The last walk left “unlucky” 13 tops to do so it would be good to move on to the final 12 as quickly as possible!  We did Seatallan last time out and fully intended doing Haycock today, just a little further on.  However in the car on the way there I said to Peter I had a cold coming on so thought we would do the smallest top out of the 71, Great Borne.  The idea being it would be easy enough to get up and down fairly quickly, well its only 2021 feet after all!

Start of the walk

So we headed to the Fish Inn at Buttermere and we were going to walk around Crummock Water and go up the way we came down when we did Starling Dodd back in May 2015.  We arrived at the Fish around 8.30 and with my knee strapped up and full of scotch egg, ready to walk around 8.45.

Early morning Crummock Water

Crummock Water

We walked between Buttermere and Crummock Water, alongside Buttermere Dubs heading towards Scale Force.  It was a clear and quite warm morning for early October, actually much warmer than our last walk in July.

Crummock Water on the left, Buttermere on the right

Scale Force

We crossed the bridge at Scale Force and begun to climb towards Hen Comb and Whiteoak Moss.

Crummock Water Panorama with Grasmoor in the distance

Whiteoak Moss was very boggy, in fact most of the walk was wet under foot, just as well it was a fine day.

Flautern Tarn and the final climb to the summit

We climbed above the boggy area towards Flautern Tarn just under Great Borne, it was now just before midday as we looked up at the final ascent to the summit.  It appeared a steep walk but had to be done as we were so close to another top.

Looking towards the coast from the climb to Great Borne

Great Borne summit

As it turned out the climb was not as tough as it looked and we reached the summit around 1pm.  A little over 4 hours walking and around 20,000 steps so far.  So much for the shortish walk to the lowest summit!

The summit with Red Pike on the left and Great Gable in the centre

Even at the summit it was still quite warm.  We now had to decide what was the quickest way down. That final ascent would be a tough descent and we didn’t fancy crossing the bog again so we headed towards Starling Dodd to descend the same way we did back in May 2015.

Looking back to Great Borne

The descent

We knew there was still some distance to be covered to get back to the car but it was a nice day and we had plenty of light left.  As we walked around Starling Dodd, just missing the top, we were heading in the direction of Red Pike.  Dropping down to find the path which would lead us back down towards Scale Force.  It was a tough path, not too steep but rocky and a few difficult parts around the waterfall.  Also by now this was becoming the longest walk we had done so the legs were very tired.

Fitbit stats showing almost 9 hour walk!

A new record for a day

We got back to the car about 5.20 almost 9 hours after we had set off, very tired but satisfied that another one was chalked off, only 12 left to do now.