Ullock Pike, Longside Edge, Carl Side & Dodd From The Old Sawmill Tearooms

I've been waiting and watching the weather as I wanted to try and do this walk without too much cloud. I've seen several people online do it and it always seems cloudy or drizzly etc. Anyhow, I managed to touch for a relatively cloudless day and the ones that did appear, disappeared quickly or got blown somewhere else. So with blue sky and sunshine promised, off I popped.
I parked up in The Old Sawmill Tearooms car park(not free) off the A591 at the Northern end of Dodd. There are plenty of spaces but at popular times like weekends and school holidays it probably fills up early. I was first there today just after sunrise at 7am as I fancied an early start as I'm not the fastest or fittest walker out there and I had an inkling that I wouldn't be anywhere near Naismiths Rule time of just over 3 hours. I also stop for many little rests, drink slurps, absorbing the views and taking lots of photos quite a lot on my walks.
The route mapping shows the walk at just under 6 mile although adding on all the little zigzags eventually pushes the walked distance out to 6.3 miles.
The wind wasn't present on sheltered sections but on exposed sections it was blowing a little bit and it was very cold even with the sun out, although it got warmer as the morning progressed.

One of the starting points for several trails around Dodd. This is right at the side of the Tearooms and my route crosses the bridge, swings right and then immediately left onto the path which passes the rear of the Tearooms.

The Ascent starts steadily and very soon you come across an intersection. We're following the Yellow markers to start with.

The path carries on ascending until we reach a bridge which we cross and start descending for a bit.

We carry on descending through the spooky Wood until we reach a fork and we follow the yellow marker and start ascending again.

This path eventually starts to descend again until we reach an intersection where we now ignore the yellow marker and turn right to ascend once again.

At the next fork we turn right and carry on ascending until we reach a gate where we turn left once through.

This starts our ascent of the fell proper. The path is obvious and steadily climbs the fell.

After a short while we reach the ridge and it becomes self evident that we need to turn right onto the ridge path and start our climb to Ullock Pike.

The route up to Ullock Pike has several nobbly bits that are steep in places.

The final lump is a minor scramble that has paths going in all directions. They all look as easy and as difficult as each other and they all meet up again just before the top. So there really isn't a right or wrong one to take. It just boils down to what you feel like on the day.

This was me trying some shadowy artistic flair with my photography skills, if you can call them that.

Ullock Pike used to have a small cairn as is seen on many web pages bit it seems to have disappeared and is now just this unassuming lump of rock poking out of the ground

1 summit done so onward to Longside Edge continuing along the same path.

There is a small cairn on Longside Edge. It can be seen here as I highlight the very scary looking path up to Skiddaw from this vantage point.

Looking back to Ullock Pike with some of its nobbly bits on the ascent.

Carl Side next and I took the path to the right which goes right up the middle. You can take the other one, its just longer. The other one also goes to Skiddaw.

Me on Carl Side summit feeling relieved and pleased with myself. The path to Skiddaw doesn't look as scary as it did earlier.

The path down starts off by aiming in the direction of Dodd and then changes to head towards Keswick.

The start of the White Stones rock formation. The path becomes a bit trickier here but still manageable.

Turn right at this large cairn.

The white stones are all over this part of the fell including the path.

Looking back at a really dangerous section. On a descent you will need to go to over the top of the rocks to the right of this drop. Just be careful.

The step stile at Long Doors where you can continue your descent via several different paths or ascend Dodd first which is what I did today.

The Memorial at the top of Dodd.

This is where my camera battery died and I never gave my mobile phone camera a second thought until it was too late and I wasn't going back up.
The ascent and descent of Dodd and your route back to the Tearooms is a straightforward affair and is quite difficult to get wrong unless you're me today. My inner Tarzan took over me whilst on the summit of Dodd and instead of descending via the sensible routes, I decided to emmulate several other walkers I had seen on t'interweb and confidently strode off the front of Dodd with the aim of taking the path through the trees. Now if you actually know where the path is that takes you through the trees safely and onto the clearing and down to the forestry track lower down, then go for it, but if like me you took a wrong turn and ended up descending through treacherously slippy, low growing and very spiky pine trees on steep, wet and overgrown almost non existent paths going off in all directions then you're in for a real shock. At some point of the descent you tell yourself you've come too far to turn back now, you might as well press on. (what a stupid idea that was) What a relief when I cleared the trees and ended up on the forestry track lower down the back of Dodd. So let that be a lesson to me especially, and others that you should really stick to your plan and use the popular well trodden routes unless you are Bear Grylls or Ranulph Fiennes et al.
Anyway no harm done fortunately, except for a bit of my over confidence thrown in the 'never do that again' bin. After all that excitement, the walk was brilliant, the views were spectacular and the sunshine really helped the day.

My 4 Wainwrights today took me 5 hours and 45 minutes overall which included lunch, my usual stops and a rediculous detour. (shown on route map above)

TrueFreedomSeekers and 2 others like this post

By TrueFreedomSeekers on 10/04/22 at 4:18pm (last edited 18/05/22 at 4:18pm)

This is a great route that you have taken. One that we haven't before but is certainly now on the cards. Looks as though you had mostly nice weather on your walk too which is always good. We recently climbed Carl Side and then up to Skiddaw and the weather changed from pure sunshine to blizzards within a couple of hours. But it was one hell of a walk too.

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