Wednesday 08 September

 Another very starry night in this dark skies area. Sunshine and breakfast outside, joined by quite a few ducks. We are on the road shortly after 9:00 heading  towards Thwaite then picking up a path that takes us to the Pennine Way and we follow this track upwards to Great Shunner Fell. 

Very hot and airless and strong sun. We then get a bit lost on the grouse moor following the wrong fence line , and faff around for quite a while on the tussocky peat moor. Eventually we reach the Buttertubs road which we have to follow down its 25% gradients. After nearly 6 hours of walking we get back to Usha Gap. We decide to cool down by going for some wild swimming. But this involves another hilly cycle to the river at Keld. We do manage to swim in the Swale, very refreshing, but a bit brown and shallow then back to our bikes and up to the pub at the Keld road for a well earned pint of Black Sheep ale. Then we wearily head back to base for showers, drinkies and supper.