Somehow, in a little over 24 hours, I’d broken Cath. We’d done no strenuous walking, beer intake had been modest, we hadn’t even carried heavy packs. All I could ascribe her ailment to was some sort of allergic reaction to paintbrushes (it certainly wasn’t the cookies as in a huge act of self-sacrifice, I pigged most of them). Rather far-fetchedly she claimed her bad back had something to do with the hostel beds. At least she didn’t claim it was down to the dehydrated food – indeed she went out of her way to say that appeared blameless.
Whatever the cause, Cath was now hors de combat and lurked around in Ambleside, while Dave and Simon joined me for a Sunday stroll over to Sallows and Sour Howes. Not for us the easy method of parking in Troutbeck – no we decided to walk over into the next valley. We took the route through Skelgill Wood and across the southern extremity of Wansfell. It was a bit grey but without an immediate threat of rain.
A rest stop in Troutbeck for coffee and cake and then we crossed the valley floor and began on the walk up the track to the Garburn Pass.
We reached a stile and took the short cut straight up the fellside to the top of Sour Howes. Now the views were opening up.
The summit came soon, and Dave set about the production of the latest installment of “Extreme Cooking”. As is the tradition, this was streamed live on Facebook.
Lunch scoffed, we followed the wall around to the base of Sallows and then climbed up for our second summit of the day.
Snow-capped fells lay to the west, and we watched a band of rain showers pass up the other side of Windermere. Our luck didn’t hold entirely though, and as we started down the Garburn track once more a few spots landed on us. It was soon forgotten though. We retraced our steps across the Troutbeck valley and thence to the hostel, for a well-earned beer.
To be continued…
