Ill Bell

The second walk of the year and hopefully we will have completed the 63rd top out of 71 by the end of the day.  Peter picked me up at 6.00 am and it was already a sunny morning as we set off for Kentmere, a little village near Windermere.  There are not many parking spaces in Kentmere, just a handful at the Village Hall and most of them were taken, even at 7.45 am.  We got one of the last spaces alongside the Hall, put our boots on and started walking at 8.00 am with scotch eggs in hand.

The first part of the walk was on a road as we walked out of the village to the Nook where we turned right to head up the Garburn Pass.

The road was now unmade and quite rocky as we began to gently climb up Garburn Pass for about a mile and a half.

It wasn’t 9 o’clock but it was already very warm and sunny.  We stopped a couple of times for drinks  and we had also bumped into 3 or 4 people this early into the walk.  It looked like this was a popular walk because it formed part of the Kentmere Horseshoe.

There was a clear path all the way today so even in poor weather it would be a good walk to do.

Yoke was now in view and just ahead of us, we reached the summit just after 10.00 am.  We were now on the ridge and could see our target Ill Bell just ahead.  As we looked down to the right you could see Kentmere Reservoir and got a great view of the Kentmere Horseshoe.

There was a short drop from Yoke and then a gentle climb up to Ill Bell.

We reached the summit just after 10.30.

We sat on the summit for 20 – 25 minutes, had some bait and watched several walkers go by. It was still quite early and with a fairly gentle descent ahead, we had plenty of time.