No rain today Pt.2 Great Burney

Friday turned out to be a very warm sunny day so we set of for a walk in the Woodland Valley in South Cumbria and go up Great Burney where the views are stunning on a day like today.
It was not a long walk by any means and more of an amble.

We parked the car at the No Parking sign just off the A5092. The sign looks like it’s been shot at, run over, but significantly nobody has taken any notice of it for years.

The first half a mile or so is a single track road walk with good views out to the estuary and across the Woodland valley. Today we could see for miles.

Just past Burney farm we took the footpath which heads off in the direction of Knittleton on a very heavily fern ridden path. Ideal tick country.
Passing the small Burney tarn on our left and gaining an insignificant rise before hitting the single track fell road.

Easy walking for another half mile brought us to the T junction with the fell road to Broughton. We carried straight on across the road and had to be careful with our footing as it was a bit boggy in places. The view of Great Burney filling our view to the south.
Prior to reaching Crooked Birch farm the path heading south is indistinct although many people have walked this way before. There is no chance of going astray though.

 Great Burney

The Coniston fells

Very soon a better track is reached and this leads you all the way to the summit and trig point of Great Burney. On the way up the views just get better and better and it’s difficult to make progress as we stood and stared at the magnificent scenery in all directions. Black Combe, The Corney and Birker fells, Scafell range, Duddon fells, Dow Crag, The Old man of Coniston, Wetherlam, Helvellyn, Kentmere fells and on and on into Yorkshire, Ingleborough 30 miles away could be seen. Stunning today.

View North from the summit

View South across Kirby Moor with Ulverston in the distance. Double click the photo to enlarge it and the Hoad Monument can be seen (Centre).

Summit trig point.

 There was a cooling breeze crossing from the west so we headed for a hollow on the east side of the Trig Point for lunch and made a coffee with the new Coleman F1 Lite.
As Gayle quite rightly pointed out in the comments of the previous post, the Primus wind shield is just a little bit short on the F1 and it leaves a gap under the pan. We reverted to a foil windshield which as well as being much lighter than the Primus does a better job of shielding the burner.

Lunch over we walked to the West side of the summit finding an unfortunate ewe that had been lunch for a fox or two, before heading down the very steep section of path South, back down to the car. We also spotted another walker making his way to the summit. The only person we saw.

Just about half way down i was taking a photograph of some Tormentil a few feet off the path and as i knelt down i spotted in the grass what i thought was a glasses case. It turned out to be a damp but still working Mobile phone alongside a whistle and a torch attached to a carabiner.
I checked the contacts and found Mum. The items are now on the way back to a lad who had lost them last weekend whilst out walking with his Grandad. The luck that i was off track, on all that open fell side, photographing a flower and spotting a phone that had only just recently been lost is uncanny.

Wainwright says in his book The Outlying Fells, that there is a small stone circle to the south but like him we never found it either. To be fair though the ferns were too dense to make any identification possible at this time of year.

How nice this walk is on such a lovely clear sunny day. Pity the weather changed again so soon. The weekend being wet again but with good visibility for quite a lot of the time. Only the high fells being shrouded.



More photo’s of the views/walk are available  here.