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An account of the trail in
northern England, starting in St. Bees on the Irish Sea and ending
in Robin Hood's Bay on the North Sea.
Click on any of the photos
to see an enlargement and cutline. |
Day
Five - 16 miles, 2700 feet ascent
Patterdale to Shap
The path
over Kidsty Pike from Patterdale to Shap can be one of the
loveliest of the trip. It can also be one of the most confusing
and unrewarding if the weather doesn't cooperate and the mountains
are shrouded in mist. For me, it was both. I'd been warned not
to miss the cutoff toward Kidsty Pike after The Knott. Nonetheless,
when I got there the visibility was only a few feet and I continued
past the small cairn, eventually walking all the way to the end
of High Street.
This mistake added several miles to
an already long day. But it wasn't all bad: As I walked back
along High Street to find the proper trail, the mist lifted and
I was rewarded with wonderful views looking back toward Patterdale
and Hayeswater Lake. The views were just as good on the ascent
of Kidsty, with the headwater of Haweswater Reservoir and Riggendale
Beck far below and the High Street ridge above it.
This was followed by a walk the length
of Haweswater and then a seemingly endless series of small hills
through farmland before arriving at Shap Abbey and, finally,
Shap itself.
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