Well, fairly astonishingly, we did it. Not only did we do it, but we did it in time to get down and (thankfully) get the train back to our studio apartment.
After some debate, we decided to take Wainwright’s advice, and instead of just heading up to Burnmoor Tarn, which had been plan A, we instead took ourselves up through Low Holme, and the Miterdale Forest before making our way up to Whin Rigg and across The Screes, before creating Illgill Head and making the (it turns out) incredibly steep descent to Burnmoor Tarn.
By this point we were both pretty tired, but there’s no point to bring pretty tired nine hundred feet and a few miles from your destination. So down we went the rest of the feet, our feet complaining intermittently and my sodden five fingers squelching away (to be fair, they started squelching in the Miterdale Forest).
To our amazement we did the whole thing in about seven hours, which means we got to knock the last couple of miles off the walk by taking the train again from Dalegarth to Eskdale.
We did, however, opt to treat ourselves to dinner at The George IV pub, which was…pleasant. Not amazing, but solid pub food.
