The Honister Three

Apart from the usual delights of views, mountains, hills, sky and so on, this  hike was up hills I had managed to miss on other days.

 

Fleetwith can easily be incorporated into Haystacks and Buttermere, why did I not?

 

Brandreth and Grey Knotts were a more strategic miss on day two of the Coast to Coast when we opted to go via Red Pike to Ennerdale.

Honister Pass was a bit grim, only the merest glimmer of sun emerging below the clouds where Buttermere should have been.

 

The tops of the hills were distinctly Grey with not a knott or pike insight.

Cloud clung up and on to Fleetwith.  A long stretch of imaginative vision to believe there was much else on the planet let alone another hill or lake.

The air was almost as grey as the slate and though the wind was turning coats into balloons and sending poles flying from wrists it was not very adept separating cloud from the fells.

They clung together over Drum Hause with only a thin white line of separation.

But the wind persisted.  Its terrier tugging pulled  the cloud first from Haystacks, then Buttermere, then Crummock and eventually the twin valleys of Ennerdale and Buttermere were one.

Hay Stacks separating the valleys

Tenacity paid off and eventually the  wind pulled the clouds off Pillar

unravelling round Kirk Fell to the Gables.

Brandreth rocks were a difficult hopscotch with the wind now wining the battle and blowing so hard it not only inflated clothes but hindered progress with invisible doors.

 

Then victory.

Blue sky and clarity.

Bunched up white over Hindscarth and Robinson , almost lifting above the both Red Pikes.

And there was Fleetwith mist banished upwards.

It was a fight against the wind to Grey Knotts but the valley was cleared to vivid colour with bunched cloud into a white cuff,  and soft light touching the small hummocks on Watendlath fell with autumn brilliance.

My route