Tag Archives: Wainwright

The Savage Temple at the Heart of Scafell

Wainwright compared Scafell Crag to a great cathedral where a man may lose all his conceit. I set off for Lord’s Rake and the West Wall Traverse with Wainwright archivist, Chris Butterfield and Lakeland Routes author, Richard Jennings to rediscover a sense of awe, experience the spiritual power of savage places and ponder whether we all need to reconnect with the sublime.

Cults of Nature

Norman Nicholson called it a cult of nature. Even at this early hour, a long line of pilgrims snakes up the grassy zig zags to Lingmell Col, above which the boulder field awaits: the desolate rocky desert at the summit of England’s highest mountain—Scafell Pike.

The author looking up at Mickledore Pikes Crag, Great Gable and the Lingmell Col path in the background - photo by Chris Butterfield
The author looking up at Mickledore; Pikes Crag, Great Gable & the Lingmell Col path in the background – photo by Chris Butterfield

All this began with a book. Until the late 1700’s, no-one visited Lakeland for pleasure. It was seen as a savage wilderness. Then in 1756, Edmund Burke published A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, in which he ascribed aesthetic taste to two fundamental instincts: self-propagation and self-preservation. All objects perceived by the senses appealed in some degree to one or other of these. Objects that were pleasing and gentle, suggesting comfort and safety, appealed to the instinct of self-propagation, those that were great and vast, suggesting fear and wonder aroused the instinct of self-preservation. The category of things that appealed significantly to the instinct of self-propagation, he called the Beautiful; the category that aroused the instinct of self-preservation, he called The Sublime.

The Sublime inspired the Picturesque movement in art. Suddenly, gentle pastoral scenes and sylvan idylls were out of fashion and savage wildernesses were in vogue. Apostles of the Picturesque like William Gilpin and Thomas Gray visited Lakeland and published accounts of their travels, exaggerating the height of the mountains and peppering their prose with heady hyperbole—the crags were terrible (in the literal sense of terror-inducing), and the towering heights were awful. They had found a sublime landscape—one that could shock and awe, and their early guidebooks fanned flames of interest.

Then came the Romantics. For the Lake Poet, William Wordsworth, the rugged integrity of the dalesmen and their close harmony with nature offered a panacea for all the ills industrialisation and urban living had inflicted on society. Gray never ventured much further than the Jaws of Borrowdale and thought the idea of climbing Skiddaw comically impossible, but Coleridge narrowly escaped death descending Scafell’s hazardous Broad Stand and experienced a religious-like rapture at having survived. William Hutchinson had described Wasdale as a valley infested by wildcats, foxes, martins, and eagles, but for Wordsworth, “no part of the country is more distinguished by sublimity”.

As the Victorians flocked to Lakeland so their relationship with the fells became more physical. Climbing Skiddaw became a must, and the more adventurous embraced rock-climbing. Owen Glynne Jones published a hugely popular book, Rock Climbing in the English Lake District, which remains a vibrant distillation of the dashing spirit of the age.

For Nicholson, these cults of nature are “symptoms of a diseased society, a consumptive gasp for fresh air”. They have arisen “because modern man has locked himself off from the natural life of the land, because he has tried to break away from the life-bringing, life-supporting rhythms of nature, to remove himself from the element that sustains him, in fact, he has become a fish out of nature.” But this is not only a sign of disease, “it is also a sign of health—a sign, at least, that man guesses where the remedy might be found.”

Krampus

It’s nearly 50 years since Nicholson published The Lakers, his insightful history of those early Lakeland writers, yet hordes still flock to these hills. Scafell Pike has become a bucket list must for YouTubers, Instagram photo op’ers, and charity-eventers, all faithfully following the crowd, checking social media as they go, some streaming Spotify, some carrying beers and disposable BBQ’s for summit parties… and amid this hubbub, I can’t help wondering whether we’ve forgotten what it is we came here for.

Deep Gill Buttress
Deep Gill Buttress/Symonds Knott

My misgivings run deeper than the litter and the wildfire risk, although these are increasingly alarming. In On Sacred Ground, the second of two beautifully written books documenting a genuinely awe-inspiring walk of 7000 miles through from the southern tip of Italy to Norway’s northern cape, Andrew Terrill describes how, in Salzburg, he stumbles on Krampusnacht, a gruesome Halloween-like parade of horned monsters roaming the streets, striking delighted terror into the crowds of wide-eyed children.

“Krampus has inhabited Austrian folklore for centuries. The creature originated thousands of years ago in pagan rituals as a horned wilderness god. In medieval times, Christianity appropriated them, inserting them into religious plays as servants of the Devil. By the seventeenth century, Krampusse found themselves paired inextricably with Saint Nicholas, and celebrations on Saint Nicholas Day soon featured saint and monster side by side, the evil Krampus a useful tool for convincing doubters to follow a righteous path.”

“I found myself wondering what effect Krampus would have had on my own childhood. I hadn’t thought much about wild nature while growing up in suburban London. I’d barely known it existed…

“The culture I’d been raised within insisted that I was separate from nature and above it; that it existed for my use. But the threat of Krampus might have helped me question that, might have hinted at my true place in the natural order of things. It might have reminded me that nature could never be controlled. That it deserved great respect. Perhaps it was something the human race needed too, and desperately; a critical reminder that wild nature would run rampage and devour us all if we stepped too far out of line.”

The Roaring Silence

The sublime is all about escaping the trappings of civilisation and facing the savage grandeur of the wilderness, reminding ourselves we are a tiny grain of sand on a vast shore with towering cliffs and pounding waves; it means feeling humbled and insignificant in the face of something so ancient and immense. And yet, here we are venturing into it brandishing all the trappings of the modern world like shields to keep Krampus at bay.

As John Pepper writes in Cockley Beck, one of the keys to fully engaging with the exhilarating wonders of nature is to shut off the noise of everyday living, and yet (even in 1984) we’d come to think of such a roaring silence as an existential threat.

‘”Anything for a quiet life,’ we sighed, and filled it with noise. The racket we engineered to escape from ourselves was more too than the relentless product of transistors, hi-fis, TVs, videos, one-arm bandits, space invaders, pubs, parties, theatres, musical events, football matches and all the other forms of popular entertainment. It was the shrieking of newspaper headlines and advertisement hoardings, high fashion, low fashion, modern architecture, paperback jackets and political panaceas.

“It was the ‘buzz’ we got from alcohol, drugs, coffee, tea and flattery; from gurus and meditation. The excitement of screaming at one’s wife, of gossip, and watching our cities in flames. The sound of our wheels and wings speeding us from nowhere to nowhere but sparing us the exigencies of having to be somewhere. It was the garbled silences administered by Valium. The graffiti over our walls, the two fingers everywhere thrust in the air… A man on the top of Scafell, plugged into ‘The Archers’”.

Wainwright: an Apostle of the Sublime

Yet awe is all around on the path to the Roof of England. We just need to put our phones in airplane mode, leave our earbuds at home, step away from the crowd, fall silent, and drink it all in. And if you really want spiritual transcendence, take a detour off the beaten path where it veers left for Lingmell Col…

“By going forward, a profound hollow is entered amongst a litter of boulders and scree fallen from the enclosing crags. The surroundings are awesome. Pikes Crag soars into the sky on the left, ahead is the gap of Mickledore, topping long fans of scree and rocky debris, and towering on the right the tilted cliffs of Scafell Crag dominate the scene and seem to threaten collapse. This grim fastness is Hollow Stones, and its deep confinement between high and near-vertical walls of rock will make sufferers from claustrophobia and others of timid disposition decidedly uncomfortable.”

Scafell Crag and Shamrock from across the scree of Hollow Stones
Scafell Crag and Shamrock from across the scree of Hollow Stones

The words are those of Alfred Wainwright, whose Pictorial Guides continue to inspire legions of fellwalkers. Of Hollow Stones, Wainwright penned perhaps the perfect expression of the Sublime…

“A man may stand on the lofty ridge of Mickledore, or in the green hollow beneath the precipice amidst the littered debris and boulders fallen from it, and witness the sublime architecture of buttresses and pinnacles soaring into the sky, silhouetted against racing clouds or, often, tormented by writhing mists, and, as in a great cathedral, lose all his conceit. It does a man good to realise his own insignificance in the general scheme of things, and that is his experience here.”

The Pinnacle and Pisgah Buttress from the top of Deep Gill
Scafell Crag: The Pinnacle and Pisgah Buttress from the top of Deep Gill

At the conclusion to his final Pictorial Guides, AW lists his six best Lakeland mountains. Number one is Scafell Pike; curiously, its sibling, Scafell doesn’t make the list. And yet for all the magnificence of Pikes Crag and Pulpit Rock, Wainwright wasn’t looking at the Pike when he wrote than beatific paragraph, he was facing Scafell.

“The most formidable of these natural bastions is Scafell Crag which towers in supreme majesty above a stony hollow in the fellside: a vertical wall of clean rock some 500 ft high, divided by gullies into five buttresses, the whole appearing to be totally unassailable…

“The aspect of the Crag from below is intimidating, even frightening, and it is so palpably impossible for common or garden mortals to scale that none dares venture up the rocks from the safe ground at the foot, readily acknowledging that those who do so are a superior breed. But Nature has provided a breach in the defences of the Crag by which active walkers may gain access to its innermost secrets, make intimate acquaintance with magnificent and spectacular rock scenery, and emerge unscathed at the top: an achievement earned only by arduous effort and much expenditure of energy. This is the only route on Scafell Crag where walkers can tread safely without encountering serious climbing and without danger to life and limb. Lord’s Rake and the West Wall Traverse are special privileges of the fellwalker and make him feel that perhaps he is not too inferior after all.” (Fellwalking with Wainwright).

Whatever his head counselled, Wainwright’s heart belonged to Scafell Crag. I’m here with Chris Butterfield, a Wainwright archivist who has amassed a vast collection of the author’s books, letters, sketches, and printing materials, and our friend Richard Jennings, who runs the brilliant Lakeland Routes website. Chris has climbed Scafell before, but never by Lord’s Rake and the West Wall Traverse, and he has come here today in search of awe.

A Pagan Place: Lord’s Rake and the West Wall Traverse

Chris looks puzzled as Richard leaves the rough path to Mickledore and starts up a stiff fan of scree, heading for what looks like an impenetrable wall of crag. Wainwright’s breach in the defences is concealed from view, making the act of striking out for Shamrock a fitting leap of faith. The gradient is steeper than it first appears, and the scree is loose and shifts easily underfoot. Ahead the soaring wall appears to grow taller with every step. At its centre is the Scafell Pinnacle. In 1898, O. G. Jones and G. T. Walker broke climbing convention by shunning cracks and gullies and heading straight up its rock face. Five years later, an attempt to do something similar lead to the deaths of R. W. Broadrick, A. E. W. Garrett, H. L. Jupp, and S. Ridsdale. As we climb beside the foot of Shamrock, an unobtrusive cross carved into the rock comes into focus. It is a humble memorial to these four men, a cenotaph, standing not in a mossy graveyard but on the mountain where they fell—the ground they considered hallowed.

The cross at the foot of Lord's Rake
The cross at the foot of Lord’s Rake

As we near the cross at the base of the Pinnacle, the sham dissolves. Proximity reveals what the angle of approach had kept concealed— like the parting of the Red Sea, a navigable channel appears between these tidal waves of rock—a steep scree and boulder strewn gully separating Scafell Crag from its illusory shoulder, Shamrock. Here is Wainwright’s breach in the defences—this is Lord’s Rake.

