Black Fell & Tarn Hows
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Today turned out to be the best day’s weather of our recent stay in the Lakes, but not without a very wet start. As we were staying in Ambleside, there is always a shop or two to spend time looking in and finding walking clothes you didn’t know you wanted until you saw them. Plus a café or two to enjoy something naughty but nice. We both ended up with new clothes, and then had an early lunch at Lucy’s on a Plate: a favourite place of ours to eat in Ambleside. But we could see what the weather was doing outside too and the sun was breaking through and there was plenty of blue sky too between the heavy showers.  Black Fell We decided as it was already afternoon a short walk was best and we ended up at Tarn Hows, not just to walk around the tarn but to visit Black Fell, another place we hadn’t visited before. We parked at the Tarn Hows car park and were pleased to see the new visitor centre has now been built, complete with toilets. It always amazed me that one of the National Trust’s most popular locations in the Lakes never had any before.
We took a route through the Iron Keld plantation which like all plantations that have been felled looked a real mess and we couldn’t really work out why some single trees had been left. I was delighted when the warm sun brought out some butterflies, especially when one was a Wall Brown: something we do get further south, but I hadn’t seen one all year.
I hadn’t carried my macro lens with me that day (the one I use for nearly all my shots of butterflies) and I was interested to see how my new Nikon 18-200 would cope with close-up pictures, and how it would perform generally too. It had given me some very pleasing results so far in dull conditions and I’d had usable shots at shutter speeds where I’d normally have to delete the results, but I wanted to see how it would cope in good conditions too. As with every lens it takes a while to work out how to get the best from it.
I had also packed my Sigma 10-20 wide angle lens: I knew that was going to give me some great opportunities for shots and it soon came out of my backpack. The clouds cleared away and it was just so wonderful to see some blue sky, some interesting fluffy white clouds and far-reaching views. In fact we still can’t work out what we were looking at in some cases. We think it must be part of the Pennines or maybe the Howgills but not knowing that area very well can’t be certain.  Langdale Pikes It wasn’t hard to find the summit as there are obvious paths leading to the highest ground and as is so often the smallest of fells gives such great views all around. As is so often the case though, you find your eyes drawn towards the Langdale Pikes. We made our way back to Tarn Hows using a different path which led us through a very boggy area so we emerged looking filthy and joined up with everyone looking so clean and hardly any mud on their shoes as they were walking around on the level paths around the tarn. They had missed the best place to be I thought that afternoon.
I do like Tarn Hows but it never really does that much for me somehow and I’m pretty certain it looked a whole lot better in previous years when the present trees weren’t so tall, but it is very picturesque all the same and I can understand why so many people want to spend time there.
The day ended perfectly with a meal at the Three Shires Inn in Little Langdale - another place we would recommend to eat and I was pretty certain I had images on my cards today that I was going to be very pleased with.
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