I had two incentives for this walk; it's rutting season and the sound of roaring stags in Bannerdale and Martindale is amazing and it's several months since the dam was removed at Hayeswater and we fancied having a look at the renaturalisation that is happening there. So we parked at Hartsop and followed the intake wall back towards Ullswater. A walking party had set off just ahead of us, 21 folk from Cockermouth, who had caused havoc in the car park (out of about 15 cars only one driver seemed to have any common sense). To our dismay we soon discovered they were heading the same way as us!
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| Looking back to Brothers water |
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| Calf close below Lingy crag, just ahead of us are the walking party......................... |
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| Leaving the intake wall we begin to climb to Boredale Hause, but now we have managed to overtake the entire party thankfully. |
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| Jay is with us today, although we did nearly lose her among the crowd as we negotiated our way through them all! |
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| Wait for me! |
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| Ullswater |
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| Brothers water again. Anyone viewing my pictures probably thinks that Breeze trots along in front of us all day. WRONG!! Breeze charges about like a complete lunatic all day, I just take pictures as she runs past me as I like to have her on as many as possible to add a bit of scale. In truth, this is more like the real thing, although even this is pretty close for Breeze! There is no doubt that she easily covers 10 times the ground that we do. |
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| From Boredale Hause we turn right and head over Angle Tarn Pikes and then down to Angle Tarn, seen here ahead |
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| Star Jelly, it was everywhere around Angle Tarn. |
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| Lunchtime! |
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| As we left Angle Tarn and made our way along Satura Crag, the Stags were roaring away down below us. Such an evocative sound. |
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| It's a popular spot up here. The group from Cockermouth had stopped at Angle Tarn just as we were setting off again after our lunch, there was another big party ahead and I lost count of the number of people we passed en route. We also collected our biggest haul of litter for quite some time. We always pick up anything we find, but we were running out of pooh bags and pockets on the rucksack to stuff it all in today. |
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| The clouds were fairly low at this point, but the sun was peeping out from time to time, here it is lighting up Deepdale |
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| Hayeswater comes into view |
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| Looks like Dr Who is visiting |
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| OK, so this isn't what we expected. The idea is to let Hayeswater re naturalise to it's original state, so what on earth is going on here? A new road and an awful lot of groundwork going on |
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| Here's the explanation. A hydroelectric plant. I can accept that. If only this sort of thing had started decades ago, perhaps we wouldn't have all those hideous and ineffective wind farms everywhere. |
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| Timw to wash the dog - notice she has two boots on again. Her feet are fine, but having had a number of injuries recently, we are being ultra cautious to try and get them hardened off without damaging them. So first half barefoot and fancy free, after lunch booted and fancy free! |
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| Heading down Hayeswater Gill |
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| Posing |
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| Showing how to negotiate a wall stile |
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| The old and the new - new plant and container on the left (for the Hydro works) and the remains of an old Lead mine in the centre. |
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One last view before we reach the car, I had to take this and I had to put it on here.......................... that's Pasture Bottom :-)
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Another lovely walk with pretty amazing autumn weather. We are having such a dry autumn it's hard to believe. We walked about 6.75 miles and it's a really easy walk to. No wonder it's so busy!
