30 March 2024
5.66 miles
Our first outing of 2024 and we headed off to conquer another mountain on the Dales 30 list - Calf Top, Middleton Fell. Before that though we did a short hike to bag another. You can read about that and view the photographs of Drumaldrace here.
When we camped on Great Coum back in April 2023 we parked at the foot of Middleton Fell and had therefore already seen it in the flesh, so to speak. We decided then that we would tackle it sooner rather than later.
Unfortunately on the day, things didn't go quite to plan as we weren't able to take the route my human had mapped out - my fault apparently! After spending more than a few minutes muttering to himself my human packed all our gear and me back in the car and we set off to our Plan B mountain.
Great Whernside, at 2310ft or 704m, is the sixth highest of the Dales 30 mountains and although we had climbed it back in February 2022, we hadn't camped on it. Last time we took the direct route straight up from almost opposite where we parked. It was tough going even without carrying a backpack (so I was told). This time we took a different, less challenging, but longer route heading diagonally across the foothills of Great Whernside towards Little Whernside before cutting back towards the summit of Great Whernside.
Given that it was getting late in the day when we parked up I wasn't so sure that this was the best option but...
Anyway, as I had expected, by the time we arrived at the summit it was getting pretty dark. I was shattered, it was getting cold, it was way past my tea-time and "we" still had the tent to pitch so it was properly dark by the time everything was sorted. After we'd eaten it wasn't long before we both nodded off.
Having had an uninterrupted nights sleep we awoke to a beautifully clear morning with lots of blue sky around... for about ten minutes. And then the mist rolled in. And rolled out. And rolled back in again.
After spending half an hour or so faffing around taking photographs and trying to get some drone footage my human decided to break camp and we headed back to the car taking the more direct and much shorter route this time.
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