From here we walked a short way up the road
towards Little Town and just by the first couple of houses, we left
the road to follow a track which was marked on the map as a
bridleway.
The bridleway led us along the bottom of Cat Bells
until we arrived at a minor road where the ridge began at the
northern end of the Cat Bells – High Spy ridge. After following the
road for a few hundred metres, a path by another small car park was
sign-posted “Cat Bells 1 mile”.
We followed this path which gradually ascended the
ridge and there were lovely views across Derwent Water below and
across Keswick to Skiddaw.
After a very short rocky section which was
slippery due to the rock being polished from the heavy traffic of
walkers and also from being wet from recent rain, we arrived at the
top of Cat Bells which was bare and rocky compared to the rest of the
hill.
In the meantime the weather, which had shown signs
of improving, worsened with ominous dark clouds appearing in the
direction of Blencathra.
As we approached Cat Bell's summit, there was a
distant clap of thunder but luckily other than even more distant
rumblings, that was all.
There was a rain shower as we continued towards
the next small peak of Maiden Moor and when we arrived at the top, we
sat in the lee a grassy bank and sheltered from the wind as we ate
lunch.
A heavy rain shower began and I pulled out my 2
person bothy shelter to allow us to finish our lunch as it was 13:30m
we decided to cut the walk short and miss out High Spy further along
the ridge. So we dropped back down to the wide col between Maiden
Moor and Cat Bells, then followed a path down past some old mining
spoil heaps, then down again to the track we had followed earlier on
our way up.
We retraced our steps along the track back to
Little Town and after changing out of our walking boots, and dumping
our rucksacks in the car, we returned to Keswick to buy some food at
the supermarket.
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