Little Borrowdale

Far less famous than the Borrowdale up near Keswick this is another of our local walks. It starts from virtually next to the motorway - one of the things I like best is that as you progress through the trees, along the rushing river and deeper into the folds of the hills the noise of roads and people fades away and slowly nature's calm starts to take over.
In today's wind and rain it seemed like it might offer a modicum more shelter than heading onto the open fell, but unfortunately we'd forgotten how quickly you leave the woods and find yourself out in the open again. However just as we thought we were in for a proper soaking the rain wore itself out - so we pushed on. The main farm in the valley changed hand last year and the new people seem to have planted more than a few hundred trees - all with quite solid timber deer fences around them - it will be interesting to see how they take hold over the next few years - you can sense that this was once a deeply wooded valley - so in some ways this will be a return to its natural wilder state.

I've been concentrating on my knee rehab exercises on these walks; feet pointing forward, not allowing the right knee to drop in or the left to over compensate - suddenly shorter distances are far more tiring - but I think some of the aches are starting to disappear a little.