Having climbed Pen Y Fan the previous week we thought there was no better time to tackle Scafell Pike especially as the weekend forecast looked perfect.

Unfortunately Scafell was 4.5 hours away which meant it was a very early start and we left the house in Gloucester just before 6am. We did a quick motorway service station stop before I took over driving as we headed into the lake district. I wasn’t the smoothest of drivers and after a few minutes of me on country roads both kids were car sick!

We eventually made it to Wast Water (a lake we had never visited) at about 10.30 and we pulled in and stopped for the kids to have a run around. Wast Water is beautiful – the water was so still that the reflections of the mountains were stunning.

^{Reflections and Stepping Stones at Wast Water}

We continued to the Wasdale car park which is where our hike was due to start and had a few snacks whilst putting our walking kit on. We walked out of the car park, passed a stream which the kids played by for a while, across a bridge and then the ascent began.

The beginning of the climb followed the stream up the mountain and was quite an easy walkable path. When we had reached an altitude of 200m we had our first break – and sat on some huge boulders looking at Wast Water behind us. We carried on climbing and when we reached 300 metres we had to cross the river. There was no bridge – we had to make our way across on the rocks. Tom ended up getting his feet wet!

We carried on along the path and soon we came to a bit of snow and a boulder field. The kids spent a bit of time making and throwing snowballs before we had to scramble ourselves over the boulders.

We crossed the boulders following the cairns and re-joined the path and there was now a lot more snow. The views across the mountains were stunning – there was snow, bits of cloud and blue sky. We couldn’t have asked for a nicer day.

^{Views as we approached the top}

The final part of the climb was super snowy and we had to rely on the cairns to lead us in the right direction. We met two girls wearing legging and trainers (completely unsuitable) who were coming off the mountain – and we had a short chat.

Once we were nearly at the top we could see the trig point and the stone hut. We stopped, did some photos and had a hot chocolate which Stuart had carried up in a flask.

^{The summit of Scafell Pike}

We didn’t want to stay too long as although it was only 3pm we were aware the sun would go down quite quickly. Also it was deserted although we were aware of another family about 20 minutes behind us.

On our descent the views over Wast Water were beautiful with the light going down.

^{Views over Wast Water as we descended the mountain}

Izzy then announced she needed the toilet so we ended up running the last bit of the descent to the car park for her and we arrived at 5pm. As we were leaving the carpark attendant asked us had we seen two girls as they had phoned mountain rescue having got stuck so we told them where we had last seen them. We made our way home driving over Hard Knock Pass as the sun set.