Sue is currently visiting from France and so we wanted to take her somewhere special and reacquaint her with the beauty of the Lakes after she has travelled so far.
We headed to the Duddon Valley for a walk with Sue, and the summit monkeys. The forecast was for rain, and the drive over was uninspiring to say the least. Driving over the Wrynose Pass in driving rain, whilst trying to dodge the poor wet 'buggers' (cyclists) on the 'Wrynose or Bust' 112 mile cycle sportive
http://www.wrynoseorbust.org/ was quite stressful to say the least.
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| Into the clag, wet feet..... |
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| Very mid Snowdonia like countryside up here |
Then, even more strange was seeing Rachael heading in the opposite direction (back up the Wrynose Pass), as we were getting close to the walks start point at Birk's Bridge. She had briefly 'miscalulated' her exact location (mountain leaders don't get lost), and detoured over the pass a few times. But luckily, as we were pontificating over the merits of walking in the driving rain versus going to see the herons at Muncaster castle (don't ask), Rachael made it to the car park, frazzled but ready to walk.
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| Dropping down into Eskdale |
We headed off on a tour of Harter Fell as I've wanted to do this walk for ages. It was damp and misty, but also very atmospheric as we headed up through the forest. As we dropped down into Eskdale the 'clag' lifted and we had great views of the valley, and it was a fine path that dropped us down to the road. The next stage saw us climbing steeply to the Hardknott Roman Fort, another local interest point I've never seen. It was pretty impressive, and hard to believe the Romans lived in this remote and often cold, wet spot.
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| Look no rain.... |
Standing at this impressive ruin we realised that we didn't really remember when the Romans where here, and why they left (poor show considering 2 teachers in the group)! So here's the brief history for us all to remember (Rachael looked on her iphone).
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| The impressive hill fort with commanding views over Eskdale |
Basically the Romans invaded in 43 AD and by 79AD most of Northern England was under Roman control. They pushed into Scotland but the lack of troops meant that the Romans could not continue to hold Scotland. When the Emperor Hadrian visited the province of Britain in 122 AD, he
ordered the building of a wall right across the border between Roman
England and 'barbarian' Scotland. By 401 AD, troops were withdrawn from Britain to deal with growing invasions from the East back home in Rome. Its hard to imagine the march back to Rome - what a walk.
Our march continued as the weather gradually improved and we quickly found ourselves traversing back around the Fell to the forestry road and then the cars after circumnavigating Harter Fell. A great walk, with great monkeys.
