Place Fell

It’s been a while! So long in fact, I forgot how to update a blog article so it has taken me a few days to remind myself. With lockdown and everything going on the past couple of years, we have not had much opportunity to get out, so it was great to be back on the fells. Place Fell was a top we did almost 15 years ago on a very cold crisp morning. This time we have had a very mild spell so it wasn’t going to be the -6 temperatures we had last time.

Start of the walk

We were parked up and ready to walk by 9 am opposite the Patterdale Hotel. We set off with Dicksons steak pies in hand back along the road, past the school and turned right at the George Starkey hut.

The path took us over the beck and along to Side farm campsite. Here we turned right and began the gentle climb to Place Fell.

The start of the climb took us to the right towards Boredale Hause, moving away from the summit direction, to later bend back towards the summit.

At Boredale Hause we turned left and we were now heading directly for the summit. It was a very steady climb today and about an hour later the summit was just ahead.

Place Fell summit

Just after 10.30 we reached the summit. A well built cairn sitting on top of the rocks. We were in cloud now and the wind had picked up so it was the coldest part of the walk, up to now it had been quite warm for November.

We saw another couple of walkers at the top and then dropped over the other side to get out of the wind and time for a cuppa. We dropped a little and then walked away from the path only about 5 yards to the right but that took us out of the wind. The way we were going to go down was walking away from the car, back down to the lakeside further round the lake and then walk back to the car.

The Descent

Once we started again we were heading for the next valley down in the picture above, right in the centre towards the lake. Just like the ascent, the descent was fairly gentle and in no time we were at the sheepfold, a little shelter created by Dalemain Estates, West Martindale Commoners and Natural England to give us walkers some shelter from the cold, wet weather out on the Fells.

We kept walking down towards the lake and about 10 minutes after Low Moss sheepfold we came across this old quarry building.

Next to the building was a very strange water feature where the water was tumbling down the rock but we couldn’t see the source of the water above and we couldn’t see where it was going below, it just disappeared underground.

Another 20 minutes or so and we were almost back down to lake level.

The last 50 yards or so was the steepest and slippiest part of the descent but we were back at the lake by 12.30. Just over 5 miles covered so far but almost another 4 miles to walk back to the car around the lake.

It was a very warm, bright day at lake level so we had a good walk around Ullswater with the opportunity for more photos along the way.

So we were now back at Side Farm and only a half mile walk along the path back to the car. We were back at the car just after 2.30. One of the lowest tops on our walks today but a long walk none the less. A very different perspective today than 15 years ago from a weather point of view.

See you on the next one.