Chris and Richard ascending Lord's Rake
Chris and Richard ascending Lord’s Rake

We start up this wild craggy corridor, clinging to its jagged walls in forlorn hope of solid footing. Halfway up, a striking feature appears on the left—a chockstone blocks the entrance to Deep Gill creating a cave, vivid green with moss, flanked with scales of slate, like a gaping reptilian mouth. Deep Gill is the inner sanctum of Wainwright’s great cathedral, and this is its gatehouse, but the way in is a rock climb above the chockstone, mere mortals like us must settle for a side entrance, albeit one of immense grandeur.

The cave at the bottom of Deep Gill
The cave at the bottom of Deep Gill
The cave in Deep Gill above the chockstone of the first
A second cave lies above the first in Deep Gill. Its first two pitches are rock climbs

The top of the first section of the Rake is littered with large boulders, the remains of a larger chockstone that fell and shattered in 2016. If you scramble the boulders, you can follow the Rake through four more distinct sections, two descents and two more ascents (all striking though none as dramatic as this first). However, to do so would be to enter the nave of the great cathedral and walk straight out into the cloisters. To approach the altar, means climbing out of the nave into the chancel. A faint trod forms a natural staircase up the left wall. Richard leads the way up on to the West Wall Traverse—a footpath along a slender shelf above Deep Gill, which rises to meet the Traverse.

Chris and Richard pause for breath by the boulders at the top of the 1st section of Lord's Rake
Chris and Richard pause for breath by the boulders at the top of the 1st section of Lord’s Rake
Richard leads the way onto the West Wall Traverse below the towering Pinnacle
Richard leads the way onto the West Wall Traverse below the towering Pinnacle – photo by Chris Butterfield

Here, eyes are compelled upward to the imperious tower of the Pinnacle. Wainwright’s simile of a great cathedral captures the sudden soaring rush of awe and wonder it instils; but to me this is a pagan place—a colossal savage temple. The Pinnacle looks like a vast hooded hawk—an immense stone idol, humbling the beholder. As you steal along the Traverse in hushed reverence, it only appears to grow in stature, until eventually you see how the cleft of Jordon Gap separates it from the muscular mass of Pisgah Buttress.

The Pinnacle and Pisgah Buttress from the top of Deep Gill
The Pinnacle and Pisgah Buttress from the top of Deep Gill

The last pitch of Deep Gill is an easy scramble. In trying to maintain three points of contact, I’m given a stinging reminder of why this volcanic rock was highly prized for Stone-Age axe heads. I slice my finger on a razor-sharp stone. It’s a paper cut but enough for Chris to spot my trail of blood on the scree. I hope Krampus will be placated with this offering and not demand a greater sacrifice.

Awe inspiring rock scenery in Deep Gill
Awe inspiring rock scenery in Deep Gill

The wall at the end of gill is not high but looks green and slippery, only when you’re right in front of it does a hidden exit appear on your left—an easy haul over a rock step and out through a dry channel. We track round the head of the Gill to feast our eyes on the magnificent spectacle of Deep Gill Buttress, the west wall of the gill, rising imperiously from the ravine to the majestic summit of Symonds Knott.

The Pinnacle and Pisgah Buttress from the ground above Deep Gill
The Pinnacle and Pisgah Buttress separated by the Jordan Gap
Deep Gill Buttress rising from the depths of Deep Gill
Deep Gill Buttress rising from the depths of Deep Gill

A slender grassy shoulder leads to Pisgah Buttress, and we pull ourselves up the rocks to its top. Across the plunging ravine, the West Wall looks even more monumental, and to our right across the cleft of Jordan Gap is the summit of the Pinnacle. I lack the climbing skills to make the sheer descent and re-ascent, but it is thrilling to stand so close. I spy the modest cairn on its summit and recall O. G. Jones’s mention of a tobacco tin stashed discretely below it, in which Victorian climbers left their calling cards. I wonder if it still there. Chris is gazing around enrapt. The view of Great Gable is astounding.

The summit of the Pinnacle from Pisgah Buttress
The summit of the Pinnacle from Pisgah Buttress
The author on Pisgah Buttress
The author on Pisgah Buttress – photo by Richard Jennings

The Savage Temple and the Roof of England

Wainwright declared, “The face of Scafell Crag is the grandest sight in the district, and if only the highest point of the fell were situated on the top of Deep Gill Buttress, perched above the tremendous precipices of stone, it would be the best summit of all”. The fact that Symonds Knott is not the summit, and the real summit is offset, somewhat removed from this sublime drama, was a disappointment to him, and the fact that much of the rest of Scafell lacks the awe-inspiring majesty at its heart, is perhaps why Wainwright, the accountant, the objective quantifier, marked it down in relation to its marginally higher sibling. But for Wainwright the poet, the romantic, the eloquent apostle of the sublime, this “towering rampart of shadowed crags” is “the greatest display of natural grandeur in the district, a spectacle of massive strength and savage wildness… an awesome and humbling scene.”

Deep Gill Buttress
Deep Gill Buttress / Symonds Knott

Chris has an early draft of AW’s Fellwalking with a Camera. It contains a page on the West Walk Traverse which was dropped from the final publication (much against Wainwright’s wishes) as the photograph was slightly out of focus. In the text he describes Deep Gill as “the most enthralling place in Lakeland”.

We wander back to the head of the gill from where Wainwright sketched the Pinnacle and Pisgah Buttress, including himself bottom right as “the Oracle”. Last year Chris published a book called Wainwright Memories in which he takes Andrew Nicol, Wainwright’s publisher back to the scenes of several photoshoots and retraces a holiday the pair took with their wives in Scotland. Andrew had the unenviable task of persuading AW to cooperate with publicity initiatives, but he soon learned to broach such matters the right way, and a deep respect and friendship grew between the two men. The book is a warm, touching, and nostalgic insight into that friendship. One of its themes involves recreating old photographs from the Scottish trip and Lakeland locations, with Andrew looking remarkably unchanged and Chris or his wife Priscilla, or her sister, Angela, or Angela’s husband, Glenn standing in for AW or Betty or Andrew’s wife, Bernice. We are certainly not going to let Chris get away without recreating Wainwright’s iconic Deep Gill sketch now. Richard takes charge, fishing out a copy of The Southern Fells and painstakingly arranging Chris’s position.

Chris recreates Wainwright's iconic sketch
Chris recreates Wainwright’s iconic sketch – photo by Richard Jennings

Once done, and after a brief visit to the true summit, we pick our way down the eroded scree of a natural amphitheatre to the puddle that is Foxes Tarn, then scramble down its gully to ascend Mickledore from the Eskdale side. After gazing in hushed reverence at the “the sublime architecture of buttresses and pinnacles soaring into the sky”, we venture back through Hollow Stones, to join the hordes descending the “tourist route” from Scafell Pike.

I understand why AW cited Scafell Pike as number one on his list of six best Lakeland mountains. There is something special about the feeling that you are standing on the Roof of England—the nation’s highest ground. I remember being there in the golden light of a winter afternoon, with snow on the ground and the low sun bathing Yeastyrigg Crags and Bowfell in an ethereal amber glow. Despite the biting cold, everywhere emanated a magical warmth. It felt like hallowed ground.

And yet, it was only when I turned my head that my pulse truly quickened. Scafell had fallen into shadow, and across Mickledore, Scafell Crag reared like a mighty black tower, fierce and intimidating, the realm of Krampus—a savage temple at the sublime heart of Lakeland.

Further Reading:

Chris’s book Wainwright Memories is a must for Wainwright enthusiasts and is available from his website:

Richard’s Lakeland Routes website is a treasure trove of detailed trip reports and local history. Well worth checking out:

https://www.lakelandroutes.uk

Acclaimed nature writer, James Perrin has called Andrew Terrill’s On Sacred Ground, “the newest classic of our outdoor literature”. On Sacred Ground and its prequel, The Ground Beneath My Feet are available from Amazon:

John Pepper’s Cockley Beck – a Celebration of Lakeland in Winter is an enthralling account of the author’s rejuvenating experiences, overwintering in a Spartan Duddon Valley cottage. Robert MacFarlane has called it “one of the great classics of British nature writing”. It is out of print but secondhand copies can be found. First published in 1984 by Element Books Ltd, Shaftesbury. I believe there was also a later edition by the History Press.

Norman Nicholson’s The Lakers is a breathtaking distillation of the work and motivations of all the early Lake District writers, interwoven with Nicholson’s own beautifully evocative prose. It is also out of print, but secondhand copies are relatively easy to find. First published in 1955 by Robert Hale, but a softback edition was published in 1995 by Cicerone.


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    In the Footsteps of Wainwright – Striding Edge to Catstycam

    “For Those Who Tread Where I Have Trod”

    In 1930, Alfred Wainwright crossed Striding Edge for the first time. It was shrouded in mist and doused in rain. For all its terrors, it sparked a passion that led AW to pen his celebrated Pictorial Guides, documenting 214 Lake District fells. This year, I walked the same ridge en route to Catstycam to bag my final “Wainwright”. As I recount my precarious negotiation along craggy crests and plunging precipices, I consider what it was about an antisocial pen-pusher from Blackburn that made him such an inspiration.

    An Ex-Fellwanderer Remembers

    “Before reaching the gap in the wall we were enveloped in a clammy mist and the rain started…We went on, heads down against the driving rain, until, quite suddenly, a window opened in the mist ahead, disclosing a black tower of rock streaming with water, an evil and threatening monster that stopped us in our tracks. Then the mist closed in again and the apparition vanished. We were scared: there were unseen terrors ahead. Yet the path was still distinct; generations of walkers must have come this way and survived, and if we turned back now we would get as wet as we would by continuing forward. We ventured further tentatively and soon found ourselves climbing the rocks of the tower to reach a platform of naked rock that vanished into the mist as a narrow ridge with appalling precipices on both sides. There was no doubt about it: we were on Striding Edge.”

    Striding Edge
    Striding Edge from the Summit Plateau

    Thus writes Alfred Wainwright in Ex-Fellwanderer, recalling his second full day on the Lakeland Fells. He was 23 and having saved £5 from his spending money, he recruited the company of his cousin, Eric and embarked on the first holiday he had ever had. The pair had arrived in Windermere two days earlier and climbed Orrest Head, where the sight of “mountain ranges, one after the other” proved a startling revelation for a young man who knew little of the world beyond the “tall chimneys and crowded tenements” of industrial Blackburn. Well it did for Alfred, Eric fell asleep in the grass. There would be no sleeping the following day, however. Alfred, or AW as he preferred, was on a mission and dragged his cousin up High Street because he had read about the Roman Road that once ran over it.

    High Street was my first mountain too and for the same reason: I hadn’t yet heard of Wainwright but I had heard about the Roman Road, and the sight of High Street rearing above Haweswater in all its wild, rugged magnificence made the notion seem so implausible, I just knew I had to go up there. In 1998, I made the climb from Mardale Head, following directions in a Pathfinder guide, which I bought expressly because it contained that very walk. 

