The Good, the Bad & the Ugly

The Rigg, Haweswater.
Up and out early (well, ish....) to catch the best part of the day. We weren't so sure when we drove into Mardale under a grey sky, but the odd patch of blue offered some promise.
We first wandered along Mardale Beck until the ground began to rise and pooch began to struggle - then we turned and headed for Riggindale - as we did we could see a wonderful clear blue sky to the East, and by the time we reached the Rigg it was fabulous. This little local corner of the Lakes never ever fails to impress!

I decided I'd hop over a stile and have a quick look for fungi - sadly what I found was much much worse - see extras.
This is simply one of the most beautiful places I know. Anywhere. To see it desecrated like this is heartbreaking. Being next to a reservoir camping is forbidden - but clearly that hadn't put off the thoughtless group (and it must have been a fair size group) that had built and then abandoned several camps - as I wandered the length of the Rigg it was hard to work out how so much rubbish could have been strewn so far, how so much equipment had been broken or simply discarded. I carried out what I could manage (2tents and a bin bag) but there's at least 100kgs still there -more tents, half a dozen camping chairs, 2 duvets, a frying pan, bottles by the dozen, huge piles of semi burnt waste - seeing the local flock of sheep trying to eat melted plastic food containers made me feel sick. I've put a shout out on a few instructor forums and this week a gang of us will go and clear it up - I can't really believe after the success of the Real3Peaks Challenge that two weeks later we're doing it all again.