Day 3 - Rosthwaite to Grasmere - 9 miles

Jen has wisely decided to rest her knee and will travel to Grasmere with the Packhorse van. I head out on foot after Jen shows me how to use the GPS. I  leave by the main road but end up looping back to Nook Farm somehow…yikes, so much for my navigational skills. I finally get on the right road out of the village and soon turn off on to the road to Stonethwaite where I cross over the River Derwent  and head alongside it, talking to the sheep as I walk.

Gorgeous Herdwick Sheep - I want some

River Derwent

Gate along the path

First of many streams I have to ford

Now the path starts to go up, a slow steady descent. Beside me is the river with beautiful waterfalls and I see  a number of walkers in front and behind me.

Looking back to Borrowdale. 

Poor Gordon

The scenery is so beautiful that I don't have time to think much about the walk ahead. I just drink it all in, take my time and rest when I need to.

Eagle Crag lost in the clouds

So far, so good

The terrain is getting steeper and steeper and it's hard work.

On the way up

Eventually I come out on to a bowl of land full of little drumlins. 

Drumlins

 I decide to take a breather here as I can see my next climb, Lining Crag, off to my left looking pretty straight up from here. OMG!!!

Lining Crag

As I contemplate the climb a number of other walkers appear and I chat to a group of scout leaders who are following their Venture Scouts up to the top. I also meet two other Coast to Coast walkers, a father and son who are carrying everything, including tents, on their backs. I follow them slowly up the path and lose them in the clouds. Now I'm on my own. I follow the book and GPS along the line of cairns and decide to stop for lunch and so do a swarm of gnats. I meet a man from near my home town who is looking for a bunch of students doing their Duke of Edinburgh award programme. He has the most beautiful sheep dog called Buster.  It's busy up here, and next I meet two more Coast to Coasters, Jill and Nick from Oxfordshire. Time for me to move on.  I've decided to go up even higher on the fells and walk along the tops from Calf Crag to Helm Crag. That's the theory anyway. I have a bit of a fall and though I'm okay I've buggered the GPS and can't find the route again.

On top of the world


I make it to the top of what I think is Helm Crag and look down on what I think is Grasmere. I see two people appear over the lip of the fell and scramble down to speak to them. Yes, they've come from Grasmere but no this is not Helm Crag, it's called Sergeant Mann. I've overshot my way down by quite a bit but they show me the route on the map. She tells me with typical British understatement that it's a bit of a scramble down. He says it shouldn't be a problem and it isn't in the sense that I did get down but it wasn't easy that's for sure and I was on my bum a lot of the time.

Part of the climb down - it took me 2 hours to make it from the top into Grasmere

I was very,very happy to see Jenipher, I can tell you that. Now what has she been up to...