“A family fell where grandmothers and infants can climb the heights together, a place beloved.” This is how Alfred Wainwright described Cat Bells, near Keswick and we couldn’t wait to get exploring this little fell.
Wainwright Walk 6 – Cat Bells
“A family fell where grandmothers and infants can climb the heights together, a place beloved.” This is how Alfred Wainwright described Cat Bells, near Keswick and we couldn’t wait to get exploring this little fell.
At the start of this year, my friend Flick was over from Ibiza. We decided to catch up whilst walking in the Lakes, because going from a pleasantly warm 12 – 15 degrees to single digits in Manchester wasn’t enough of a temperature change – close to freezing on the fells was what was required.
During the last months of 2017, I made plans to get up to the Lakes for a solo walk. I’m pretty cautious regarding the weather when I go on my own, and it seemed that every time I made plans to go, near gale force winds were forecast and I would end up cancelling at the last minute. After the third time of postponing it occurred to me that I didn’t actually know what it felt like to walk in 30 – 40 miles per hour winds. After a chat with Rick, I decided I would head up anyway. If it was too windy for me to feel safe, I would turn back and take myself for a nice low level wander somewhere.
At the end of August, I was really excited to be out in the Lakes with my lovely friend Kathryn again. Back before our children arrived, we had volunteered with Fix the Fells together, regularly making the journey up the M6 to spend the day with brilliant, passionate people repairing or maintaining the upland paths. (You can find out more about the great work they do here.) This time, our destination was Kentmere, to try and tackle the “more challenging than we had walked in ages” Kentmere Round.