Catbells

          … A gentle family walk…  

         We boarded a boat at Keswick Launch which took us to the other side of Derwent Water for our planned day on the hills.  We had our light-weight waterproofs on as it had rained pretty much since we had arrived in the lake district but the weather man had promised us a better day for our walk up to the top and by the time we arrived at Hawes End, our starting point for the walk, the clouds had started to break. 

          Hubby was in charge of navigating so, as is often the way, I just tagged along, but it was reassuring to see someone had been before us and left us instructions. 

          True to its description, and most definitely compared to our climb up the “PYG track” on Snowdon, Catbells was quite a gentle climb, and we did see quite a few families. 

          At about half way up we stopped for a short while for me to take a few photos over Derwent Water and back towards Keswick. 

          At about the same place I took a photo in the opposite direction, into the hills.

          Now I believe there is a connection to a Beatrice Potter story here…  “The Tale of Mrs Tiggy-Winkle” 

          A little girl who lives in a farm called “Little town” (very possibly one of the ones I’ve caught in the photo here) runs up the hill in search of her missing handkerchiefs and finds Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, a hedgehog  in the middle of doing the laundry for all of the other animals. Mrs Tiggy-Winkle has washed and dried the little girl’s handkerchiefs and they make their way back down to the farm, delivering fresh laundry as they go.

          After our encounter with Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, its just a nice gentle stroll to the top of Catbells, however, I wasn’t prepared for the scramble on all fours for the last ten or fifteen feet to get there. 

          The clouds were kind to us and parted nicely for a few snaps back down on Derwent Water and Keswick before we made our way back down to Hawes End  and the last boat of the day back to Keswick Launch. 

          More from before : a week in the “Lake District” in July 2010.

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Keswick & Catbells jigsaw

          As memories go, mine are becoming fewer and farther in between so when I spotted this jigsaw puzzle and not only recognised the picture, but remembered being there, I simply couldn’t think of a reason not to buy it. 

         After I’d finished the jigsaw, I took a photo and went off to delve around in the files to find my own photo.

          In comparison, they had better weather than us, I had fewer boats and they had no ducks, but apart from that, it’s no real wonder that I recognised the jigsaw’s location. 

         And what’s more, checking the blog against the file of photos, it would appear that I didn’t get around to taking you to the top of Catbells with me… I’ll try and rectify that in a day of two. 

          More from before : a week in the “Lake District” in July 2010.

Jettying

          A while ago, back in July 2010 according to my photo files, we spent a week in the Lake District where, based in Keswick on the edge of Derwent Water, we climbed up Catbells.  A nice gentle family climb I was assured by Hubby, and most of the time I had to agree with him, but faced with the choice of a final scramble on all fours for the last ten minutes or turning back without reaching the summit, I wasn’t exactly polite about this nice family climb.  I’ll see if I can fill in the memories of that from some of the photos in a little while, but since we only climbed one “mouintain”, while we were there, I spent more than a few of the other hours in the week enjoying the view out over the lake with the camera.

          These first two pictures are of different jetties on the Keswick side of the lake, you can see the clouds rolling around over head on the first, and a welcome break where the sun managed to peep through on the second.  It rained a lot, in fact so much that when we arrived the area was suffering from a local drought, but by the time we left roads were flooding with the amount of water running from the mountains towards the lakes.

          These second two pictures are of the jetty in Hawes End, we took a boat across to the opposite side of the lake to Hawes End before starting our climb up Catbells.

          This last is a view of the boat leaving after it had dropped us off, we were lucky on our way home to not see this view again with us still standing on the jetty as we had to run (yes, I believe I did actually run) run to catch it.

          More from before : a week in the “Lake District” in July 2010.