The main reason for the weekend trip to the Lake District was to catch sunset and sunrise at Sprinkling Tarn.  After leaving Chris at Tarn Hows, we got ourselves some breakfast/lunch, drove to Seathwaite and started walking.  There were a lot more cars there than I expected but, luckily, we managed to get parked right at the end closest to Seathwaite.  It’s about a 6km walk to where we were camping with a 500m ascent, which wouldn’t normally be too bad, but we were carrying quite a lot of stuff.  Most of the following photos were taken using a phone.

By the time we got to Sprinkling Tarn, the sun was beginning to set and the sky was clear of interesting clouds.  We also started feeling pretty cold (it would be below zero centigrade overnight), so I didn’t think it was worth setting up the camera to get some sunset photos, which was a shame.  We set up camp, cooked some dinner and spent the evening and night in the tent where it was warmer.

The next morning, I got up to find that the clear skies were now heavy fog…

At time went by, the fog was getting thicker and it was looking like I wasn’t going to get any photos at all.  About 5 minutes after that photo was taken, the Tarn couldn’t be seen at all from that location.

I sent a message to Chris to let him know that we’d survived the night.  He said probably wouldn’t sleep worrying about us, but apparently, he slept like a log!

While I was wandering around, trying to find something to photograph, the cloud started to clear in places which led to some nice views down a valley to the right of the tarn.  I composed the shot, using a focal length of 95mm to zoom in on the far end of the valley and the town of Keswick in the distance and waited for the clouds to part, allowing the sun to punch through the mist and light up the valley.

After getting my photograph, we started the walk back.  Originally, I’d planned to walk down through the valley that I’d just photographed, but it looked like quite a steep descent, so we decided to go back the way we came, which is longer but probably easier.

We stopped to get this photograph on the was down…

Although the last kilometre or so of the walk back is flat, the toll of carrying the backpack started to kick in, so I was very glad that we’d managed to park to close to Seathwaite.

We dumped our backpacks in the car and once I could move my arms again, started the long drive home, pausing for some lunch at the White Horse Inn, which I can highly recommend.