    In 1930, AW and Eric ascended Froswick from the Troutbeck Valley and walked over Thornthwaite Crag to High Street’s summit. Wainwright took comfort from the thought that the Romans had walked that way 2000 years earlier. For one unnerving moment, I thought I was coming face to face with a ghostly legion. My ascent along Riggindale Edge had been breathless not only for the exertion but for the richness of the unfolding panorama. As I reached the top of Long Stile, however, my head entered the clouds literally as well as metaphorically. Not that I cared, it was immensely atmospheric, and I was busy imagining cohorts of legionaries marching beside the summit wall. Then all of a sudden, I realised I could hear them.  Slowly their outlines started to emerge from the mist, moving two abreast in strict military two step. Part of me wanted to run, but I was rivetted to the spot transfixed by the image crystallising in front of me… It was somewhat deflating to discover their armour was Gore-Tex and their spears were trekking poles. I swear I have never since seen a party of fellwalkers march with such precision.

    I made a round of Mardale Ill Bell and Harter Fell, but AW and Eric followed the line of the old road for quite some way before descending to Howtown and walking along the shore of Ullswater to Pooley Bridge.  The very next day they set off for Striding Edge:

    “In agonies of apprehension we edged our way along the spine of the ridge, sometimes deviating to a path just below the crest to bypass difficulties. We passed a memorial to someone who had fallen to his death from the ridge which did nothing for our peace of mind. After an age of anxiety we reached the abrupt end of the Edge and descended an awkward crack in the rocks to firmer ground below and beyond, feeling and looking like old men.”

    Striding Edge from High Spying How
    Striding Edge from High Spying How

    The experience filled Eric with dread, but it sparked a passion in AW that would consume him for the rest of his life.  In 1955, he published the first of his Pictorial Guides, The Eastern Fells, in which he described Striding Edge as “the finest ridge there is in Lakeland”.

    Helvellyn swiftly followed High Street for me too, chiefly because my Pathfinder Guide drew a parallel between Striding Edge and Long Stile. Just as it had for Wainwright, High Street had sparked a passion in me, and I was hungry for more.

    Pipe & Socks: Discovering Wainwright

    In the weeks between tackling Long Stile and Striding Edge, my wife, Sandy, and I popped into Kendal Museum to see our friend, Meriel, who worked there. She was talking to an outdoorsy couple in front of a display case containing a walking jacket, boots, a pipe, and a pair of old socks that had belonged to Alfred Wainwright. Meriel explained that Wainwright had been Honorary Curator of the museum between 1945 and 1974, and as her own maiden-name was “Wainwright”, visitors frequently assumed (wrongly) that she was related to him. The couple laughed and stared at the socks with a kind of hushed reverence.

    Intrigued, I sought out a second-hand copy of one of Wainwright’s Pictorial Guides and immediately began to understand why fellwalkers held him in such esteem. The book was totally unlike my Pathfinder Guide. It contained no handy advice on parking or refreshments.  The walks weren’t graded as easy, medium, or hard. The maps were not official OS versions, but hand-drawn impressions that morphed into sketches; yet every page felt sacred, as if the author was imparting arcane secrets. The book communicated an almost religious devotion, a profound understanding, and a deep, deep love for this remarkable landscape.

    The weather was kinder to me on Striding Edge than it had been to AW and Eric; I found it utterly exhilarating. Inspired, I went on to tackle Scafell Pike, the Coniston Fells, Great Gable, Crinkle Crags, the Langdale Pikes and more. And yet, somehow, as the years passed, with work, and moving house, and everything else life throws at you, my newfound passion for the fells dwindled. Eventually, in 2015, Storm Desmond flooded the gym I had joined and forced me to think about an alternative form of exercise.  I bought a new pair of walking boots and headed for the hills. I never renewed my gym membership.

    I bought all the other Pictorial Guides and immersed myself in them. Yet to start with, I would cherry pick my walks, always favouring the high fells. Two years on, my great friends and neighbours, Paul and Jeanette would persuade me to attempt all 214 hills that AW documents. Some of the smaller ones have the most spectacular views, they said, and your understanding of how everything fits together grows exponentially. 

    All of which is why I am now heading towards Lanty’s Tarn with a mind full of memories. You see my Pathfinder guide took me over Helvellyn via its Edges, but it missed out Catstycam.  When I repeated the walk several years ago, I made the same omission. Today, Catstycam will be my 214th Wainwright, and I shall reach it by repeating one of my first mountain experiences: Helvellyn via Striding Edge and Swirral Edge.

    Nature’s Cathedrals—Striding Edge

    As I climb the slopes of Keldas, I’m gifted a glance at Ullswater, shining like a silver plate, the backward scene a moody wash of early morning monochrome, but ahead, the sun breaks through the leafy canopy to render all in summer colours, the tarn a sparkling cut of aquamarine. I remember spotting a red squirrel here, twenty three years ago, the first I had seen since moving to the Lakes.

    Ullswater from Keldas
    Ullswater from Keldas

    Today should have been a shared celebration with friends, but unexpected events forced a last-minute reschedule. No-one else was free today, but the weather forecast was perfect, and I was too impatient to wait longer. Yet as vivid memories of first fell walks flood back, part of me is grateful for the solitude to indulge them. Today marks a significant milestone in a journey, not only physical but emotional, through a landscape that has come to possess me entirely, just as it did the man whose footprints I have been following.

    Lanty's Tarn
    Lanty’s Tarn

    I emerge from the trees into Grisedale and follow the path that climbs steadily to the Hole in the Wall—up slopes where pink foxgloves rise like beacons from a rippling sea of green bracken. Two magnificent ridges dominate the forward view: one rising dramatically to enclose Nethermost Cove and attain the summit of Nethermost Pike, and beyond, the airy majesty of Dollywagon’s craggy Tongue. I’m yet to climb either—so while I’ll attain the last of Wainwright’s summits today, there are many more adventures lurking in the pages of his guides.

    The Tongue Dollywagon Pike
    The Tongue Dollywagon Pike
    Grisedale -The path to the Hole in the Wall
    Grisedale -The path to the Hole in the Wall

    From the Hole in the Wall, I’m greeted with the glorious vision of Helvellyn, looking every bit like an immense organic castle, its summit a broad stronghold rising above the languid navy moat of Red Tarn. It is defended on either side by the crenelated walls of its Edges, terminating in conical pyramid of Catstycam; to reach it via two of Lakeland’s most dramatic ridges promises to be the finest of adventures—a precarious negotiation along craggy crests and plunging precipices.

    Helvellyn & Catstycam over Red Tarn
    Helvellyn & Catstycam over Red Tarn
    Catstycam over Red Tarn
    Catstycam over Red Tarn

    The going is easy at first but gets craggier from Low Spying How. Soon the rocky turret of High Spying How looms. This is Wainwright’s black tower. Partially glimpsed through mist, its true height unknown, it must have been an intimidating prospect for two fledgling fellwalkers. In today’s brilliant light, it is less daunting, yet still imparts a frisson of nervous excitement, as on reaching the top, you are greeted with the sight of Striding Edge tapering to a slender Toblerone before rising in a steep upward sweep to the summit plateau high above.

    Striding Edge from High Spying How
    Striding Edge from High Spying How

    But where are all the people? Reports of late have suggested Striding Edge is overrun, and I was worried I’d be joining a thronging queue. I’m not entirely alone—I’m one of a handful of walkers, but we’re well spaced out, and no-one else is currently in view. It’s reassuring to know that if you pick your time, even on a Saturday in summer, there are still opportunities to wander lonely as a cloud.

    I pass the memorial that did so little for AW and Eric’s peace of mind. It reads:

    “In memory of Robert Dixon of Poolings Patterdale who was killed on this place on the 27th day of Nov 1886 when following the Patterdale Fox Hounds.”

    On reaching this point in Terry Abraham’s Life of a Mountain film, Stuart Maconie professes, “I’m not sure I’m a fan of memorials on mountains—sends out the wrong message.”

    A narrow bypass path runs below the crest on the right, but it feels more adventurous to clamber along the naked rock. Besides, I find three points of contact more reassuring than walking along a narrow ledge where one misstep could send you tumbling.

    Striding Edge
    Striding Edge

    I recall the exhilaration I felt when I first stepped out on Striding Edge, and the years have done nothing to diminish the feeling. To my left, the slopes drop abruptly into the wild green bowl of Nethermost Cove, and to my right, to the inscrutable blue waters of Red Tarn.

    A little further along, I glance back to High Spying How. The ridge looks every bit like the spiky spine of a fossilised dinosaur.

    Striding Edge
    Striding Edge

    The King & the Pen Pusher


    AW grew up in poverty. His father was an alcoholic stonemason who drank what little he earned between long bouts of unemployment. AW adored his mother who made sure the children never went hungry even when it meant going without herself. Despite exceptional academic promise, AW left school at 14 to help put food on the table.

    He started as an office boy in the engineer’s department at Blackburn Town Council, but soon transferred to the Treasurer’s office and studied at night school to become an accountant. He embraced work with a passion and attributes the failure of his first marriage to the mismatch between his own ambition to climb the professional ladder and his wife’s reluctance to leave the bottom rung. At Kendal, he rose to become Borough Treasurer, and it’s easy to think of his move to Cumbria as the logical next step in an upward trajectory. But it wasn’t. It was a voluntary step down, which involved a pay cut. Reaching the next rung was no longer his motivation. He moved here to be closer to the hills, and although he remained diligent about his work, his heart now belonged to the mountains:

    “Down below I was a pen pusher. Up here I was a king; a king amongst friends.”

    The fells were to give the spiritual nourishment that organised religion had failed to provide:

    “At Blackburn I had attended chapel. Now I worshipped in nature’s cathedrals”.

    For me too, these hills have become hallowed ground.

    Helvellyn

    Striding Edge ends in an abrupt drop—a scramble down a craggy chimney. As bad steps go, however, it isn’t Lakeland’s worst—hand and footholds abound, and with due care and attention, it is tackled with relative ease.

    Striding Edge, Helvellyn
    Looking back at the bad step from the scramble to the summit plateau

    What remains is the stiff climb to the summit plateau. On the approach, it looks daunting, but it’s an illusion that serves to test your resolve. Close up, the gradient is less severe and a plethora of options reveal themselves. It is worth pausing on the little rocky platforms to gaze back at Striding Edge, which now looks razor sharp. The aspect is best seen from the top, where a smug smile of self-congratulation is permitted.

    Red Tarn and Striding Edge
    The author in front of Red Tarn and Striding Edge

    A memorial to Charles Gough, who died here in 1805, is a poignant reminder of the dangers. Gough’s death made him, or more particularly his dog, something of a celebrity, but to learn more of their story, you’ll either have to climb Striding Edge or read my first ever blog:The Stuff of Legend—  http://www.lakelandwalkingtales.co.uk/grisedale-tarn-helvellyn/

    Looking west from the summit, I recall AW’s remark about “mountain ranges, one after the other”, but today, it’s the north-eastern aspect, over Red Tarn to Catstycam, that sets my pulse racing.

    Swirral Edge & Catstycam

    A large cairn marks the start of Swirral Edge. People talk of Swirral Edge as the less difficult of the two, but the initial scramble down bouldery rocks is the rival of anything on Striding Edge. The going gets easier after that and all too soon, I’m climbing the slope of Catstycam.

    Red Tarn from the scramble on to Swirral Edge
    Red Tarn from the scramble on to Swirral Edge
    Swirral Edge & Catstycam
    Swirral Edge & Catstycam
    Swirral Edge & Catstycam
    Swirral Edge & Catstycam

    At the summit, I delve into a rucksack for a prop that I have painstakingly placed between sheets of stiff cardboard to protect it. In our age of social media, it’s customary on completing the Wainwrights to take a summit selfie with a sign saying “214”. Sandy is an artist, so I asked her if she could draw me a doodle of a pipe—well I thought it more iconic than the socks. She did much better than that and produced a larger-than-life cardboard cut-out beautifully painted to look like a 3D pipe, replete with a puff of smoke bearing the magic number.

