Striding Edge, Helvellyn, Swirral Edge
Went walking in the Lakes at the weekend, finally got along Striding Edge – very nice. When I get a moment, I’ll extend this into a full route description, but for the time being, it’s very brief.
We walked up from Glenridding to Lanty Tarn, and from there, we took the old path up the side of Birkhouse Moor to the Hole In the Wall, which is pleasant enough until the final trudge up to the hole.
From there, we climbed up to the start of Striding Edge. Helvellyn’s top was in cloud, but the ridge wasn’t at this point, although the cloud did move in just before we climbed down the Awkward Step.
As I was descending the Awkward Step (I went right, which turned out to be more complicated than going left), hanging in a little rock gully, a rather excitable Pointer puppy jumped down from the top, wedging herself in between my legs and the rock, which was somewhat offputting. After surviving that, we rested at High Spying How for a few minutes before beginning the long easy scramble up to the top of Helvellyn, where we stopped for lunch at the shelter.
As we were leaving, the wind really picked up, visibility dropped to a few metres, and it started to hail (!). We navigated to the start of Swirral Edge, just in time to see the ridge through a break in the cloud. The wind was still very strong, but westerly, so as soon as we dropped from the summit down onto the ridge, the wind dropped right away.
After an easy scramble down Swirral Edge, we descended via Red Tarn, and over Birkhouse Moor, before descending down the boring steps by Mires Beck, back to Glenridding.
It took us about 7 hours to do this walk, but we were going slowly; Andrea was practicing navigation, I was taking lots of photos, and we were taking it easy, both being somewhat out of practice at fellwalking. If you’re in reasonable shape, it’ll probably take 5 hours.