Hiking
Just 162 m. altitude and a ten to fifteen minute walk from Keswick town centre, Castlehead offers a famous panorama of Derwent Water, Bassenthwaite Lake and the surrounding fells, which today were clouded with numerous shades of grey. The geological evidence is that this was once a glacial valley and even earlier was the lower slopes of the Borrowdale volcano.
Good Friday hike on the South Downs between Kingston near Lewes and Rottingdean. We enjoyed a picnic of Hot Cross Buns still warm from Hot Cross Buns queue at the bakery at Fiveways, Preston Park. This year’s lambs enjoying the sunshine in the South Downs National Park.
A lakeside walk along Ullswater from Howtown pier, fine to try out a new rucksac and enjoy the big fells beyond the lake peeking through the mist. A few squalls on the atwr but overall the temperature in London was much colder today than most of Cumbria!
Shap is a Cumbrian byword for “cold and bleak” - the highest point on the A6 trunk road over Shap is 426 m. altitude. The area marks a sharp change in the geology which is exploited by several prominent quarries each with different specialities,
Shap granite is famous for large grains of reflective minerals, Shap pink granite looks good polished up and constructed as a kitchen worktop, Shap Blue granite is used as an aggregate for road surfaces. Exposed within this small area there are almost the full range of rocks found in the Lake District.
A preserved fragment of the South Downs. Parts of Castle Hill nature reserve have never been ploughed, so maintain something like the original character of this Sussex downland before modern farming took over. The bank on the right is Hawthorne scrub with a wide mixture of grasses and flowering plants. Now, under the protection of the National Park, the grassland is grazed to promote a variety of wildlife including birds and butterflies. A quiet place to enjoy my picnic lunch in the winter sunshine, open to the skies but secluded from roads.
