Seat Sandal – Lake District Walks
November 30, 2023
Seat Sandal is Clark’s choice. “Let’s do something in the middle, somewhere we haven’t explored much”. Well ok then, Seat Sandal it is. As it goes Seat Sandal is an extension of Fairfield. A much loved horseshoe walk from Ambleside on which, I’ve just discovered, we actually walked over 6 of Wainwright’s fells (Low Pike, High Pike, Dove Crag and Hart Crag on the way up and Great Rigg on the way down). Well I never knew that. That was back in the days of “Gary, where are we going to walk today?”, where I willingly let someone else decide on the walk and the route. These days I am the researcher of our destinations and routes…with the help of Mr Wainwright’s wise words of course.
Our circular of Seat Sandal
This is number 68 of Wainwright’s fells at 2415 feet (736 meters), so a reasonable climb. As ever we studied the relevant Wainwright chapter on Seat Sandal and made our choice of ascent to go up Raise Beck. His words of “This is a quick way up” and “very easily climbed from Raise Bridge” aided our decision….as well as the fact we’d be walking alongside lovely cascading water.
This really is a simple route following the beck along a stoned path before turning right near its top to go steeply up a grass bank to the summit.
A very respectable 10km circular which took us 3 hours 45 minutes (including our many stops for photos, food and foot dipping).
The summit
The top of Seat Sandal is not especially noteworthy, being pretty flat with some rocky outcrops. But it does have 3 different points from which to get great views.; over to Ullswater, directly across to the Fairfield range and then looking north to Helvellyn and Skiddaw beyond. Just as we dipped off the edge on our descent, we started to get the most amazing views of Grisedale Tarn:
Join us on our walk up Seat Sandal
The descent
We took the east ridge sharply down loose scree to Grisedale Hause, with views of Grisedale tarn in front of us all the way. From there we followed Tongue Gill back down to the road and were once again accompanied by the sound of cascading water.
The only downside was having to walk along the road (fast traffic) to our parking spot at Dunmail Raise. The plus side was getting to dip our toes in Tongue Gill at the end. Heaven.
Love the shout out about being in Georgia! ❤