Boretree Tarn

It was hot and I wanted a swim. We went to High Dam but with people arriving in separate cars to maintain social distancing, there was a parking problem.   We purposely came on a Monday thinking it would be quiet but we were wrong.  There seem to be more people about, maybe its furloughed people with free time or parents “working at home” because the children are off school, who knows, but it’s a problem. The NT have not yet opened Fell Foot Park but this has not stopped the visitors, many too many were parked on the verges of the main road and walking into the closed park.   It was like a bank holiday.
Anyway – back to High Dam, the people of Finsthwaite must be fed up, the English Heritage car park was closed, the LDNP car park was full, so we like, many others were parked on the road.  To avoid the crowds, we trekked over to Boretree Tarn, about 3km and did not see a soul on the way. You can imagine my dismay when we got to the tarn and found a family on the floating raft with a boat and a large inflatable yellow duck.  They told us we should not swim in the tarn because the tarn was not open access and they did not want it to become like High Dam. There is little chance of that, it was a 3km hike across rough open access land to get there and I was quite hot and bothered looking forward to a dip.  I don’t know who they were, but they let us swim.  I can tick off Boretree Tarn. Penally1 alerted me to this swimming opportunity, I’m guessing she’s never come across the family with a floating yellow duck.

MrP is not a hardy wild swimmer and had brought his wetsuit long johns along so he would not be too cold. It was not cold. It was glorious. Main blip is Mr P changing on the shore. Extra is the tarn, sorry about the water droplets on the lens