New Year's Day - Sour Milk Gill and more
Our first walk of the year was a cracker as we headed to one of our favourite start points in Borrowdale at Seathwaite but, instead of one of our more usual forays south (Grains Gill or Styhead Gill) we headed west.
Sour Milk Gill (the Seathwaite version) is one that we rarely head to the top of as we normally reach it towards the end of a walk and so only head up alongside it for a few hundred metres to a great viewing spot (from where I took the main pic) before heading back to our cars. Today, however, we went all the way to the top and kept going into the hills, hitting the summits of Base Brown (at 646m) and then Green Gable (at 801m, see pic below for the final push, with some walkers in the clouds) before pausing for some lunch.
The weather was crisp and cold but as we got higher it, naturally, had got even colder and by now was well below freezing with the chilling wind. We reviewed our options; we could keep going for Great Gable (which, with the clouds that we had walked into, we couldn't even see even though it was barely 500m across the valley from us but involved a drop of 50m followed by another 150m of height gain) or start our return journey from here. We chose Plan B!!
We headed north to Brandreth (at 715m) from where the views north-west towards the valleys and lakes of Ennerdale and Buttermere and the peaks including Haystacks were just jaw-droppingly beautiful. It took a while to drag ourselves away from the views below.
We continued to Grey Knotts, and kept going to get beyond Raven Crag before dropping down to Gillercomb, the valley below. It took several attempts each time to find dryish routes across various boggy tributaries to get to the south side of Sour Milk Gill again but eventually we reached the top of the falls and headed back down (see pic below, with Grey Knotts in the background).
An awesome start to 2024!!
Andy