    Swirral Edge from Catstycam

    The trouble is there’s no-one else here and my arm is barely long enough to to take a selfie that fits in me, the pipe, and Ullswater curving away in the distance. After several squinting attempts, I just about manage it. Shortly afterwards, a girl arrives and grins as she obliges by snapping me with a wider sweep as the backdrop. The views are majestic, and I sit long in quiet contemplation.

    Catstycam
    The Author with pipe on Catstycam.jpg

    In places, Ex-Fellwanderer descends into the rant of an old man at odds with the modern world. Yet the digs are not directionless. His most extreme suggestion—that convicts be used in vivisection experiments—is not just Daily Mail style vitriol but part of a passionate plea against performing such atrocities on animals. AW loved animals and poured the royalties from his books into building an animal sanctuary—a selfless act in a decade that celebrated selfishness.

    Even before the 1980’s, the quest for ruthless efficiency was driving out values AW held dear:

    “I retired from the office early in 1967, and was glad to go. I had enjoyed the work immensely but methods of accounting were changing…Computers and calculating machines and other alleged labour saving devices, which I could not understand, were coming in and pushing out the craftsmen”.

    A master craftsman is exactly what Wainwright was: a man whose ledgers were almost works of art, and who would go on to pen his stunning Pictorial Guides in the same immaculate copperplate handwriting. It is wrong to think of these are mere guidebooks. Guidebooks are functional things, carefully targeted at specific segments of the market. Wainwright’s books are works of spiritual reverence. His devotion to nature was a form of worship he knew could cure many modern ailments. He describes the fells as “the complete antidote to urban depression”.

    A party of energetic young people arrives on the summit. One lad is curious about the pipe. He’s heard of Wainwright and comes to sit beside me, eager to know more. I fish out my copy of the Eastern Fells and watch as he turns the pages, transfixed. When they leave, he turns back to me and says, “I’m going to get that book. I’m going to get them all”, and I feel as if I have passed on a little piece of magic.

    Swirral Edge from Catstycam
    Swirral Edge from Catstycam

    Eventually, I leave too, and make my way down the lonely north-west ridge to the old Keppel Cove dam. As I follow the steep path, I remember the dedication at the start of Ex-Fellwanderer: “for those who tread where I have trod”; and I feel proud to count among them.

    Keppel Cove Dam
    Keppel Cove Dam
    Keppel Cove Dam
    Keppel Cove Dam

    Further Reading

    For more information about Wainwright’s books, visit Wainwright archivist, Chris Butterfield’s splendid website:


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      Paint It White

      Barf via the Bishop and Slape Crag

      With their hand-drawn maps & poetic prose, Wainwright’s Pictorial Guides feel less like guidebooks and more like the arcane scripts of a sage, handing down the secrets to another realm. His description of the direct route up Barf reads like an epic quest; its way markers; the Clerk, the Bishop, the Solitary Rowan, the Pinnacle; sound like clues in the unravelling of a mystery. On a glorious day between the lockdowns, I set off for Thornthwaite to answer the call.

      Arcane Secrets

      Twenty three years ago something special caught my eye.  I was upstairs in the Carnforth bookshop, browsing the second-hand section for crime-thrillers, or cookbooks, or music biographies, but what I picked up was none of those. It was a small, dog-eared hardback with a torn dust-jacket and yellowing pages that bore the title, “A Pictorial Guide To The Lake District—being an illustrated account of a study and exploration of the mountains in the English Lake District by A Wainwright. Book Four, The Southern Fells”.

      I bought it. I’d heard of Wainwright, I’d even seen some of his artefacts in Kendal Museum, and I was vaguely aware he was revered among fellwalkers. But I wasn’t yet a fellwalker. I was a musician, whose short if promising career had failed to find that elusive breakthrough. By 1995 that dream was over. I retrained as a software engineer, and when my wife was offered a dream job with the Lakeland Arts Trust, we left our home in Newcastle for the South Lakes.

      It was the beginning of an exciting new chapter. For the first time, we had a little money and modest prospects, but something was missing. Being in a band had never been about courting fame, you see. It was all about the magic that happens when ideas and understanding gel.  Not that they did always, some gigs meant travelling for hours to stumble, without conviction, through a short set to three bored punters and a dog. But on the nights when everything came together, the songs took on a life of their own, and we conjured something that transcended its parts. Audiences were complicit, and everyone’s spirits soared. When it was over, we’d lug our gear back into our transit van and drive off to sleep on somebody’s floor—but we were warm in the afterglow. I missed that transcendence, that soaring sensation of liberty and release. Little did I know, I was about to find it again in the most unexpected of places.

      It hadn’t taken long for me to lift my eyes to the fells. I remember standing on the shore of Haweswater, looking up at High Street and a friend telling me that a Roman road used to run over the top of it.  I knew then that I had to go up there.  I’d invested in a map and a modern guide-book (which would get me to the top of High Street), but this Wainwright guide was entirely different. It didn’t contain any photos, or useful details about parking or facilities. Its maps were not borrowed from Harveys or the OS, but hand-drawn in an idiosyncratic style that morphed into illustration, and the text was rendered in the author’s own hand. It felt like arcane knowledge, the sacred scripts of a sage handing down the secrets to another realm.

      And the fells looked like another realm; wrapped in mist, or capped in snow, they seemed to belong more to the clouds than the olive patchwork of fields and woods below. Wainwright’s words transported you there.  They made each mountain feel like a quest, and my little second-hand copy was replete with handwritten annotations from previous owners who had followed in his footsteps.  It was a call I would answer too, and in doing so I would regain what I had lost. On the summits, I would know again that feeling of exhilaration and humility, the affirmation of being a tiny part of something much grander, and I would learn that music is not the only mode of flight.

      A Quest

      By 2020, many of the mountains in the Southern Fells had become old friends. I now owned all seven Pictorial Guides, but there were still a few fells I hadn’t climbed, (not a box ticker by nature, I had only recently resolved to climb all of the Wainwrights). On the western bank of Bassenthwaite Lake stands a small group of green, mostly wooded, hills which were still virgin territory for me. As Wainwright so enticingly describes, one of these presents a very different face to the others:

      “Insignificant in height and of no greater extent than half a mile square, the rugged pyramid of Barf… yet contrives to arrest and retain the attention of travellers along the road at its base. Its outline is striking, its slopes seemingly impossibly steep, the direct ascent from its foot appears to be barred by an uncompromising cliff. There are few fells, large or small, of such hostile and aggressive character”. Wainwright describes the direct ascent from Thornthwaite as “a very stiff scramble, suitable only for people overflowing with animal strength and vigour”. Yet, perhaps more than any other, his depiction conjures an epic adventure—of the kind that flows from the pen of Tolkien or JK Rowling.  Its landmarks: the Clerk, the Bishop, the Scree Gully, the Solitary Rowan, the Oak and Rowan growing together below the rock traverse (the key to breaching Slape Crag), and the Pinnacle (a signpost to the upper escarpment); all sound like esoteric clues in the unravelling of a mystery. Here, for sure, is a quest.

      End of the Scree Gully
      The Scree Gully

      And like all true quests, it is not without danger. In recent years, several people have become crag-fast in the vicinity of Slape Crag and been forced to call for help. I like to think of myself as a responsible fellwalker, who, even at the best of times, takes all reasonable steps to avoid calling for assistance; but September 2020 is not the best of times:  Britain is in the grip of COVID-19, and while lockdown restrictions have been eased (temporarily), Mountain Rescue are urging people to stay within their capabilities.  There is no way I will attempt this with being certain I can do it, or at least, that I can back out safely. Some further research is needed then. 

      Wainwright suggests that the rock traverse below Slape Crag recalls Jack’s Rake, except that it is short and easy. I’ve climbed Jack’s Rake, and Sharp Edge, and Striding Edge, and Dow Crag’s South Rake; the received wisdom seems to suggest that if I was OK with those, I should be able to cope with Barf.  The excellent Lakeland Routes website gives a step-by-step photographic guide, which instils confidence rather than dread. It also provides an alternative route (now included in Clive Hutchby’s third edition of Wainwright’s guide). This gives slightly easier alternatives to both the rock terrace and the “unpleasant” scree gully. Crucially, it affords a way down, avoiding the scree gully, should I baulk at Slape Crag. I have a Plan B then, should I need it.

      Slape Crag. Barf
      Slape Crag
      The Bishop

      Suitably reassured and with an excellent forecast of clear skies and strong September sunshine, I set off for Thornthwaite. Before I reach the parking area at Powter How, I pull over , for here is a view of Barf just as AW sketches it— it looks just as impossibly steep and hostile. With the sun minutes away from clearing Skiddaw, the pyramid’s face is yet in shadow, its grey crags mottled with mauve, morphing into russet where summer heather has succumbed to autumn’s touch. But among the sombre tones of first light, something shines—an upstanding pillar of brilliant white. This is the famous Bishop of Barf. Few rocks in the Lake District are subject to a ritual with such a bizarre backstory.

      So the tale goes, in 1783, the Bishop of Derry was on his way to Whitehaven to make the crossing to Ireland, when he broke his journey with a night at the Swan hotel in Thornthwaite. During the course of the evening he fell into drinking with the locals and drunkenly bet he could ride his horse all the way to the top of Barf. He made it just under halfway. At about 700ft, the horse fell in the vicinity of the pillar, killing both animal and rider. They were buried together at the foot of the fell near another rock, known as the Clerk. In commemoration, the pillar was whitewashed and named, the Bishop. Whitewashing the Bishop became an annual ritual for the villagers, organised and rewarded by the staff at the hotel. In recent years, since the hotel closed and was converted into flats, the responsibility has been assumed by Mountain Rescue.

      The Bishop of Barf
      The Bishop of Barf

      I park at Powter How, opposite the old Swan Hotel, and take the path that leads into the woods. Before long, I reach the Clerk, “a poor drooping individual who attracts little attention to himself”.  But all good quests begin with an inauspicious sign, and here the Clerk is it. He marks the point where the adventurer must leave the beaten path (which continues up through the verdant woods beside Beckstones Gill), and head out on to the unforgiving slopes of fractured slate. 

      The Clerk
      The Clerk

      The unseasonably bright sun is now fully risen, and as I emerge from the tree cover, the light is dazzling. Ahead is an arid desert of shifting scree and sparse scrub, tilted at an alarming angle, atop of which the Bishop gleams like a beacon. Wainwright counsels that the slope is “arduous to ascend, the feet often slipping down two steps for every one step up—from which it should not be supposed that better progress will be made by going up backwards”. Behind the Bishop, forbidding walls of rock rise in ominous warning. I begin the slog. The semblance of a path is simply a line of erosion, and stripped of the cushion of scree, not always the easiest choice. My quads burn as I follow my instincts, and the Bishop is a welcoming figure when he finally stands before me, resplendent in his gleaming garments. From the front, this seven foot pillar is more redolent of a shapeless glove puppet than an elevated dignitary of the church, but from the rear, he cuts a more refined and human figure: a rounded head on top of a slender neck casts an authoritative gaze over ground that drops abruptly to the patchwork of fields, far below.

