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About Hartsop Dodd | About Stony Cove Pike
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This walk was thoroughly enjoyable. A long ridge walk, then a beautifully scenic valley walk on our return. There is a hard technical part, climbing down East from Stony Cove Pike, via Threshthwaite Crag. I wouldn’t do that part again in a hurry! However, a great walk with views of Brothers Water, Ullswater and Windermere.
We were lucky enough to get a space in the car park in Hartsop Village. From there, we walked through the gate and immediate right, then left down a track. Soon to climb the steep, grassy side and up onto Hartsop Dodd.
Following a wall, we were treated to some great views of clouds falling away from Caudale Moor and Thornthwaite Crag. We kept following the wall and spun round to Stony Cove Pike. Here, we had excellent views of the South and to Windermere.
Now why this next bit is shown as a green footpath on OS maps is beyond me. It was genuinely a climb at one point. The descent down Threshthwaite Crag was merely slow going at first. Watch where you put your feet, relatively straight forward. But then came the point where I had to carefully drop myself onto the rocks below. A short bit of climbing that quickly became tedious during such a slow descent. I am only glad I wore my stiffer mountain boots that day.
At the bottom, we considered the possibility of ascending to Thornthwaite Crag and ticking off another Wainwright. Though from our position, and our enthusiasm having dropped like the altitude from our previous descent, it looked more than we could handle. In fact, the look of this one turns out to be far worse than it actually is. It is just a steep stony climb to the top. Regardless, today we chose a nice valley route as the weather started warming up.
As we slowly descended further into the valley, we encountered a few icy steps which would have been terrible in worse weather. Fortunately, the sun was melting the slippy bits as we travelled so we barely had a problem thereon after. Please don’t do this route after a freeze or in winter.
Walking in between Hartsop and Grey Crag was beautiful. We followed the path which ran a similar course to the stream. It proved itself to be a proper sun trap as it led us back to where we turned off for the fell at the beginning of the walk.
