A circuit of Seat Sandal...

Ullscarf and Wythburn Church from Wythburn car -park

which is a lovely little hill above the Ambleside - Keswick road; guarding the approach to Grisedale Tarn from Dunmail Raise.

OK, it wasn't what Gary and I had planned; when we had rendezvoused at the car-park at 9am. The drive up from Manchester was agreeably quick - something to bear in mind for future trips - and the hills looked agreeably white as well; whilst the roads were clear.

The plan was simple  - up to Grisedale Tarn and then up onto the ridge between Dollywaggon Pike and Helvellyn....returning by basically the same route. The first challenge was crossing the stile from the lay-by! Wood with a thin skein of ice/verglas on it - once across it we ambled toward the path up the ravine. Gary and I know from first hand experience that this can be very slippery indeed - it gets very little/if any sun this time of year and the path up can resemble a rink. This is my mitigation for suggesting we cross the stream and take a path up the side of the hill leading up to Grisedale Tarn. Crossing the stream proved more 'entertaining' than first thought (we managed not to see the bridge 200m downstream!) and then we struggled up steep grass slopes to meet the path. Neither of us were particularly fit; I had been busy with work (preparing for a new job in Jan) whilst Gary had had far too much real life and not enough walking/climbing, not to mention injury. So the ascent was a struggle; made more a struggle by the snow which got softer and deeper the higher we walked. The forecast was also out  - the snow storms weren't forecast -and the temperature was clearly higher than we'd been led to believe. Honestly, my short ski's would have been perfect in this kind of terrain. Approaching the tarn the snow got deeper and the plod got more tiring. It had been some time since I'd been out in new, soft snow and it was a salutory reminder of how tiring it can be - especially when one is as unfit as I am.

Gary descends towards Dunmail Raise

View towards Grasmere on the descent

Given conditions, snow etc a change of plan was decided upon. We'd follow the path up to Grisedale Hause (a place, embarrassingly, I'm not sure I've ever been) and thence down the path towards the road. The aim was to contour Seat Sandal, worse case was 1.5km up the road to get to the cars. The path down was actually very nice. Even better, a new path left the original path down Little Tongue Gill and contoured the shoulder of Seat Sandal. We gladly took this, and then the path petered out a gate. The gate had a footpath sign on it so we could clearly go through. We then got emeshed in a series of fields and walls that made getting to the road - about 100m away - a real pain. With hindsight, we should have stayed much higher (above the intake wall) and contoured the hillside to get back to Dunmail Raise. Suffice to say that we didn't and had to climb a fence and scramble down to the road. Gary's hamstrings were really troubling him so I went ahead to the car-park; hopped in the Jazz and drove down the road to collect him.....I got a pint for my troubles so :-)...