      Behind the Bishop of Barf
      Behind the Bishop

      In 1783, the Protestant Bishop of Derry was William Augustus Hervey, the Earl of Bristol, known as “the Edifying Bishop”, on account of his predilection for building churches. He won respect for cross denominational initiatives that benefited Catholics as well as Protestants, but he was famed for his flamboyance. King George III described Hervey as “that wicked prelate”, on account of his womanising (his mistresses included society beauty, Madam Ritz, and Emma Hamilton, who was better known for an affair with Lord Nelson). He was also an eccentric, requiring his clergymen to play leapfrog to determine which parishes they served. It might be entirely believable that such a colourful character died here, in such reckless manner, had he not actually died in Italy, twenty years later (expressing the dying wish that his body be shipped back to England in a sherry cask). How or why Hervey became the subject of such a curious local legend is unknown, but it’s a fabulous story, and it would be a shame to let truth stand in the way of it. In the words of John Ford, “when the legend becomes fact, print the legend”.

      The Scree Gully
      The Scree Gully
      The Scree Gully

      Behind the Bishop, a path curves right through the heather, avoiding the formidable scree gully that rises, seemingly vertically, between the walls of rock above. But the easy route is not Wainwright’s way, and its presence feels like a temptation designed to lure the pilgrim from his calling. A true quest involves a series of trials, and to rise to the challenge, the scree gully must be negotiated.  Wainwright warns “its walls of rotten rock cannot be trusted for handholds and fall apart at the touch. The tiles here pull out like drawers”. Tentatively, I cast around for purchase and pull myself up. In actuality, the gully is not as daunting as the sage suggests, and by the time I reach the rocky outcrop that bars the exit, I’m enjoying myself enough to shun a path that escapes left to a heathery slope and tackle the terminal rocks head on.  The slates here are stacked, as if by ancient hands, to form a defensive wall, replete with buttressed turrets, but in the absence of incumbents armed with spears, and arrows, and barrels of burning tar, they are easily scrambled.       

      Wall of the Scree Gully
      Wall of the Scree Gully
      Terminal rocks of the Scree Gully
      Terminal rocks of the Scree Gully
      The Solitary Rowan

      There is some respite now for aching limbs. A gentler heathery slope stretches onward, and up ahead stands the next of Wainwright’s mystical way markers, the Solitary Rowan. Wainwright indulged the notion he was blazing a trail through this wild terrain and was slightly deflated to find the trunk inscribed with the initials of those who had gone this way before. In my imagination, the carvings are ancient runes, a riddle whose meaning can only be unlocked by the worthy.  I make out the characters G and T, letters with a clear spiritual connotation that I resolve to imbibe as soon as I get home.

      The Solitary Rown, Barf
      The Solitary Rown

      Despite the encroach of autumn, much of the flora here is still in bloom. Bees are abuzz with pollination duties, and the September sun feels more like June. The desert of shifting scree has given way to fertile swathes of yellow gorse, and purple bell heather, while russet hues of dying bracken herald the turning of the season.

      Bee on heather by Slape Crag
      Bee on heather by Slape Crag
      Bee on rocks below Slape Crag
      Bee on rocks below Slape Crag

      Slape Crag

      The respite is fleeting however, the scree returns before the towering fortifications of Slape Crag, which loom above. A lower curtain wall threatens to impede access, but with proximity, a line of shadow on the right resolves into a gully. The passage is narrow and steep, but the rock is firm, a natural stone staircase.

      Gully below Slape Crag
      Gully below Slape Crag
      Gully below Slape Crag
      Gully below Slape Crag

      At the top, the easier path winds in from a bield on the eastern side, beyond which the fell disappears in a rapid tumble to the road and the diminutive Swan below. Ahead is the towering face of Slape Crag. That the unwary should become crag fast here is perhaps no surprise. The cliff rises in a sheer white wall of smooth slate, blocking onward progress. With the prospect of descending back down the severe scree an apparent invitation to a broken neck and a seemingly unassailable cliff looming above, those with a vested interest in continued living might well conclude discretion the better part of valour and dial for help. But those armed with the arcane knowledge of a sage, know that all is not lost.

      Looking down over the bield to the Swan, Barf
      Looking down over the bield to the Swan

      Wainwright declares, “this obstacle can be safely negotiated at one point only”. In this, he is actually wrong. The scree falls sharply away to left where the lower part of the cliff rises, but ahead, the shattered slate continues upward to meet the foot of the upper wall. Here, a heather terrace tracks left, along the top of the lower wall. Apparently, it ends in a simple scramble. This is Lakeland Routes’ and Hutchby’s alternative way, thought by some to be the easier option.

      Slape Crag, Barf
      Slape Crag

      Wainwright’s way is harder to spot. It passes below the lower wall. “Bear left at its base”, he says, “to a rock traverse above an oak and a rowan together”. I can see a cleft rock at the bottom, but the scree stops there too. Beyond, the slope becomes a stiff drop, obscured by foliage. If there is a traverse, it must start here, but the sunlight is blinding and it’s difficult to make sense of the impression.  As I approach, features start to coalesce, and I realise a tree is growing horizontally out of the cliff. Its trunk is robust and gnarly, and its deciduous leaves still deeply green—it’s an oak. Closer still, I make out a smaller, lighter, spindly trunk sprouting from the rock in front of it. Here then is the rowan, but I still can’t see a path. With the blind belief of Harry Potter running at the wall in King’s Cross Station, hoping it will yield access to all platform 9 ¾, I make steadfastly for the spot. When I’m almost upon it, the impenetrable shadow that looked like a dead end resolves into a narrow trod around the base of the cleft boulder. I track above the rowan and the oak, so focused on discovering the way forward that I’m unfazed by how abruptly the ground falls away, at least until I glance back. This must be the section that revived “lurid memories of Jack’s Rake” for Wainwright, but I’m already beyond it, and a path is now obvious. Before I know it, I’m on to the heathery slope beyond.

      The Rock Traverse above the oak and rowan, Barf
      The Rock Traverse above the oak and rowan
      Around the Pinnacle

      All that remains is to breach the upper escarpment. This can be tackled directly with a steep climb through the heather, but Wainwright eschews such a prosaic approach in favour of rounding the pinnacle, a semi-detached needle of rock over to the left. The way is obscure, but again, it is a case of seek and ye shall find. A path slowly reveals itself among sporadic blooms of purple heather, yellow gorse, and fragrant wood sage.

      Heather slope below the Upper Escarpment, Barf
      Heather slope below the Upper Escarpment
      The Pinnacle, Barf
      The Pinnacle

      Beyond the Pinnacle, a sheep trod, no more than a furrow in the foliage, tacks back along the top of the escarpment, affording breathtaking views over the line of ascent, and a growing sense of triumph at having survived it.

      Two false summits, with tantalising views of Bassenthwaite Lake, lead to the cairn that marks the top. Here the unimpeded view over the lake’s tranquil blue waters is a rich delight. Beyond the eastern shore, the muscular mass of Skiddaw rises, a true Lakeland giant, a Goliath to Barf’s humble David. And yet for all its might, it lacks the myth and mystery, the beauty and intrigue, the sense of unravelling adventure that Barf holds in abundance.

      Bassenthwaite from the summit of Barf
      Bassenthwaite from the summit

      A grassy ridge path leads on to Lord’s Seat, and from there, to Broom Fell, Graystones, and Whinlatter. I shall spend the rest of the day exploring those green and wooded slopes, and they will seem a world apart from the route which brought me here. In late afternoon, I’ll reach the bottom of Beckstones Gill and wend through the woods to the Clerk. I shall look out again from the dappled cover of the trees onto the sun-bleached slope of fractured slate; and I shall spy the Bishop presiding over the progress of a solitary walker, starting up the stiff scree—another pilgrim on a quest, armed, no doubt, with a hand-drawn map and the poetic scribblings of a sage.

      Further Reading

      Lakeland Routes guide to the direct route up Barf

      Lakeland Routes Alternative Route

      The National Trust on William Hervey, Bishop of Derry

      https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/downhill-demesne-and-hezlett-house/features/the-flamboyant-earl-bishop-at-downhill


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        Rhiannon

        A Midsummer Night’s Dream on Dixon Heights

        One of the positives of lockdown has been waking up to what is right on your doorstep. With its ruined tower, Bay views, and fell ponies, Dixon Heights (Newton Fell South) is a Wainwright outlier, rich in enchantment. Its mention in the Annals of Cartmel reads like a nineteenth century episode of Father Ted. As I discover, on the eve of midsummer, it can prove veritably dreamlike.

        “Things seen, things remembered, and things imagined are blended together into a delicate landscape which is half reality and half dream, but in which the dream helps to clarify rather than to obscure that which is really there.”

        Norman Nicholson

        In its heady days as a watering hole for coach and horses, High Newton boasted three inns. Now there’s only The Crown, a fine pub, but closed this evening, due to lockdown. Newton was once a stop on the horse-drawn omnibus route from Lancaster to Ulverston. As 19th century interest in the Lakes awakened, a steady stream of curious sightseers made the journey, inspired in part by the hyperbole of early apostles of the picturesque, like William Gilpin. In 1820, a new turnpike opened through Levens, Lindale, and Newton that offered an alternative to the perilous race over Morecambe Bay. In his guidebook of 1842, J Hudson commends the route to “those Tourists who dislike to cross the sands”, adding, “the road is excellent, and passes through a pleasant and agreeable country”.

        For the best part of two centuries, High and Low Newton suffered their share of pass-through traffic. Fifteen years ago, you needed your wits about you to cross this road. It was a single carriageway bottleneck on the A590, and an accident black spot. In 2006, however, work began on a bypass that would transform village life here. The new stretch of dual carriageway opened in 2008 and reduced traffic through the villages from 17,900 vehicles per day to 550. This midsummer evening, with the road journeys restricted further by COVID, I see none. The prevailing sounds are the distant bleat of lambs and a sudden downbeat of big wings as a buzzard takes off from an overhanging branch.

        Buzzard
        Buzzard

        Our house looks out on Newton Fell, the long low heather-clad ridge that runs north through the woods of Chapel House and Simpson Ground to the rocky summit of Gummer’s How, perched above Windermere. Wainwright features Newton Fell in his book of outliers, dividing it into two separate walks which he calls Newton Fell North and Newton Fell South. No right of way exists between them, and although much of the ground is now open access, there is still a portion that is not, an untempered legacy of an 1806 land-grab—the enclosure of the Cartmel Commons.

        With lockdown keeping me from the mountains, I’ve been taking a deeper interest in what is right on my doorstep. The trek along the ridge from the Newton reservoirs over the tops of Saskills (Newton Fell’s summit) and the weathered crag of White Stone has become a fast favourite, but until last week, I’d never climbed the southern tip, Dixon Heights. It is the shortest of fell walks but rich in enchantment, and on this balmy midsummer’s eve, I’m eager for some solstice magic.

        Dixon Heights from Bishops Tithe Allotment
        Dixon Heights from Bishops Tithe Allotment

        Wainwright climbed Dixon Heights from Lindale, but his route is bisected now by the dual carriageway. Happily, there is an alternative that starts closer to home for me. Opposite Yew Tree Barn Antiques in Low Newton, a track skirts a farm and narrows to a public footpath, little more than a furrow through the bracken.  As I leave the road, I disturb a grazing roe deer. It darts away through dense foliage, a ripple in the fern. Beyond a gate, the path forks. The lower prong hugs the wall, but the higher one climbs through a sea of leafy green, dotted purple with the cascading bells of foxgloves. Red admirals flit over canary coloured tormentil, and as the trod meanders toward the ridge line, craggy outcrops spring from the undergrowth like eroded ruins of ancient temples. To the right of Buck Crag, over the lush flatland of Cartmel valley, I catch my first glimpse of the Bay.

