Sour Howes and Sallows  | - Click on the image above to view gallery
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 Rocky outcrops on the route to the summit Today our walk started close to the delightful village of Troutbeck and as luck would have it we managed to park in a small lay-by just where we wanted to start our walk at the bottom of the Garburn Road. Very soon we made height on this path and could see our first objective in sight. Sour Howes at 1568ft isn’t particularly high but we found the route up to the summit interesting enough. In fact I had really expected it to be an uninteresting grassy slope so was surprised to follow the ridge path over several rocky outcrops. While we were walking up this slope we heard the calls of a hunt going on and there were several people on the lower slopes of Applethwaite Common, obviously looking for something. Thankfully we weren’t asked to detour from our walk because of the activity.  Ash Tree  View from the climb towards Troutbeck Tongue
The summit area of Sour Howes really is a rather confusing place but we think we found the highest of the grassy hummocks, although there was no summit cairn to speak of. The view towards Windermere is very nice although getting a decent picture of this view wasn’t easy as we were looking directly into the sun. The weather had started rather overcast but during the walk the clouds had lifted on the higher fells so our views improved as the walk progressed.
After lunch, during which we had been watched closely by some Ravens obviously waiting for us to leave to see if we had left something for them, we made our way across the contours of the fell and followed the wall to the end of the ridge to Sallows. From there we made our way to the summit, which has to have the cutest summit cairn I have ever seen, made from just a few tiny stones. It was then just a case of making our way back down the short easy slope to the Garburn Pass, and once back on the Garburn Road we just followed it back to our starting point.  Sunshine on Sallows  Follow the wall to the summit
Sour Howes and Sallows may not be the most exciting of fells to visit but we just enjoy being in Lakeland and walking the fells so much that we found it as enjoyable as ever. Although I don’t think we will be rushing back to them our views from these fells showed us how many other fells in the area we would still like to visit, in particular the Ill Bell ridge.
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