We both wanted to take our time to walk this route so we could explore the mountain and it's surrounding and search out all of the areas we had read about for so long. But due to relentless rain that week we decided we would just go on the next available day and see what happens. So on that very day with the cloud still hanging over the peak we left Wasdale campsite and headed up to the track. Walking through the car park confirmed to us that it was going to be a fairly quiet day on the mountain compared to what we had heard prior. As we crossed the bridge onto the track heading up through Lingmell Gill it soon became obvious that most of our walk would be on man made tracks built to keep people on route and also to protect the mountain from erosion. It's a fairly straight forward walk up this part to the spot where you can look across to Lord's Rake with its precariously hanging boulder at the top. Maybe next time!

With the walk going well and the skies clearing we now had a short scramble up to a place called Mickledore (Lord of the rings?!) which proved to be a little harder than it looked. Great fun though getting hand to rock but over a little to soon really. Still we then had the view of the summit and a cracking view to the north. It was really warming up now and we decided to get moving fairly quickly before the midday sun hit us. We followed the various cairns through a field of rubble and eventually came across the summit. And we weren't let down be the view. This really is a great place to be in clear weather. Stunning views in every direction and you could even see the isle of Man!

After a good half an hour of taking in the views and filling up on calories we decided we would take a different route back down. So we headed down towards Lingmell where we planned to include that summit as well. Unfortunately as we reached the saddle between the two mountains a big storm cloud was clearly going to hit us and you could see the rain already pouring on to the valley below. A quick turn of direction and we we heading down the side of Lingmell and back to the car park and campsite from where we had started. We managed to get down fairly quickly but did get a bit of a soaking! But we didn't care because we had climbed to the top of the highest mountain in England and there was just one thing left to do, a few pints in the local pub to finish of a great day. And a further bonus was Scrappy (the dog) really seamed to have enjoyed his day out at the local kennels!