        Path to DIxon Heights, Low Newton
        Path to DIxon Heights, Low Newton
        Ridge line Bishops Tithe Allotment
        Ridge line Bishops Tithe Allotment
        Bracken, foxgloves, and rocky outcrop, Dixon Heights
        Bracken, foxgloves, and rocky outcrop, Dixon Heights

        The first summit is Bishop’s Tithe Allotment, a name echoed in a portion of neighbouring Hampsfell, which suggests the church may have been an early beneficiary of the enclosures. The elevation is a humble 620 feet, but it boasts fine views. The Bay stretches out to the south, and Arnside Knott rises across the Kent Estuary. The eastern skyline is dominated by the dark distant shapes of the Pennines, the Howgills and Ingleborough. Closer at hand, across the Winster valley, is another Wainwright outlier, one of his favourites, Whitbarrow Scar. Its western flank is long and wooded, but it presents a 200 foot escarpment to the A590, and to the turnpike that preceded it. To J Hudson, writing with all the poetic overstatement of his age, it was, “a huge arched and bended cliff, of an immense height”.

        Bishop's Tithe Allotment
        Bishop’s Tithe Allotment

        Down in the valley, the River Winster forms a natural parish boundary. A country lane runs from High Newton to Witherslack, borne over its waters by the twin arches of an old stone bridge. According to James Stockdale’s Annals of Cartmel (1872), here in April 1576, stood the gibbet from which Richard Taylor swung, deliberately conspicuous from the road, a macabre moral lesson to all would-be ne’er do wells. Stockdale writes,

        “The highway road from Newton-in-Cartmel to Witherslack, after the steep zigzag descent of Towtop, crosses the river Winster at Bleacragg Bridge (so spelled in the Ordnance map, 1850). On the Lancashire side of the river, and adjoining the south-western end of the bridge, is a small rocky knoll, on which some Scotch fir and larch trees now grow; this knoll has always had the name of “Gallows Hill,” which may be accounted for by the above register, though all other tradition of the crime and its punishment has been lost.” 

        The church register, from which Stockdale quotes, states, “April 10. Richard Taylor was buryed whoe suffered the same daye at Blakragge bridge end for murthering wilfullye Richard Kilner of Witherslack.”

        If Bleacrag bridge supplies Stockdale with a dark tale, Buck Crag, on the western slope of Bishop’s Tithe Allotment, furnishes a lighter one. At the start of the 18th century, the farmhouse at its foot was home to Edmund Law, the curate and schoolmaster at Staveley. Stockdale praises Law for his “pedestrian achievements” and calculates that by walking the eight miles there and back to the church and school every day, over his forty-nine years in post, Law must have clocked up 122,696 miles—“a distance more than equal to five times the circumference of our globe”. Edmund remained a humble footsore curate, but his educational prowess propelled his progeny into high office: his son became the Lord Bishop of Carlisle, and his grandsons went on to become variously, the Bishop of Elphin, Baron Ellenborough, and the Bishop of Bath and Wells.

        Stockdale describes the house at Buck Crag as “one of the most homely and lonely places in these realms”, but evidently, it held such a fascination for Law’s grandsons that, in 1818, one of the bishops arrived on the doorstep, replete with an entourage of clerics and a secretary, and much to the astonishment of the farmer who now lived there, requested a thorough tour of the premises. Apparently, “t’Bishop inquir’t t’dog tail aut a-joint”. Meanwhile, a scene straight from Father Ted was playing out on the fell: “Whilst all this was going on, some of the younger clergymen took the opportunity, under the guidance of the farmer’s two daughters, to scale and scramble over the precipices of Buck Crag and the mountains adjoining; but whether it was the delightful scenery or the presence of the ladies that rendered them oblivious, they certainly quite forgot ‘that time hath wings,’ and having kept the bishop a long time waiting, they did not escape some mild reproof for tarrying so unnecessarily long on the top of Buck Crag”.  The Bishop himself, it seems, left with his grandfather’s old armchair from “i’ t’ingle neak” as a keepsake, despite some mild reluctance from the farmer who had grown rather fond of it.

        Top of Bishop's Tithe Allotment
        Bishop’s Tithe Allotment above Buck Crag

        From the summit, the ridge continues south, dropping 130 ft to the saddle with Dixon Heights. At the bottom of the depression, Tom Tarn nestles beside a copse. In wetter times, a stone wall divides its waters, but after weeks of little rain, it’s dry, distinguished only by a small expanse of cracked mud. Whitbarrow Scar to the east and Hampsfell to the west are renowned for their limestone pavements, but Newton Fell is an outcrop of older Silurian mudstone, muddy siltstone, and muddy sandstone of the Bannisdale formation. In times past, the slopes down to the tarn were quarried for slate and flag. I lose the path amid prolific undergrowth. To regain it, I affect an easy scramble over a grey face of cut slate, now prettily laced with white and pink petals of English stonecrop. I disturb a skylark. It shoots skyward, its flight a succession of deft tacks on the arc of white-tipped wings.

        Rocky Outcrop Dixon Heights
        Rocky Outcrop Dixon Heights

        A gate by the tarn leads through to Dixon Heights. The wall disappears into the deep tree cover, but ahead, there is a grassy clearing, mown close by the carefree grazing of the wild ponies that dwell here. Beyond, a hawthorn covered bank rises to the grassy top. Here stands a ruined tower.

        The Tower Dixon Heights
        The Tower Dixon Heights

        In 1827, architect George Webster, acquired Dixon Heights and built an elegant country mansion, Eller How, at its foot. Webster made his name extending and remodelling stately homes like Hutton in the Forest, Dallam Tower and Holker Hall. He also built Kendal Town Hall and several local churches. Eller How became his home. It is often supposed that Webster erected the summit tower as a romantic folly, but in his book of 1849, succinctly named, A History, Topography, and Directory, of Westmorland: And Londsdale North of the Sands, in Lancashire Together with a Descriptive and Geological View of the Whole of the Lake District, P. J. Mannix calls it an observatory. Wainwright says it was used by the Home Guard during the war but suggests its origins are obscure.  According to Wainwright, a local legend claims it was “a lookout for the observation of smugglers in the estuary”, but he admits it’s equally likely that it was “merely a decoration of the Eller How estate”.

        The Tower, Dixon Heights
        The Tower, Dixon Heights

        Whatever its original purpose, it is a romantic ruin now and a fine viewpoint over the estuary and the Bay. As I settle on its old stones and surrender to the charm of midsummer solitude, the soft light of evening weaves a gentle magic.

        The Tower, Dixon Heights
        The Tower, Dixon Heights
        The Tower, Dixon Heights
        The Tower, Dixon Heights

        I’m not quite alone. A feral white horse is grazing at the edge of the summit plateau, its taught muscular frame, flowing tail and unkempt mane, the epitome of wild majesty. Backdropped by the shimmering mudflats of the estuary, shores braided with dark woodland, and lit by an opal sky feathered silver with cirrocumulus, the whole scene is beguilingly beautiful. The horse looks ethereal, not quite of this world: a vision of something simpler, something older, something finer. I’m entranced, and I watch for a long while, lost in the rarefied poetry of the moment. It’s a wrench to tear myself away.

        White horse, Dixon Heights
        Rhiannon
        White Mare and the Bay from the Tower
        Dixon Heights (Newton Fell South)
        Dixon Heights (Newton Fell South)

        Below the summit, on a wooded bank above the track that leads to Eller How, there is a weathered arch. This was certainly a folly, likely built by Webster as a mock ruin; the vogue for the picturesque prized ruins in the landscape, and it became fashionable to build your own. William Gilpin, a devout apostle of the movement, frowned on such contrivance, but after two and half centuries, nature has conspired to turn this arch into the very thing it was meant to mimic, a gothic relic. Wainwright sketched it with more battlements than it boasts now, so perhaps Gilpin would relent, and admire the effect of time and weather on these chiselled stones. After the dreamlike wonder of the white horse, the arch assumes an air of Arthurian romance.

        Arch, Dixon Heights
        Arch, Dixon Heights

        One version of the Arthurian legend can be found in the Mabinogion, a collection of Welsh stories composed in the 13th century from older Celtic tales. When waves of pagan invaders pushed into Cumbria, its Celtic priests and poets fled to Wales, taking their traditions with them, so it is entirely possible that some of the stories of the Mabinogion are Cumbrian in origin.

        The Arch, DIxon Heights
        The Arch, DIxon Heights

        Also featured in the Mabinogion, is Rhiannon, a woman of the Otherworld, who appears to Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed, astride a horse. Smitten with her beauty, Pwyll follows her, but despite her gentle pace, he can never catch her until he implores her to stop, which she does willingly and rebukes him for not asking earlier. Rhiannon then reveals she has chosen Pwyll to be her husband. Pwyll and Rhiannon marry, but their son is abducted on the night of his birth. Fearing execution for their negligence, his nursemaids kill a puppy and smear the sleeping Rhiannon with its blood. Just as they plan, she is accused of murder and cannibalism. Pwyll refuses to abandon her and retains her as queen, but she is obliged to undergo a penance. Every day, she must sit outside the castle by the stable block and profess her crime to visitors. She must then offer to carry them into the castle on her back, like a beast of burden. Eventually, a vision of a foal being stolen from a mare by a dark presence leads to the baby’s rescue and to Rhiannon’s exoneration.

        Rhiannon is associated with the Gaulish horse goddess, Epona, and often portrayed as a maiden. But in some depictions, Rhiannon, herself, is an ethereal white mare.

        “Things seen, things remembered, and things imagined are blended together into a delicate landscape which is half reality and half dream, but in which the dream helps to clarify rather than to obscure that which is really there.”

        White horse, Dixon Heights

        Further Reading/Sources

        Stockdale, James. 1872: Annals of Cartmel. Ulverston: William Kitchen; London: Simpkin, Marshall, & Co

        Guest, Lady Charlotte E. (Translator). 1838: The Mabinogion. Dover Publications, 2000

        Wainwright, A. 1974: The Outlying Fells of Lakeland. Kendal: The Westmorland Gazette

        Nicholson, Norman. 1955: The Lakers. Milnthorpe: Cicerone Press, 1995.

        Hudson, J. 1842: A Complete Guide To Wordsworth’s Scenery of the Lakes of England.

        Mannex, P. J. 1849: History, Topography, and Directory, of Westmorland.
        London: Simpkin, Marshall & Co.

        Thomas, P.R.. 2006 Geology of the area between Lindale and Witherslack. Nottingham, UK, British Geological Survey, 39pp. (IR/06/079) (Unpublished), Available at: http://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/7302/


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          Hit the Rake Jack

          Jack’s Rake and Dungeon Ghyll Force

          Wainwright describes Jack’s Rake as “just about the limit” for the ordinary fell walker. Richard Jennings and I set off for Pavey Ark to find out whether he’s right.

          “Pavey Ark is Langdale’s biggest cliff. In an area where crags and precipices abound, here is the giant of them all, and, scenically, it is the best. The view of the Ark across the waters of Stickle Tarn, at its foot, is superior to all others of this type in Lakeland, having an advantage over the principal rival team of Dow Crag-Goats Water in that the scene, being invariably reached by the steep climb from Dungeon Ghyll, bursts upon the eye with dramatic effect.”

          As rather a big fan of the rival team (I can see Dow Crag from my kitchen), I’ve always been a bit miffed that  Wainwright relegates it into second place, but this morning, staring at Pavey Ark across the green marble waters of Stickle Tarn, I concede he has a point.

