A bit of tidying up

What a good little outing arising from a prick of conscience. I have many times visited Hutton Roof which name describes a large plateau of limestone six or seven kilometres square with the village of the same name nestling beneath. There is a line of small crags which provide excellent one pitch climbs on a summer's evening which I frequented some years ago in my climbing days, and I have ranged all over tracking down Geoacaches. There is also a trig point which I visited when I was embarked on my trig campaign for that OS sheet, consequently I had, more recently, ticked it off as a qualifying Marilyn.

Recent conversation with Mick and Gayle informed me that the true summit is 110 metres from the trig bearing 64 degrees and 0.6m higher! I might well have trampled over that point at some time but couldn't be sure, and today was blue sky and the best of autumn so I had a double motive for the walk.

I ascended from the quarry car park at SD 552 761. On the summit I met a couple with a border terrier. It turned out they had bought the dog from people who breed them living only a few hundred yards from me in Arnside. Those people were also the same who gave me a lift back from Longsleddale  when I lost my car keys bum-sliding down the fell-side in October 2012 - one of my more self deprecating anecdotes  CLICK HERE TO READ POST.

Having given this couple a bit of directional advice (they had no map or compass) I paced out the 110metres to the grassy lump posing as the true summit then returned to the trig. All of a sudden there was a sort of whoosh behind me and a collie dog came flying through the air and landed on top of the trig - I am not making this up. The dog was followed by two more collies, all very friendly, but less ambitious to leap onto the trig. Their owner appeared and he turned out to be an enthusiastic walker and  very amenable, and we chatted for quite some time about our walking experiences, and our good fortune to live in such a splendid environment.

I decided to drive back on nerve-racking  narrow country lanes with few passing places and much grass growing in the middle. As I descended to Cawthorpe I had to pull in for a large 4 x 4 coming the other way heading for the worrying narrow lanes I had come from. The lady driver stopped and wound down the window, "we're not from around here, can we get to Lake Windermere up here?" I was just dumbfounded - how could anybody think that they may be remotely heading for our largest lake in England over sixteen miles away (even in a straight line) up this road which is not much more than a surfaced cart track. I often wonder what happens to people like this after my encounter.

Wonderful limestone country walking

A bit of a zoom back to the trig from the supposed highest point

Any walk within a radius of thirty miles from my home gives a good chance of seeing Ingleborough

The bottom red dot shows where I met the 4 x 4 and the top one is on Lake Windermere which is probably twenty miles away by road