Paul Lydon: Cross Fell

After leaving the Alston Training and Outdoor Adventure Centre after breakfast, Karen and I drove to the hamlet of Kirkland and left the car on a grass verge near Glebe Farm.
We followed a rough vehicle track running due North above Cocklock Scar with views of Cross Fell above and the Lakeland Fells in the opposite direction in the West looking very hazy despite the mainly clear and sunny but breezy weather.
The track steepened and started wending its way gradually upwards passing some disused workings on the way to Skirwith Fell where a large cairn marked the junction of paths with our route joining a bend in the Pennine Way.
Ahead the Pennine Way made its way past Gregs Hut towards Garrigill. To the right, it continued up sloping ground towards the summit of Cross Fell passing a few hundred yard away from a large snow patch remaining from the winter.
Reaching the summit plateau, we passed another large cairn and made our way towards yet another before veering off to the nearby drystone shelter near the trig point at 893 metres above sea level.
We found a sheltered spot in a small patch of sun in one of the quadrants of the summit shelter and had a rest and some snacks.
The views were excellent for 360 degrees around us but hazy in the distance as we set off towards a large cairn to the South-East marking the continuing Pennine Way leading downwards towards Crowdundle Head where a bridleway crossed the Pennine Way. This junction was not obvious and was not in the valley further down as we expected but was marked by an engraved slab of rock showing the Pennine Way and the bridleway marked as “PW” and two horseshoes respectively.
The bridleway was very indistinct as it gradually dropped towards the South-East but its route was marked by the odd small cairn now and then until we arrived at the top of steeper ground at the top of Wildboar Scar, where the path led down at an angle so that it wasn't too steep.
The path led down Littledale above Littledale Beck below the interestingly-named Grumply Hill. Soon we left the open ground and entered through a gate into a walled enclosure full of flowering gorse bushes before passing through a gate to cross in front of a house at Wythwaite to join the start of a farm track which led us the final kilometre back to where we had started at Kirkland.