          Pavey Ark over Stickle Tarn
          Pavey Ark over Stickle Tarn

          The cliff is riven by two magnificent gullies, but to the north of the tarn another significant cleft has appeared. It delimits the buttocks of a wild camper, who’s just emerged from his tent, stark bollock naked, and is proceeding to undertake his morning stretches with nary a care about who may be copping an eyeful.

          Pavey Ark
          The author looking at Pavey Ark (photo by Richard Jennings)

          Naturism is no match for the natural wonder of the cliff face, however. I eye the latter with a tremor of nervous anticipation as it holds in store a challenge. Richard Jennings and I are about to embark on ascent which Wainwright describes as “just about the limit that the ordinary common garden or fell walker reasonably may be expected to attempt” (which maybe a case of all the right words, not necessarily in the right order). Unusually for a cliff, Pavey Ark permits the walker to get up close and personal. A narrow ledge runs diagonally across it from bottom right to top left. This is the infamous Jack’s Rake, revered and feared for its steepness, bad steps and sheer drops.

          Jack's Rake on Pavey Ark
          Jack’s Rake is the faint line running bottom right to near top left

          A preposterous rumour purports that the Rake was named for Jack Nicholson who supposedly made its first ascent. In truth, Jack’s Rake was already popular in Victorian times (half a century before Nicholson was born). It is mentioned in O. G. Jones’s guidebook, Rock-Climbing in the English Lake District, a tome that was on its second edition by 1900. Owen Glynne Jones (although he claimed his initials stood for the Only Genuine Jones) was a pioneer of English rock-climbing, and his book, written with characteristic dash and vigour, did much to popularise the sport. Of Jack’s Rake, he says this:

          “Well towards the north end of the cliff is a wide scree gully with a square notch at its crest. Near the foot of this a safe natural path may be followed obliquely across the face. This is the well-known Jack’s Rake. It starts rather steeply, but soon assumes a gentle, uniform gradient. It crosses the Great Gully a hundred feet below the top; there then follows a rather awkward bit for the walker, who will need to scramble up a corner to get on to the last portion of the rake. It crosses the Little Gully within fifty feet of the summit, and ends on the buttress just beyond.”

          The Only Genuine Jones

          Of course, to a climber, the Rake is child’s play, and Jones’s attention is drawn to Pavey Ark’s gullies and chimneys. His interest is piqued by the words of another writer, a certain Mr Gwynne:

          ‘About half-way up there runs on to the ledge a chimney which —when it is not a small waterfall—forms a pleasant climb to some broken rock above, whence the summit is easily reached. If, however, the water in the chimney makes it uncomfortable and unpleasant for the climber, he may still arrive at the top of it by choosing a long bit of steep, smooth rock on the left.’ 

          I can find no evidence that Mr Gwynne wrote a book of his own, but it does seem he was a correspondent for the Pall Mall Gazette. He is immortalised in far grander way, however. The chimney is known as Gwynne’s Chimney; and the FRCC credits H. A. Gwynne with its first ascent.

          Gwynne’s Chimney is well beyond my capabilities, and as a Jack’s Rake virgin, I’m wondering how I’ll fare on the Rake itself, especially the awkward bit near the top. Wainwright is not exactly reassuring:

          “For much of the way the body is propelled forward by a series of convulsions unrelated to normal walking, the knees and elbows contributing as much to progress as hands and feet. Walkers who can still put their toes in their mouths and bring their knees up to their chins may embark on the ascent confidently; others, unable to perform these tests, will find the route arduous.”

          At the tender age of fifty-three, neither my toes and mouth nor my knees and chin have been on intimate terms for years, but I do have something in my favour. My legs are just a touch on the short side for my height. I have never considered this an advantage before, but it just might be when it comes to Jack’s Rake. Wainwright archivist, Chris Butterfield, has, in his extensive collection, a private letter from A. W. to a Mr Crompton congratulating him on his ascent. In it, he reveals this:

          “I too put off Jack’s Rake until it could be put off no longer. When I finally plucked up courage and did it I was in such a state of apprehension that I quite forgot to take any photographs or pace the distance, my sole reason for going. So the following week I did it again, more leisurely, and once out of that awful initial groove, which in my case (having abnormally long legs) called for the most grotesque contortions, I almost began to enjoy it.”

          Wainwright’s letter to Mr Crompton (courtesy of Chris Butterfield)

          Fortunately for me too, Richard is a Rake veteran. Indeed, last time he climbed it, he was dressed as an Oompa-Loompa. Sadly, this isn’t his normal walking garb. It was donned in aid of a charity group excursion to raise funds for Mountain Rescue. On the day, the summit was veiled in cloud, and walkers crossing from Thunacar Knott must have been a little startled to find twenty-three Oompa-Loompas emerging from the mist.

          Looking down the first section of Jack’s Rake

          For all his experience, even Richard confesses to a slight tremor in the legs whenever he tackles the Rake. Today however, he’s distracted by another mission. Wainwright’s map mentions a stone tablet, set in a cairn, bearing the inscription, “JWS, 1900”, and Richard’s determined to find it. We follow the path around the south end of the tarn and keep our eyes peeled as we approach the foot of the cliff. We double check the position against Wainwright’s guide, but there’s no sign of a cairn. We even wander off piste, but there’s nothing doing. Eventually, we give up and wander back toward the path.

          Still scouring for a cairn, I trip over a rock and steady myself on a boulder. That’s when I see it, tucked in among the stones by my foot—the elusive tablet. No trace of the cairn remains, but JWS is still commemorated in a secret natural shrine away from the tread of boots. No-one seems to know who he or she was, although on one web forum, someone has floated the idea that “J” might stand for Jack—the man or woman who gave their name to the Rake perhaps? It’s a beguiling thought, and a tad more believable than the Nicholson ruse. Richard is determined to uncover the truth, and he’s as tenacious as a terrier when he gets the scent of his story, so keep an eye on the local history section of his Lakeland Routes website for more on this.

          JWS stone tablet, Pavey Ark
          JWS stone tablet, Pavey Ark

          Two climbers are roping up at the foot of the cliff, and just beyond, begins our line of ascent. It’s a narrow trench, littered with boulders. It rises at an alarming angle. And it smells of death.

          The decaying remains of a Herdwick ewe lie near the bottom. Herdwicks are natural mountaineers, but they’re not infallible. Something about the Ark seems to wrong foot them. Richard tells me it’s not uncommon to find a body here: a brutal truth, unlikely to instil confidence, and one I try to put out of mind. That’s easier once we’re upwind of her.

          Climbers at the foot of Jack's Rake
          Climbers at the foot of Jack’s Rake (photo Richard Jennings)

          I’ve stowed water bottles inside my rucksack and shifted my camera bag from belt to chest strap—precautions that prove prudent as soon as Wainwright’s warning about knees and elbows is fulfilled (which is almost immediately). From here on, engagement is total: hands grip and haul; legs balance and push; eye and brain engage to plan contortions and match body parts to nooks and crannies that might accommodate them. Adrenaline courses through my bloodstream; I’m buzzing with exertion. Curiously, there’s little sense of exposure as the groove of the gully hides the sudden drop, and the demands of the scramble keep senses focused on the task in hand. It’s totally invigorating.

          Scrambling Jack's Rake
          The author scrambling Jack’s Rake (photo by Richard Jennings)
          First steep section on Jack's Rake
          First steep section (photo by Richard Jennings)

          A prominent rowan tree marks the start of a brief respite. The gradient eases then levels off to a small platform at the foot of Gwynne’s Chimney. Any relief is tempered by a sudden sense of exposure. The protective lip of the gully has crumbled away to expose steepest part of the cliff. Richard turns to check I’m OK with this. I’m less daunted than I expected to be, but it’s no place for complacency, and the trickiest section lies just ahead.

          The rock funnels into another short but steep chimney, blocked at the top by a fallen boulder known variously as the Cannon or the Gun. Manoeuvring up and around this is awkward. It involves getting in slightly under the slab where there is a natural step, then gripping the overhang, while stretching backwards to force a knee on to a higher ledge and swinging your weight across. Richard tells me I make it look easy, but I had the distinct advantage of watching him do it first, and besides, from above, he couldn’t see the faces I was pulling.

          Scrambling round the Cannon of Jack's Rake
          Scrambling round the Cannon of Jack’s Rake (photo by Richard Jennings)

          From above, the Cannon’s name makes even more sense, and the grass shelf Wainwright calls Easy Terrace gives a genuine respite; although Richard introduces a frisson of drama by climbing on top of the Gun. Slowly, meticulously, he inches along the barrel, then straightens up to stand proud at the top. As I take his picture, it occurs to me he looks as if he’s on a diving board. I fumble momentarily with a camera setting, and when I look up, he’s gone. Moments later, the sound of a grand splash echoes up from Stickle Tarn, and on the far bank, a panel of Oompa-Loompas hold up score cards that would shame Tom Daley.

          Climbing the Cannon on Jack's Rake
          Richard climbs the Cannon
          Climbing the Cannon on Jack's Rake
          Richard climbs the Cannon
          Climbing the Cannon on Jack's Rake
          Richard climbs the Cannon
          The Cannon on Jack's Rake
          The Cannon on Jack’s Rake

          (OK, I might have made a bit of that up).

          So far, I’ve coped with the physical demands of the scramble and the psychological demands of the exposed sections, but there remains one last real test—the awkward bit near the top that O. G. Jones mentions. If I’m honest, this is the part that worries me the most, and it’s only a matter of minutes before it’s upon us. The gully is again blocked by a large rock, but this time, the way around it involves climbing out of the channel onto a thin stone ledge between the rock and the precipice. It’s a bad step with maximum exposure.

          Richard goes first and points out a narrow groove and lip in the ledge. It’s a reassurance, a small but welcome barrier to your feet slipping over the edge. Getting up there requires a big ungainly heave, but once on the ledge, you can lean in on the boulder and use it for support, keeping your body away from the drop. The ledge is only two or three steps, then you tuck back in, safely away from the edge.

          The Rake widens, and the Pinnacle rock that marks the top is visible ahead.  Between here and there is a rising wall of large boulders. Despite their size, this is easy scrambling. We’ve turned a corner, moving away from the drop, moving out of the most obvious danger. I’m borderline euphoric, and it feels as if we fly up this bit. Moments later, we cross the summit wall and stand proudly admiring a hanging rock that looks like a primitive head carving.

          The Pinnacle on Jack's Rake
          The Pinnacle on Jack’s Rake
          Nearing the Pinnacle on Jack's Rake
          Richard nearing the Pinnacle
          Nearing the Pinnacle on Jack's Rake
          Richard nearing the Pinnacle

          Nearing the top of Jack's Rake
          Nearing the top {photo by Richard Jennings)
          Hanging rock near Pavey Ark summit
          Hanging rock near Pavey Ark summit
          The author on Pavey Ark summit (photo by Richard Jennings)

          That was one hell of a scramble, but the day isn’t quite done with surprises. We walk on over Thunacar Knott, Harrison Stickle, the Pike O’ Stickle and Loft Crag, swapping accounts of cloud inversions. Richard waxes lyrical about the fog bows and Brocken spectres he’s seen on his many wild camping trips to these summits.

