Up The Secret Valley

It's been a pretty tiring Christmas. A house full of family for 5 nights and a couple of marathon journeys. Breeze (and Molly who was staying over Christmas too) had to make do with village walks, mainly without me. I feel like I haven't been outside for ages. Today is the first day we get a chance to get out,and even then only for a couple of hours.

We pick our route to make the best of the winter sunshine. Starting out up our secret valley. We could see people walking all around us on all the known routes, but we didn't actually pass a soul until we were about 2/3 of the way through our walk. Bliss.

above the snow line

Blencathra

Walking back down through Bannerdale

What a beautiful day

Only about 4 miles in all,but it was so good to be out, particularly in such wonderful conditions

Little Mell with Molly

For various reasons we haven't been on the fells this week, and since Thursday we have had a fair covering of snow at home (best part of 2" at it's worst). We're not into crampons and ice axes, so we avoid proper winter conditions, but that gives us the perfect excuse to do a small walk - and one to suit little Molls. So Jay and I wrapped up warm, left husband at home with BT sport and did a quick up and down Little Mell.

Parking at The Hause it's straight up the fell. That's our car parked by the road on the right of the trees. Ullswater is just in view on the left, hidden by Little Meldrum. We were over that side of the road last week

Mell Fell Summit. A Snow topped Blencathra is off to the right 

Zooming in on Blencathra as Breeze zooms past

Heading back down

Gowbarrow

They got the forecast wrong today! It was supposed to be blowing a hooley and fairly cloudy. Sometimes wrong is good! A last minute rethink brought us to Parkbrow for a local walk that wasn't going to take us two high given the windy forecast.

From the carpark we crossed a couple of fields and then headed uphill, by the side of the wood seen here below us as we pause for breath. Already it is a stunning morning, with hardly a breath of wind.

Before long the summit of Gowbarrow is in view. Beautiful but cold as you can tell by the condensation on the lense!

From Gowbarrow we head over to Great Meldrum, the small lump ahead. The slightly bigger lump to the left is Little Mell Fell.

The Dodds on the left and Blencathra at the back. Perfect fell walking weather.

Swinburn's Park and a lovely sunny lunch spot. 

Ullswater will dominate our view for most of the second half of the walk, this is looking park as we walk through the lovely Swinburn's Park

Barton Fell, Martindale and Boredale on t'other side

The Memorial Seat

A Steamer heads up the lake

The last stretch of our walk is through the lovely Aira Force falls. Having seen hardly anyone all day, predictably there were a few more folk around here, but not many so it was still a nice way to finish the walk.

Just shy of 8.5 miles and the most perfect walking weather. The forecast winds never materialised and whilst it stayed cold all day, it was just wonderful. It doesn't get much better than this!