A brief window of opportunity…how many times have I used that phrase on this blog? This is the internet age, the era of textspeak and limited attention spans, I ought to be using an acronym…BWOO! How’s that?
So, I had a BWOO because the boys had been invited to attend a cub-scouting event in Whinlatter Forest; they were scheduled to kill and gut a bullock before roasting it over a blazing 2CV. Possibly. Anyway, leaving them with their favourite paramilitary organisation, I parked at the Spout Gill car park and, with three hours before I needed to pick them up again, set-off in search of some Birketts to tick.
Mr Birkett suggests a circuit here which takes in 6 tops, but I knew I would never get around all of those. In fact, I wasn’t really sure, at my standard Almost Snail’s Pace (but not quite that speedy), that I would make any tops. In the end I managed to snaffle two: Broom Fell and Lord’s Seat.
It was a hazy day with very limited views, but there was a pleasantly distracting diversity of insect life about, seemingly enjoying the clammy conditions.
Dor Beetle
Looking back from the ascent on Broom Fell – the hill on the left is Whinlatter Top.
Mother Shipton moth.
I had quite a game getting a sharp photo of this distinctive little chap (or chapess). It’s a Mother Shipton Moth apparently. Look at those dark profiles on the outer edges of each wing; apparently they resemble the famed Yorkshire witch. She was a prophetess. Predicted that the world would go to wrack-and-ruin, destroyed in a conflagration sparked by small boys and blazing 2CVs. Or maybe that’s a load of bullocks.
The Cairn on Broom Fell.
Looking back to Broom Fell from Lord’s Seat.
There’s an embarrassing postscript to this tale. I generally pride myself on my ability to cope with the simple tasks in life…tying shoe-laces, utilising a knife and fork efficiently, turning up at airports on the same day that my flight is booked, distinguishing correctly between left and right; that kind of thing. What possessed me then, on the way home, to turn left onto the M6 at Penrith and tootle blissfully along, Scotland-bound I shall never know. I might have got away with it: our boys were happily listening to a story and wouldn’t, I think, have twigged that I had made a preposterous error, but we were giving a friend of theirs a lift and he was soon wise to my buffoonery. Since then I’ve faced a certain amount of ribbing from the parents of the rest of the cub-scout troop. (Is troop the right collective noun? Band? Mob? Cell?)
Anyway, a grand (half) day out. Roll on the next BWOO.
Beating The Bounds 
Gloomy day, but nice quiet hills. We did the nearby and very curiously named hill of Barf on OGS stag do (before he arrived for his own do). Heading the wrong way by 180 degrees is easily done. Ask TBF, once turned and headed for Derby instead of Nottingham of the M1
Yes, I remembered that ascent (but not that it was that particular weekend). I was trying to remember whether we also climbed Lord’s Seat, but I wasn’t sure?
As for heading the wrong way – I can’t help feeling that it might be a forerunner of many ‘senior moments’ to come.
Ha! Glad to hear that I’m not the only one to make seemingly improbable navigational errors. 😉
Seemingly improbable errors are my specialty!
There’s also a Lord’s Seat in the Peak District near to Castleton; I thought your photos didn’t look familiar.
Hi Lee,
On Rushup Edge – I know it very well, although it’s an age since I’ve been there. I guess there might be a few more Lord’s Seats out there. There’s a Lord Berkeley’s Seat on An Tealleach. I don’t know of any others, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that they exist.
[…] steady and pointed in the right direction I recognised the moth, because I’ve seen one once before, in the hills above […]