Grey Friar (773m) and Brim Fell (796m) - 20/06/2019
Distance: 14km; Ascent: ~720m; Time: 6h
We parked in the Duddon Valley at the Birks Bridge car park. Turn left out of the car park and walk up the road a short distance. Ignore the first public footpath sign and walk up a track shortly after this. After ~200m a footpath crosses the track, turn sharply right onto it. This passes through woodland and then bracken and then boggy grassland as the outflow channel from Seathwaite Tarn is approached. Once Seathwaite Tarn was in view we started ascending towards the summit of Grey Friar on the route indicated on the map below. This route is shown as a footpath on the Lake District map app we use, but there is no clear footpath on the ground until the last 500m or so before the summit. Unfortunately we did this section in moderately heavy cold rain and cloud. As we arrived at the summit cairn the clouds cleared and the sun came out giving us good views all around. There are two cairns at the summit of Grey Friar - the true summit is to the SE. The path marked on the OS map heading NNE towards Cockley Beck does not seem to exist on the ground - and was one of our options for continuing our route. The path heading round below Great Carrs and Swirl How towards Levers Hause was clear and with little change in elevation was quick, if rather exposed to the unseasonably cool wind. From Levers Hause there are good views of Levers Water and the ascent of Brim Fell and the impressive looking Dow Crag beyond. From the summit of Brim Fell, the natural continuation of the ridge line is to the Old Man of Coniston. We took a route directly to Goats Hause (again the footpath indicated on the OS map was not apparent on the ground). From Goats Hawse there are view of Goats Water and Dow Crag. From here we descended to the indistinct track on the SE of Seathwaite Tarn. There was no clear track for most of the route that we took (possibly there is a clearer route to the path indicated on the north side of the tarn, but that looked very boggy. Eventually we crossed the dam and weir and retraced the path of our inward journey.