Brock Barrow is only about 750 feet above sea level (228m for all you metric system users) but it has a good view, including of Coniston Water below. Nice cairn too. It becomes my 303rd Wainwright on my second round: 27 to go. Tell you what though, it was damn windy and cold up there, even if it doesn’t look it. I just about got my 202nd Wainwright walk in before a storm arrived at lunchtime.
Having done Craig Airie Fell the day before, today I continued walking and bagged two more County Tops. This cairn marked the second one of the day, Kirriereoch Hill, high point of Ayrshire. Apparently its name translates as ‘Hill of the Brindled Quarter’, which to me is no translation at all. When I came up over the final slope and saw the cairn sitting next to the vast granitic lump of Ailsa Craig out there in the Irish Sea, the photo was immediately assured. A mild shame about the wind turbine poking up to the right but one can’t have everything.
I continue with my attempt to re-cover the whole Lake District, having already done it all once. Hesk Fell is certainly one of the 330 LD peaks that I am now glad I never have to return to a third time; it’s not awful, but as this picture makes evident, it’s just a big grassy moorland, although it does have a decent view. Those are the Scafells in the distance, the highest peaks in England. Someone has made a very great effort to bring those stones up to build the summit cairn, as there certainly aren’t any that occur naturally on the ground for some distance in any direction, so let’s pay homage to their effort with today’s picture (others can be found on my walking blog, if you are interested…).
In need of distraction from the various (minor) personal and (major) political and institutional cock-ups afflicting my life at the moment — so I did what I usually do in these circumstances, took a book to read on the way and got myself up a mountain. On the top of Dollywaggon Pike (2815 feet, or 858m, above sea level), this tableau awaited…. is the stone on top of the bear a kindness, to keep it there until its owner returns? Looks more like a sacrificial altar to me. Still, there are worse places to be exposed to the elements.
Being 42 