Set off at 8am. An hour into our journey we're teased by mist (which would make our plans impossible). Thankfully it had cleared when we eventually arrived at the starting point of our walk, see below. Somehow this was around 1pm. We had been held up by traffic, stopped for coffee in Keswick, and suffered a short episode of mudslide while trying to pick somewhere to park, but other than that I can't see what took up all the time. The fact this walk was going to take us upwards of 5 hours didn't set alarm bells ringing as it should have done, seeing as we had sod all equipment (read: torches) and it would be dark around 4-5pm (when we'd be, conveniently, at the top of the mountain). It would infact take us a hell of a lot longer than what we anticipated...taking our time, enjoying the scenery...not knowing what was to come.
The beginning....I took this standing on a little wooden bridge and thought to myself...
I wouldn't mind living in that white house. The enchanted staircase up through woodland. (my favourite part - there's more pictures but this one will do)
A little later...our first hint of the views to come as we climb higher.
Looking back...
Forgotten the name of it but this is the tairn near the top. The way up from here (to the right of this photo) was incredibly hard...the soil became red sand and it was almost impossible to keep your footing. There was these huge spiders everywhere too, with gold bits on their bodies.
Fast Forward...view from the top. We would, over the course of our walk, pass over four peaks.
We made our way over here, and it seemed as if daylight decided to duck behind one of the mountains when we weren't looking (despite my 100+ photos!), and we were faced with a descent in the dark, where we'd be stepping blind but for the moon (which we would find, wasn't exactly lighthouse that night). Not only that but we were uncertain as to which way to go, and passed over this camel back in the next photo:
This is the last photo I took, when we were still wandering around the mountain tops at a loss for a way down. In the process of the three of us trying three different directions, we managed to lose eachother for half an hour when we soon found we could hardly see a step infront of us. The only light we then had was a clouded moon playing peek a boo. Finally deciding on a path (what we at least hoped was a path), we set off, slipping, sliding and tripping with every step we took. But the dark wasn't the only thing against us, we were exhausted, muscle-splittingly so...and then we reached a point when we realised this wasn't even a real way down and didn't know what the strawberry float to do next...and that's when we saw a black shape charging for us. I laughed, I actually laughed. Turned out to be a dog of course, it's owners approaching with torches on their heads, who would for the next hour escort us kindly (and unkindly) down the mountain. Touch down on the ground, (we'd somehow ended up at the farm where you start your ascent for Haystacks)...but our troubles weren't over...we were miles along the road from where the car was parked and had to walk like penguins thinking we were going to get hit by approaching cars the whole way. We got home around 11:30, calling at a Kfc on the way.