Longsleddale to Branstree - Photo Gallery

It was a foggy morning, both at home and in Longsleddale; I had to make a couple of lengthy reversing manoeuvres on the single track road before I got to the parking area at Sadgill, one of them to avoid a huge hedge-trimming tractor. From Sadgill, I walked back down the road, until I found a grassy rarely-used track leading to Stockdale; I carried on along another barely used green track until I reached a gate near a waterfall. I turned left through yet another gate to walk up by the side of a wall on a wet, grassy slope in the mist; I was heading for the survey columns marked on the map.

There was a vague path, until I left the wall and followed an even fainter path northwards; I walked through some bracken to reach a ruined structure, and then another one higher up. There seemed to be a path, I followed it uphill on grass until a bit of a climb up steeper, bouldery ground, and then across an extensive plateau. I eventually realised that I had walked for too long without seeing the survey columns, I had obviously missed them in the mist. Wainwright thought these fells were dangerous in bad weather, I'm not sure about that but they do present a different set of challenges.

I carried on along the faint path until I reached a fence corner and I realised that I had been there before; I used the stile to get over the fence and walked across level grassy ground, until I reached bouldery terrain, and headed for higher ground when the path disappeared for a while. When I reached the summit of Grey Crag, the sun seemed to be starting to break through the mist; I took a bearing and followed a boggy wet path to until I reached a fence; the path by the side of it was even wetter and boggier up to the impressive cairn at the summit of Harrop Pike.

I retraced my steps to a fence corner, from there I had to make a careful, difficult descent on a pathless boggy swamp before crossing Grey Crag Tarn. I found out, by necessity rather than choice, that the dangerous-looking mud was actually dense enough to bear my weight, leaving one inch deep footprints; in Scotalnd I would have been in it upto my thighs. I carried on upwards by the side of the fence to the top of the rise; a faint path bears left and takes you to the summit of Tarn Crag, and then on to an obvious survey pillar. I descended to a col, it was a fairly reasonable descent at first, but near the bottom it got very difficult to stay out of the swamps and bogs.

At the col, there was a gate in the fence leading to Mosedale, probably the most awkward gate puddle I have ever had to get through, without my boots being swamped. There wasn't much of a path, but where it was obvious it was seriously swampy, all the way to Mosedale Cottage; it is not the most luxurious bothy that I have ever seen. I carried on along a good path for a short distance before having to cross quite a wide stream, and then get through an awkward-to-open gate before making the long walk down to Ash Knott.

I found the fence going uphill that I was expecting to find, but the long uphill slog I was expecting seemed to end at a crest on the rise, it was nowhere near as far as I thought it would be. I was disoriented, and couldn't really work out where I was; I decided to head upwards; I found a cairn, then an undulating faint path, that led eventually to another fence on the other side of Selside that I was expecting to be. Looking at the map afterwards I realised where I had got confused, but it seemed far too easy for me to get the navigation so completely wrong.

From the summit, I followed the fence, or rather the muddy path by the side of it, firstly to the huge cairns on Artlecrag Pikes and then on to the summit of Branstree. I walked directly down to Gatescarth Pass, and made the long descent to Sadgill by the side of River Sprint, feeling very warm in the sunshine.

© Andy Wallace 10th October 2009