http://www.shareyouradventure.com/map/50500/dribelad/6th-July-2014This was my first walk of a two week holiday in the lake district, I arrived on the Saturday and set up camp at Keswick Camping & Caravan club based on the shore of derwent water a cracking location. I decided to walk to Skiddaw from the campsite as I had done this on a previous visit so knew it was achievable, so after a nice lie in (1 of several on this break) I got all my gear together and set my viewranger to record to enable my progress to be tracked on @SocialHiking (this was the first time I would be using @SocialHiking in the hills) and of I set it wasn’t long before the street sections were out of the way and I could get off road.

It was quite a warm day and I got a bit of a dab on on the climb out of Keswick, I had decided on a different route to the one I had previously done to keep things interesting and take in an extra peak (Sale How). As I was making my way around towards Sale How I could see that there might be some inclement weather on the way.

During the walk towards Sale How I noticed a lone walker gradually catching me up so I decided to wait at the next stile a take a few pics and allow him to catch me up, when the lone walker arrived he was disappointed that I had stopped because he was using me as a pace setter. So I let him carry on for a bit before setting off again, the route up Sale How was a bit of a slog with the summit never seaming to get any closer, however I eventually got there and I could see my route went down and up again to intersect the path towards Skiddaw summit. Once on the Skiddaw path I was back in familiar territory and made quite good progress towards the summit.

At the summit I noticed a couple of guys in fluorescent jackets but didn’t think much of it however on the way back from the summit I was passed by fell runners heading for the summit (they were going at quite a pace).

From this point I headed up towards Skiddaw little man and a well earned lunch break with cracking views towards Derwent water.

I took a pic of the view and posted it on twitter (it received a few positive remarks). Whilst I was sat having lunch I noticed there was a bit of a chill in the wind so I decided to try out a new gadget I had bought which was a kestrel weather station.

Any way lunch break over I carried on towards Skiddaw lesser man on whose summit I spotted this cap which I initially thought was left as a memorial*.

* a few days later I looked up the motto on the interweb and contacted the charity asking them if they had lost a hat, they were most appreciative of the pic and apparently the hat had blown of someone’s head.
After taking a few more pics I started my way down the main Skiddaw path were I was caught up by the two guys in fluorescent jackets who were at the summit, during the walk down (which I had to pick up my pace) I had a good chat with them and it transpires that it was the Skiddaw fell race and that they were ex fell runners themselves and it was very interesting listening to them.
After leaving the two marshals at the car park I suddenly felt rejuvenated and decided to add Latrigg to my route back to the campsite, this was a relatively easy summit to attain however on the way down my route took me into some of the darkest woods I have seen ( the pic doesn’t do it justice).

I eventually made it out of the woods in one piece (no big bad wolves or teddy bears having picnics) and made my way back to the campsite for a well earned beer(or two).🍺http://www.shareyouradventure.com/map/50500/dribelad/6th-July-2014