For our third 3,000 footer, we had hoped for a clear day, as Skiddaw's position promised some wonderful views, but again we were unlucky and the cloud was very low.

We had parked the car at Applethwaite and walked to Millbeck, from where we would take the footpath to Carlside. From the side of the road we had some visibility, but the low cloud made it difficult to take a good picture.

Back at Carlside, we took the scree path from Carlside Tarn to Skiddaw.

At the top there was a large cairn, but consulting our map (as the visibility was very poor and there were no views to be had) confirmed that the true summit and the trig point required a left turn and some almost level walking along the summit ridge.

By now, it was teeming with rain and there was a howling wind, so we decided it was not a good time to stop for lunch, and started making our way quickly to our next destination, Skiddaw Little Man.

As we started walking off, a man with a carrier bag and a suit on, strode past us at great speed - obviously the locals are much hardier than us Southerners!

By the time we reached Skiddaw Little Man, David had walked ahead a little and in the poor visibility I could not see him. I soon spotted him at the summit cairn grinning. He later told me that he had been amused to look back into the mist from the summit cairn, and all he could see coming out of the cloud were two trekking poles, with me following on a few seconds later.

Although the weather was very bad, we decided to go ahead and walk out to Lonscale Fell, our final summit of the day.

This is a broad plateau, and if it was not for a fence running most of the way towards it, we could have had problems finding the summit, but as it happens, although the fence turns left before the summit, provided you keep walking straight ahead, you cannot really miss it.

On our last holiday in Cumbria, I had problems with keeping my stuff dry in the rucksack, in spite of having a rucksack liner, so this time I had invested in a rainproof cover. However, by the time we had walked to Lonscale Fell, it had been blown away by the strong winds, so if anybody out there has found a black raincover, I'd like it back!

From here, we dropped straight down towards Whit Beck and the car park. Unfortunately, with the visibility so poor, I made a poor judgement in suggesting we did not bother try to find the path, and as a result we ended up wading through lots and lots of overgrown heather - not the best way to finish off a long day's walking. Most annoyingly of all, by the time we got to the bottom, we were sufficiently out of the cloud to see that we had been quite close to the path all along.

From the car park, we walked along the road back to Applethwaite.