Green Gable, Base Brown & Brandreth

Wed 26 Aug 2020
Richard and my first trip away this year I think – certainly the first since the Covid crisis started anyway. We didn’t go far – just to one of our favourite hotels down Borrowdale.

It might seem silly for me to go to stay down Borrowdale now I’m a ‘northern Cumbrian’ but it actually makes sense really. For a start, the hoteliers are friends of ours and also it meant we could just leave the car at the hotel for the whole visit and just do walks from there. With the current parking and visitor chaos in the Lake District, that was a very good thing!

Photos: a mix of my Zenith film camera and Richard’s Olympus digi-point-and-shoot.

We did take the bus a couple of miles down the valley to Seatoller each day – fairly safe now public transport is a masked zone – except for the people who couldn’t be bothered to wear their masks but just kept them under their chins – we opened the windows to combat their germs!

We went up Seathwaite Slabs by the side of Sour Milk Ghyll to start – they were wet and I have to say Richard didn’t cope well with them at all, seeming to panic most of the way up. There was lots of water in Sour Milk Ghyll and the waterfalls were fairly photogenic – Richard’s digi-photos first…

And my film photos…

We then proceeded up the hanging valley of Gillercombe (admiring the climbing buttress on our right as we passed). At the head of the valley, a very easy zig-zag gains height easily to the Base Brown/Green Gable col – we were soon up it. We’d been debating whether to go for Base Brown and, on reaching the col, saw it would be a very easy (but very wet) add-on. We decided to go for it. We were soon back and heading up to Green Gable.

As we reached the summit of Green Gable the cloud socked in and it started to rain. We’d originally been considering Great Gable but Richard wasn’t feeling either fit or supple and I couldn’t be bothered with the long clamber up wet boulders all the way so we decided to give it a miss and go for Brandreth instead.

As we reached the Brandreth col, Brandreth started to clear. We noticed that Great End behind us had also started to clear…

There are some nice little tarns on the Brandreth col…

Brandreth was a very quick add-on and I wanted to go onto Grey Knotts – however, it was very much in cloud and Richard wasn’t keen so I decided to take us straight down the side of the hill to Moses Trod – the old smugglers path which goes from Honister Pass to Beck Head, passing under the Gables.

Just as we reached Moses Trod, the lakes of the Buttermere Valley suddenly appeared (Richard’s digi-photos)…

Then the High Stile range also appeared with interesting lighting picking out the individual fell fronts

Richard’s digi-photo of High Crag in front of High Stile

My film photo of Haystacks in front of the High Stile Range

Pillar starting to show (my film photo)

Still plenty of black cloud overhead (Richard’s digi)

Then the sun started to come out as well lighting up the route to Honister and Dale Head ahead (my film photo)

Some of the cute little peaks on the route to Haystacks were picked out by the sun – Richard’s two digi-photos first…

then my film ones…

We then squelched our way on down the track to meet ‘The Drumhouse’ – the old built-up quarry railway trackbed which is now used as the path down to Honister Pass. Moses Trod was more or less a river most of the way and we were meeting a surprising amount of people still coming up the hill…

Soon, we had the steep descent down the end of The Drumhouse to the pass – we’d considered having a break on the pass but it was too busy with people so we continued straight on down for the Allerdale Ramble back to Rosthwaite for our tea, scones and rum butter – a daily event at this hotel and very good!

Honister Pass from final steepening of ‘The Drumhouse’ track

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