Monday 3rd December 2018. An ascent of Castle Crag 290m/75m, Borrowdale, Lake District, Cumbria, England. 7.2km, with 270m of ascent. 2 hours 25mins.

It has been some time since my last hiking photo-blog, as family matters have prevented me from finding the time to do justice to the beauty of the British hills. My father died in November, and there has been much to do, not least the mourning at his passing. There have been a few short hill-walks, but in poor grey weather that did not excite me to the putting of fingers to the keys. The walks reflected the sombreness of my mood.

My wife and I had booked a short break in a hotel in Northern Lakeland many months ago. The timing proved apposite, between the death and funeral, giving us time to refresh and process our confused thoughts and feelings. The weather forecast for the first day, before we booked into the hotel, was conducive to a walk in the first days of winter. We headed to beautiful Borrowdale, south of Derwent Water, for a hike over the diminutive, but impressive, Castle Crag. A.W. Wainwright devoted a whole chapter in Book 6 of his Pictorial Guides to the Lakeland Fells to this small fell, and it is the only one in the seven volumes below 1000ft (304.8m). It deserves inclusion, as it is an impressive mini-mountain. There are no difficulties in reaching its summit, but it is ringed by crags and quarry cliffs that invite a degree of caution in its ascent.

We parked in the National Trust car park in the village of Rosthwaite in Borrowdale. An expensive place to put the car, but as members of the National Trust (for Scotland) it was free for us. A weak winter sun shone, giving the landscape a fresh sparkling quality that was life-affirming. We took the track through the village, and alongside the River Derwent to the humpback stone bridge, called New Bridge, over the water. We were walking on the Cumbria Way, but soon left it to climb steeply on a side path up through woodland to a stile over a stone wall. Beyond the stile, the path headed up in a series of zigzags, built into an unstable mound of broken slate, to the base of a quarry.

It took us a while to locate its continuance, wandering around in the quarry, until we found a narrow trail heading up through the trees. The summit lay a little way beyond, in a clearing above the trees. A large rock tor was the highest point, easily scaleable from its northern side. On its southern side was a memorial to the men of Borrowdale killed in the Boer and two World Wars, decked with red poppies after the remembrance service last month. The view was stunning, especially to the north. Derwent Water lay sparkling beneath us, with Skiddaw above cloaked in cloud. It was hard to leave the summit, but it was approaching 2pm, with sunset only two hours hence. It was time to move on.

We headed down to the stile in the wall, but this time descended north to rejoin the Allerdale Ramble, which took a route down a rugged dale, through which Broadslack Gill tumbled on its way to join the River Derwent. The trail was on a paved track, taken by the quarrymen of yore working in the quarry below the summit. Back in Borrowdale, we crossed the beck by a narrow wooden bridge to rejoin the Cumbria Way. This wound its way through woodland, mainly close to the river, back to New Bridge and Rosthwaite. The sun was low now, with filtered red light making the rock on the nearby fells across the dale glow a deep orange.