Bield Pass. However we had a rather slow member in the group and the progress was so slow and the weather so terrible that no one apart from myself and the two other leaders on the walk wanted to carry on, so we decided to head back down.
The clouds started to clear a bit on the way down and I managed to get a few photographs of the very swollen Mardale Beck.
It really was very foul weather, even my GoreTex jacket didn't withstand the downpour and in fact my boots are still drying out, nearly a week later (and that's after being stuffed with newspaper). I think a good Nikwax-ing session is in order.
We stopped off at Bampton in the lovely but quite eccentric Mardale Inn - you'll understand the "quite eccentric" part if you ever frequent the gent's toilets in there! Next week (or, as I write this, tomorrow) we're off to Grasmere and at the moment I'm rather tempted by the snow sitting on the top of Helvellyn, but we'll see.
Saturday - Parbold Hill Race
I decided on a spur midweek to sign up for Parbold Hill Race on the Saturday, with a group of guys from the Running Club at uni. I'm very glad I did as it was a fantastic race. A great course, on a mix of road, track and muddy fields, with the odd stream thrown in there. The organisers have done a brilliant job of picking an exciting and fun route which made sure - especially with the recent rainfall - that we all returned caked in mud. I was very pleased with my result, 47th out of around 450 and in a time of 50 minutes. Next month I'm in the Edale Skyline Fell Race so this acted as a bit of a warm up (albeit a very small warm up) to that.
Sunday - Haweswater
On the Sunday I went up to Haweswater with the Hiking Club, an area I really haven't been to much. The reservoir sits in the valley of Mardale and its controversial construction saw the flooding of the two farming villages of Measand and Mardale Green. In times of drought when the water levels in the reservoir are at a low, the remains of the village can still be seen.
The original plan was to walk the whole ridge from Harter Fell up to Wether Hill but no one else wanted to come on my walk so I tagged along with a group with the intention of Harter Fell and High Street. We headed up the Gatescarth Pass before branching off over Harter Fell and down to the Nan Bield Pass. However we had a rather slow member in the group and the progress was so slow and the weather so terrible that no one apart from myself and the two other leaders on the walk wanted to carry on, so we decided to head back down.
The clouds started to clear a bit on the way down and I managed to get a few photographs of the very swollen Mardale Beck.
It really was very foul weather, even my GoreTex jacket didn't withstand the downpour and in fact my boots are still drying out, nearly a week later (and that's after being stuffed with newspaper). I think a good Nikwax-ing session is in order.
We stopped off at Bampton in the lovely but quite eccentric Mardale Inn - you'll understand the "quite eccentric" part if you ever frequent the gent's toilets in there! Next week (or, as I write this, tomorrow) we're off to Grasmere and at the moment I'm rather tempted by the snow sitting on the top of Helvellyn, but we'll see.