So here I am, potentially my last visit to the Lakes to bag new fells from the Wainwright 214 list. I needed just two walks to finish off the list, and join the ever expanding number of members, who have completed them all. Not that this is planned as my final ever visit, if all went well, as there are other options to do walks around the Outlying Fells, Birketts or just do the list again and help the boys and Linda fill in more of their own list. But for now we shall let that lie, and see how the weather behaves in letting me pick off my final 3 fells. Before all that however, we had the arduous 400 mile drive north and wait around to get into our house for the week. This was the family holiday and 16 of us were descending on the National Park, so we need something big, which turned out to be a former hotel in Borrowdale, and it was lovely. The journey up wasn’t too bad and we seemed to be ahead of the busiest of the traffic, arriving in Lakeland around 1pm. The next choice was what to do to pass the time until 5pm (our time to enter the house), the obvious answer is a walk and a choice of one of my favourite lower fells. I came to Sale Fell first in October 2015 so I was well overdue a revisit, plus the boys and Linda hadn’t done this one, and it was not too difficult after a long drive. We parked up and ate our lunch before heading off through the gate, reaching the bench in no time. We turned left to follow the path as it gently contours around and upwards, giving great views down to Embleton and Lake Bassenthwaite. Turning right at a fence we headed steeply upwards and after a bit of huffing and puffing made the summit. We didn’t linger too long before following the superb grassy path back down and around to the right to the bench again. We then headed to Wythop Church to have a proper look in this little gem of a place. All that was left was the short walk back to the car, then into Booths for some shopping and off to our home for the week. The only downside was I managed to pick up a tick on this walk, the result of wearing shorts and wanting to stay comfortable on the long drive I guess. But this doesn’t detract from a superb little fell.

Start – Wythop Church

Route – Sale Fell – Wythop Church

Distance – 2 miles maybe  Start time – 2pm  Time taken – 1hr 10mins  Highest Point – Sale Fell 359 metres

Weather – Threatening clouds around us but mainly sunny overhead for us