Our first day in the Lakes for a long time and the weather was good !! We had a cottage at Field Head, just north of Hawkshead having driven up on a Friday for a change. It was good though as there was slightly less traffic, but more traffic news on the radio. We crossed Lake Windermere using the ferry as usual, but had been stuck in traffic on both the M40 & M6... We also bumped into Dave & Barry at the services on the M40, who were on their way to the RAB.
We had a bit of a late start - we are on holiday afterall and drove quite a way through Ambleside, Grasmere and Keswick and round into the Borrowdale Valley and up and over the Honister Pass. It was a lovely drive too. We got to Gatesgarth Farm, where we were hoping to park, but it wasn't very big and was already full, as we were so late ! We managed to find a space in a layby up the road a little bit (saved us paying £3 parking).
The plan was, as we hadn't done any Lakeland walking for so long, to take it easy (if such a thing is possible in the Lakes) and not go too far or for too much climb on our first day out. So I'd planned, from the Wainwright books to go up Haystacks from Gatesgarth Farm, past the tarns at the top (including Inominate Tarn, where Wainwright's ashes were scattered) and possibly contouring round and up Fleetwith pike, returning down to Gatesgarth. Started off from the farm and it was a lovely path to start with. There was the option of going round Buttermere Lake instead of going uphill !
We headed uphill, it's amazing how quickly you can gain height and also a really nice view. The weather improved too and was really quite warm and sunny. We took the path up to Scarth Gap Pass, the last bit of which was quite steep and rocky. We had lunch at the top of the Pass, almost, with a good view of Fleetwith Pike and the valley below. The last bit to the summit of Haystacks was a bit of a scramble/rock climb in places which was quite exciting ! We had a fantastic view of Buttermere & Crummock Water from the top. The top was actually two summits, the northern one and first we got to I think is the slightly higher and official one. We followed the path round the top to the tarns - Inominate Tarn, which was pretty busy but lovely and then around to the other tarn, which was very quiet.
It was all quite rocky and a bit up and down, but there were some fantastic views. We decided to not go up Fleetwith Pike as well, it looked like a long way (and even more climb) and we didn't want to overdo it ! So we continued on the path contouring round the crags and stayed relatively high to join the Quarry Road to descend back to the farm. There was another path down, through the old quarry I think, which looked even steeper than the Quarry Road, and we wanted to keep our knees ok for the whole week.
The descent was good, a bit steep, as expected but the Quarry Road was nice. I wouldn't want to climb Haystacks this way though. We got back to the car and drove up the valley to the Honister Slate Mine, of which you can do a tour. There's also a Via Ferrata there, which Julia Bradbury did on one of her programmes. There's also a cafe, which was the real reason we were there for a cup of tea & coffee.
According to the GPS watch we walked 8.64kms and climbed 659m. We stopped at the garage with a shop in Keswick to pick up a few things for dinner and cooked a curry.