Between the Fells and the Firth: Fellscapes and snowscapes

Snow down south, snow on the tops - 360 degree mountains - patterns - frozen bog - thaw

A long-planned post-Christmas trip to the in-laws in Fenland was cancelled owing to predicted poor driving conditions in thundersnow, leaving me with an unexpectedly free weekend. Our snow was light and I drove as far as Lancaster for work, straight into bright sunshine and blue skies, with the white fells to the right – never seen Shap look so good.

Before the weather changed on Sunday I wanted to see the snowy tops from more than lakeshore, less than high tops, and chose Lord's Seat and Barf from Whinlatter ("Low Fells" walk 1). Swedish boots against the bogs and plenty of layers against the windchill.

East-South-West from Lord's Seat

A quick walk through the forest, past the fairy circle, the families and the people finishing their walks as I started mine, to the views, of fells, Pennines and Scottish hills, and to the silence, broken by birds and becks.


Skiddaw from NP boundary	Northwestern fells

Derwentwater and Helvellyn range	The path towards Keswick

Whinlatter forest	The Lake and the sea

Scottish mountains, reminding me of Turkey at New Year 2006	Criffel imitating Mount Fuji

The open ground was quite boggy, with very light snow. The snow has fallen onto the frozen boggy paths and frozen again, resisting the thaw longer than the snow on the drier heath and heather, and leaving the paths outlined in white across the slopes.


Heather and me	Frozen boggy path from Lord's Seat

Skiddaw from Whinlatter forest

Heather and bilberries are regrowing in the forest edges and across the boggy lands. Bilberries at this stage look like wiry samphire, bright green but not fleshy.


Snow fungus	Ici-gmites melting

The forest paths are marked by human tracks - feet, bike wheels (why do they wobble so?), forestry vehicles, dogs. Approaching the visitor centre there are piles of boxes, flat such as might be used to contain tiles. On investigation, it turns out they have lots of plug-grown baby trees with labels confirming that they are approved by Santa (which seemed a surprising mark of quality for the Forestry Commission).


Tracks	Tracks

Icy path	Snowy tree

This is the first time I remember walking on semi-frozen bog, needing slightly altered techniques to read the land and stay on the surface (but the Swedish boots are good when I get it wrong)