Tuesday 20th April, Wast Water and the great Passes

After a cool night, with occasional wind and rain, a fine day dawned, so to get to our destination while the weather remained good, we headed north to the A66 and coast road down past Sellafield to Gosport then via back roads to one of our favourite lakes.

Wast water is one of the more remote and certainly the most moody and eerie of the lakes, with the high scree cliffs (all 700 feet high!) behind the lake and in shadow on all but a midsummer day, it's hard to grasp their sheer scale unless you see some tiny dots at the base of the cliff (walkers in their brightly coloured windproofs)

I read somewhere that the lake is over 700 feet deep, even deeper than the height of the cliffs,but I'm afraid my imagination can't seem to get round that figure!

Any way here to start with is a Panorama of the scene taken from a parking spot mid way along the lake, it is small so I can load it to the net, but hopefully captures something of the atmosphere of the place.

This next shot is two shots joined together vertically to try to capture the immense height of the cliffs, which are awe inspiring.We returned to Gosport as we had spotted a Cafe that looked promising and this turned out to be a real find. we had very nice omelettes and chips and salad for a reasonable price before facing the challenge of Hard Knot and Wrynose passes.

These proved interesting as we had to deal with insane cyclists (going in all directions and all over the road) and some elderly motorist who didn't seem to understand if you are ascending a 1 in 3 hill and they are on the way down, they should give way.

I had to stop on a hairpin bend for one of these doddering fools and if I had been driving a less powerful car we would have had real difficulty getting going again.

I said "Oh Bother!" (or something to that effect.)

The upper shot is the top section of Hard knot pass

And this is the lower section of Hard Knot pass, there is a car parking area between the two from which there is a short walk to the Roman Fort (it was too cold for me to attempt it today!)

Between Hard Knot and Wrynose there is a rather tranquil valley that gives no hint of what lies at either end, here it is
And once you have reached the top of Wrynose, there is this splendid vista of the valley below
Once this bit of fun was behind us we went to Grasmere for more supplies of Gingerbread before returning to camp for a snooze.

I did go out for an evening walk, heres a shot of the very end of Derwentwater in the evening light