Carlisle & District Rambling & Fellwalking Club

Walk & Event Reports

Sunday 23rd April 2017

A/B Walk

Mabie Forest

10 Miles Grade 3

Leaders: Peter Flynn & Ken Halliday

Report by Peter Flynn

Photos by

John McKay & Peter Flynn

On such a beautiful day it was lovely to welcome several new walkers.  We had Richard, Sean (been a couple of times but fairly new), Patricia  and Sue,  who seems to have stopped off from touring the World.  I had a very interesting conversation with Sue;  she had been in the mountains in various parts of the World,  including (successfully) dodging bears in Canada.  When I asked her why she had joined the walking group, she said there was safety in numbers and it was good to go somewhere with someone knowing exactly where they were going.  I’m afraid I must pull you up on that last bit,  Sue.  After complaining about a wrong turning on the last occasion we did this walk,  and making a particular point of pointing it out on the recce last Friday,  I had a brain storm and managed to walk right past the requisite turning as though it wasn’t there!  Fortunately,  we had a co-leader,  Ken,  who is not subject to the same flights of fancy and he put everyone right.  Other than that,  it was a lovely walk.  There were 32 of us in the group,   the forest was at its best. We started off with a vast giant sequoia tree,  there was  a tremendous variety of birds,  we had sightings of a couple of jays and possible one red kite (might have been a buzzard) that accompanied us for a while.  The weather was warm,  we had superb views of the Lake District across the Solway Firth,  even Criffel was inviting.  We finished up with the excellent café next to the new,  (as in 1273) abbey.  Thanks to Ken for keeping us right and I trust everyone enjoyed it as much as I did.   

Peter