Monday, January 28, 2019

TAB to Bowland - The event

There was 4 in total for this little adventure into the Bowland Fells, YJ, EtU SN and yours truly. Weather was not looking the best but we hoped we'd be off the fell by the time it turned a bit 'yucky'

We headed off up the Langden Valley with the promise of a guided tour round Langden Castle. Both SN and myself were a little disappointed to find it was only a glorified cow shed, but we agreed to the obligatory piccies. The guided tour was brief to say the least.


From here we headed further up the valley to ascend towards Fiendsdale Head, negotiating a crossing of the Langden Brook. Wet feet for all.

Visibilty on the top wasn't great, so it was useful to have fence to follow, visiting the Trig Point on Fair Snape was left for another day. 

Navigating up to this point had be going 'swimmingly' well especially due to the number of boggy bits, but the lure of a waymarked trod down out of the mist had the only person able to read the map without glasses, making a spectacular parallel error into the wrong valley.


The map reader only realized their error once Langden Castle came back into view - ooops!! All we had to do now was find a safe way to cross back over Langden Brook, given that we were further downstream. Wet feet were a given this time. 

The gps trace reveals the true scale of the error! Thought they were in one valley to the right


All thanks to EtU for suggesting the outing. All felt it was worth another visit but perhaps in the summer months and to see if we can do the original planned route!

TF

1 comment:

Ed the Unready said...

Go on TF, admit it, It wasn't a navigational error - you'd hatched a plot with SN, so you could have another look at the castle.
With regard to a re-run in better visibility, we might do better to try the route in reverse, perhaps when the heather will be in full bloom - July?