I woke to another picture-perfect walking day - ideal weather for scrambling up to one of the smaller peaks in the Lake District on the Castle Crag and Jaws of Borrowdale circuit.
A. Wainwright (Alfred, but A. or A.W. as he preferred), author and illustrator of The Pictorial Guides to the Lakeland Fells, had this to say in Volume 6 about Castle Crag:
If a visitor to Lakeland has only two or three hours to spare, poor fellow, yet desperately wants to reach a summit and take back an enduring memory of the beauty and atmosphere of the district… let him climb Castle Crag.
While Castle Crag is not the highest peak in the district (far from it), the views from its summit are breathtaking and given the steep fall on all sides, Castle Crag provides vistas of other crags and fells (not that I could identify any of them), as well as the Jaws of Borrowdale and Derwent Water.
It was a little precarious. I was relieved to have my walking pole with me as the scree underfoot wanted to obey the law of gravity where I was trying to defy it, and I had to check me footing more than a couple of times.
Back at sea level (or closer to it), I veered off the path at the halfway mark to have lunch at Grange - a wee whitewashed town (very pretty). The hard yakka out of the way, the stroll back to my car in Seatoller via Rosthwaite was gentle - I was accompanied by the River Derwent much of the way and, of course, sheep.
Before heading back to the B&B, I drove to Keswick to see the Castlerigg Stone Circle - it doesn’t compare to Stonehenge but it is just as mysterious. It is thought to have been constructed around 4,500 years ago by a prehistoric farming community and its location would suggest the site was carefully chosen.
More pics in the gallery!