November and a week booked in the Lakes. Not normally a choice for many but the hardiest of walkers. I’ve been quite a few times now in the half term at the end of October, this time we chose the second week in November. I figured that the 2 weeks won’t make too much difference, with the daylight hours not too dissimilar (depending on when the hour changes) and the weather likely to be wet and windy. We figured we’d make the best of it. As we set out from Plymouth on the 400 miles drive at 5am, I’d looked at the weather which was set for some sunshine and blue skies. My thoughts changed from a leg stretch at Grasmere to maybe a fell, one that I could get parked at, considering it would be midday when we got there. Wetherlam kept coming up, its a 5 mile walk so doable in the time we had (I wanted to be off the hills by 4pm each day so as not to get caught out by the darkening days) and also the parking at Tilberthwaite is fairly big and with a possibility of a free space. So we came off at junction 36 and headed for the A593 and the Tilberthwaite turn off (which I missed first go). Parking was found and we booted up and set off for the path on the southern side of Tilberthwaite Gill. The weather overhead was ok ish, dark clouds loomed, some did patches of sunshine and some rain in the distance. We figured we’d go for it. I’d looked at the routes and I liked the look of Steel Edge to get up to the summit quickly, we got to its foot quickly and had our lunch sat looking up at it. Its a great route up, some small bits of scrambling, which in the bits of drizzle we had were manageable. The cloud dropped as did more drizzle as we neared the summit so we didn’t linger too long before we headed off for Wetherlam Edge and our descent, in the dry this would be a fairly simple way down, in the wet, with slick slanted smooth rocks it was very tricky, but we took our time, loving the views which kept opening up to the Fairfield Horseshoe. Wetherlam Edge is longer than Steel Edge so we’d have been better doing this the other way around, however we loved this walk and stayed away, were possible, from any tricky descent sections. One for the ‘best of’ list at the end of the year I reckon.

Start – High Tilberthwaite

Route – Tilberthwaite Gill – Steel Edge – Wetherlam – Wetherlam Edge – Birk Fell Man on Birk Fell – Tilberthwaite Gill – High Tilberthwaite

Distance – 5 miles    Start time – 12.10pm   Time taken – 4hrs  Highest Point – Wetherlam 763metres

Weather – Dark clouds and some drizzle throughout, some patches of sunshine. Cloud down at the summit briefly.