Ingleborough Two Ways

The First Ascent

The forecast was for a cloudy day, but it was raining as Piglet and I set off for Ingleton in the car 😦

Things soon looked up, though. By the time we reached the top of Ingleborough for the first time it was snowing, and as we crossed the plateau towards our first descent the wind was blowing a bit of a hoolie and the step was shrouded in low-lying cloud!

First descent

As we slipped down towards Nick Pot the sun began to make fleeting appearances, and the rain that I’d been concerned about didn’t return. Phew!

Piglet and I love the Dales. We like to do a hill or two, but we don’t want to walk the same route every time. This one was a variation on the one we walked two weeks ago with pals, but this time, at Clapham Bottoms, we turned right and climbed back up via what felt, by that time in the day, like the implausibly steep snout of Little Ingleborough. Quo tells me we walked a little over 12 miles, but yesterday I was tired and it felt much further.

The route

The info

When we reached the top again it was sunny but freezing, and we stopped for a welcome break at the shelter and shared a flapjack and a flask of coffee as we chatted with three young blokes who were boiling up a brew.

This was my first opportunity to properly try out my new Panasonic Lumix GX7 camera (whoohoo!). I plan to learn to use it properly — f stops and all that — but today we mainly used the IA setting and played with a few of the artistic filtery things.

Monochrome Tree

Sepia Sheep

When I saw the rain as we were about to set off I almost turned round and went back into the house. As we ambled happily along the beautiful little green lane between Long Scar and Trow Gill, though, I was horrified to think that we nearly hadn’t been there. It was an excellent walk on a gorgeous day of enormous contrasts.

Green lane

It’s become a bit of a tradition, now, for Piglet to eat a tub of scrummy wet dog food mixed up with her kribble when we return from a good day out, and as she settled to her rawhide chew in front of the fire I tucked away an enormous pizza.

More piccies here for anybody who would like to look.