The Langdale Pikes

Walking the Wainwrights : Route 12

England – Lake District

As we get out of the car across the road from the new hotel, we already put on our jacket. We can feel a few drops of rain but nothing much and we are pleased be on our way to the Lakes again. We soon get to a fork. People ask me what way it is. A quick look at my GPS to tell them I thought it was left. But in fact, after looking at the map and the track we go right. Never mind, their won’t get lost and there are already a long way ahead! We start going up and discover the valley below us. But as we are going up I realize that we are on the track we should have taken on our way down. I decide to go on without telling anybody. After a nice way up we cross the river and go up on our left. Following the ridge through … we stop just bellow the Pike of Stickle to have a scotch egg and a sandwich. It’s quite windy and we are getting a few drops of rain too so we don’t stay for long. We start scrambling up the steep hile to the top. The panorama at the top is super. Even if we now we aren’t on the highest part of our walk, the mountain top is so special that it gives us the impression we accomplished something really special. Anyway, a quick photo or two and off we are. I stop a while to look at our route as I can see everything from here.

The track to go Thunacar Knott is so small I have to walk first with the GPS. We soon get there and we aim for our next step the Pavey Ark. There we discover the carn Stickle Tarn bellow and we can see Harrison Stickle were we are going next. On the way, we can admire the carn on our left. At the top of HS, it’s every windy again but the view is great. We can see all of our walk with the Picke of Sticke sticking out from the end of the plateau. We then go down and I follow a track that crosses the one we took going up. For a 100 m, we follow the same track as in the morning before I start looking out for the other track going down. There it is bellow. We take a really steep way down to join it between a few crags. Going down the rain gets stronger and by the time we can see our car park our trousers are quite soaked. Never mind, we had a great day and that doesn’t stop us having a nice beer in the pub near the car park.