          We take the path between Loft Crag and Thorn Crag that descends by Dungeon Ghyll. As we reach the lower slopes, the Ghyll runs near to the path, but it’s cut into a ravine and hidden by foliage. I’ve walked this path many times, but I’ve never seen Dungeon Ghyll Force. It has remained an elusive blue star on the OS map. I meant to look for it today, but after the exhilaration of the Rake and the wonder of the summits, and our rapid-fire conversation, it goes clean out of my mind.

          Not far from the hotel, Richard stops abruptly, double checks his surroundings, and grins.

          “Come with me”, he says and turns down a narrow path I hadn’t seen for its generous covering of bracken. It leads to the edge of the ravine, which is much deeper than I’d realised.

          And suddenly, we’re scrambling again. Down climbing steep rock steps to the stream. At the water’s edge, we stow our rucksacks in the undergrowth, and wade in, clambering atop the large rocks that line the bed to try and stay out of the water. They’re wet and mossy and slippery as hell. I lose purchase and drop in. My boots fill with water but it matters little as up ahead is a vision immortalised by Wordsworth in the Idle Shepherd Boys:

          “Into a chasm a mighty block
          Hath fallen, and made a bridge of rock ;
          The gulf is deep below;
          And in a basin black and small,
          Receives a lofty waterfall”

          We’re in the chasm that’s been turned into a cave by the boulder lodged overhead. In front of us, the stream crashes down a wall of rock into a dark pool. Here is the primeval majesty of Dungeon Ghyll Force.

          Dungeon Ghyll Force
          Dungeon Ghyll Force

          “Welcome to Jurassic Park”, says Richard. “The lost world.”

          And he’s right. Not just for its sublime grandeur, so well concealed from above; or for the the fact a dinosaur encounter wouldn’t be incongruous; but because a hundred and fifty years ago, Dungeon Ghyll Force was a cause célèbre, and according to Harriet Martineau, it was the principal draw that brought visitors to Langdale. Martineau was a prolific writer on politics, religion and sociology, but in 1855, she also produced a guide to the Lakes, which became the go-to resource for the nascent Victorian tourist industry, superseding Wordsworth’s own guidebook, published forty-five years earlier.

          The idea that well-to-do Victorian women in crinolines scrambled down this bank seems inconceivable, but according to Martineau:

          “There is a well-secured ladder, by which ladies easily descend to the mouth of the chasm; and when they have caught sight of the fall, they can please themselves about scrambling any further. There is the fall in its cleft, tumbling and splashing, while the light ash, and all the vegetation besides, is everlastingly in motion from the stir of the air.”

          Dungeon Ghyll Force
          Dungeon Ghyll Force
          Dungeon Ghyll Force
          Dungeon Ghyll Force

          I imagine the outcry a bid to fix a ladder would provoke today. Now, we like our wild places to appear wild, even if, in the interest of conservation, we have to accept compromises like stone-pitched paths. A ladder might be a step too far, but the very fact that one once existed is testimony to the power of this landscape to enrapture sightseers. That is all to the good. There is little doubt that the world would be a happier place if more people engaged with the great outdoors; and yet, most often, the reward is proportional to the effort expended to attain it. That doesn’t mean we all have to take on a challenge as big as Jack’s Rake, but I’m heartened that Dungeon Ghyll Force is, once again, a hidden treasure that it takes a certain degree of commitment to behold.

          Further Reading

          Chris Butterfield’s Facebook Group, Alfred Wainwright Books & Memorabilia, is a must for any Wainwright fans. His posts are invariably fascinating and entertaining, and he often has collectable items for sale or as giveaways in his competitions. Well worth checking out:

          https://www.facebook.com/groups/AlfredWainwright

          Keep an eye on Richard’s Lakeland Routes website: it’s only a matter of time before he unearths the identity of JWS. If you want proof that he’s as tenacious as a terrier (especially where a stone tablet is involved), check out his Wolfman of Eagle Crag story.

          https://www.lakelandroutes.uk/local-history


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            A Big Day in the North

            Blencathra via Doddick Fell, Mungrisdale Common, Bannerdale Crags, Bowscale Fell, Souther Fell

            Wainwright describes no fewer than 12 ways to ascend Blencathra. When I chicken out of Sharp Edge due to high winds, I try his third best route—the exhilarating ridge of Doddick Fell. On reaching the summit, I ramble on over Mungrisdale Common, Bannerdale Crags, Bowscale Fell and Souther Fell, encountering foxhounds, Geordies and John Wayne. (Some of them are even real).

            “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways”. The opening line of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s sonnet may have chimed with Alfred Wainwright in 1961, as he spent evening after evening sketching for his fifth book, The Northern Fells. While her words hardly described his marital life at the time (the fells and his books were his retreat from the unease of a failing relationship), they perfectly capture how he felt about Blencathra.

            Wainwright spoke of a “spiritual and physical satisfaction in climbing mountains – and a tranquil mind upon reaching their summits, as though I had escaped from the disappointments and unkindnesses of life and emerged above them into a new world, a better world.” For AW, the southern face of Blencathra was “the grandest object in Lakeland”. He devoted 36 pages to this mountain (more than any other) and described 12 different ascents— “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways”.

            The southern face comprises five distinct fells fused together by the summit ridge. At either end, Blease Fell and Scales Fell are broad grassy flanks, but the middle three, Gategill Fell, Hall’s Fell and Doddick Fell, taper to narrow airy ridges separated by broad plunging gills. As far as dramatic mountain scenery goes, it’s an embarrassment of riches. Hall’s Fell Top is Blencathra’s summit, and from here, another short ridge dips then rises to Atkinson Pike to create the Saddle, the mountain’s iconic skyline that gives rise to its alternative name, Saddleback.

            Hall’s Fell Ridge was Wainwright’s favourite ascent (indeed, he thought this the finest way up any mountain in the district). Second came Sharp Edge, the narrow arête that runs east from Atkinson Pike above Scales Tarn. Doddick came in third. But third is good isn’t it? Third out of twelve—that’s something. AW went walking in his third-best suit. Better than second, at any rate. Shakespeare bequeathed his second-best bed to his wife, and I can’t imagine she was overly chuffed. Probably raised some awkward questions about who got the better one…

            Doddick Fell
            Doddick Fell

            OK, it’s a ridiculous train of thought, I know, but I’m standing at the bottom of Mousthwaite Comb trying to convince myself I’m not a chicken. Ahead, a path runs up to the col between Scales Fell and Souther Fell and, from there, climbs above the river Glenderamackin to Scales Tarn and the start of Sharp Edge. This was my plan for today, but the ridge is a razor edge scramble with sheer drops on either side. It’s not for the faint-hearted, and I’d quite like to lose my Sharp Edge virginity on a day when the wind isn’t gusting quite so hard. With the words “discretion” and “valour” repeating in my head like a mantra, I take the other path—the one that climbs over the toe of Scales Fell and heads for Doddick Fell.

            Sharp Edge
            Sharp Edge

            I’ve climbed Halls Fell Ridge before. It has drama aplenty—an exhilarating scramble with steep sides, if not quite as sheer as Sharp Edge, still capable of instilling an air of danger. While holding few genuine difficulties, it does require care. Doddick is a similar slim ridge, but with fewer rock turrets and precipices so it should be a little easier. However, my scrambling abilities are tested before I even start the ascent. Scaley Beck separates Scales Fell and Doddick Fell, and its crossing requires a descent into a steep ravine. The way down is easy enough, but on the other side, a narrow path climbs to a large rock step with a dearth of decent hand and foot holds. After some shenanigans that are most accurately described as scrabbling rather than scrambling, I manage to get one knee over the parapet, and with a little inelegant huffing and shuffling, I haul myself up.

            A few minutes later, I’m stuffing outer layers into my rucksack. Out of the wind, the sunshine is warm. It’s a beautiful spring day, quintessential May—except it’s February, and this is alarming. (Still, it would be churlish not to enjoy it).

            As I start my winding ascent up the steep foot of Doddick Fell, the green fields of St John’s in the Vale stretch out below, walled into irregular squares like a patchwork chequerboard. Wisps of low cloud soften the charcoal peaks of Clough Head and the Dodds as they rise across the valley, and to the west, the ridges of Coledale and Newlands are dark sails in a sea of fine mist. At 450 million years old, they’re all newcomers compared to Blencathra, which has stood a full fifty million years longer, forged not from cataclysmic volcanic eruptions but formed, over imponderable millennia, from layer upon layer of sedimentary deposits on the sea bed. I can’t tell whether it’s the weight of such eternities, or simply the wind direction, but the noise from the A66 below seems to have disappeared.

            Clough Head from Doddick Fell
            Clough Head from Doddick Fell

            Across the foot of Hall’s Fell, half a dozen foxhounds are trotting this way. Members of the Blencathra pack, perhaps? Kennelled at Gate Gill, they are a famed company with a lineage stretching back to John Peel, the huntsman immortalised in the seventeenth century song, “D’ye ken John Peel in his coat so gay”. Their master awaits further up the slope here on Doddick. Perhaps I’m just used to seeing farmers dressed in fleeces and coveralls, but in his tweeds, waxed jacked and flat cap, he seems the embodiment of tradition. In spite of myself, I find I’m enjoying the scene. I supported (and still support) the fox hunting ban, and I don’t subscribe to the Countryside Alliance’s view that it is a law passed by Townies who don’t understand country ways. Growing up in the countryside, I encountered as much anti-hunt feeling as pro, even among some farmers whose interests it claimed to serve. Yet, it is possible to acknowledge and appreciate a close working relationship between man and dog, and between both and the landscape, even if you don’t condone the endgame.

            Of course, since the ban, the endgame is supposed to have changed. They no longer kill foxes, they pursue fell runners now (which surely even Oscar Wilde would consider fair game). Trail hunting, where a runner lays a trail scented with aniseed or fox urine, was big in Cumbria long before the ban, and the Blencathra Hounds’ website states emphatically that their events keep strictly within the law—any attempt to do otherwise will result in the hounds being returned to their kennels. How rigidly this is enforced, I don’t know, but there’s no bloodshed today, they’re simply exercising the animals. One of the hounds has already reached Doddick, and minutes later, he brushes eagerly past my leg. As I reach the top of the slope, I pass his master, and being British, we comment on the weather, “Aye, wam oop ‘ere”, he grins.

            According to Wikipedia, one version of the folk song paints Peel’s coat as grey, not gay. This seems likely, as it was probably made from Herdwick wool. It also reminds me I know the song best from Porridge, where Norman Stanley Fletcher sings an entirely different lyric:

            “D’ye see yon screw with his look so vain?
            With his brand new key on his brand new chain;
            With a face like a ferret and a pea for a brain
            And his hand on his whistle in the morning.”

            As the initial slope levels off, Doddick’s ridge is revealed. If you ask a child to draw a mountain, they draw a triangle, and this is the shape of things ahead—a perfect chestnut pyramid rising to a pale grey peak. At the top, this fell joins the ridge that curves round from Scales Fell.  The ground between is scooped into a deep and wide gill, its high sides draped in dry heather, like the chocolate fleece of a Herdwick yearling.

            Doddick Fell
            Doddick Fell
            Scaley Beck Gill from Doddick Fell
            Scaley Beck Gill from Doddick Fell

            To my left, is another higher horseshoe. Across Doddick Gill, Hall’s Fell rises to an imperious tower where it becomes Blencathra’s summit, its slopes, a great wall of exposed stone flecked with sparse patches of yellow scrub, topped with rocky turrets and riven by a narrow fissure running all the way down to its foot. It’s a view Wainwright calls “awe-inspiring”. I’m reminded of a friend who used to run the Coniston Launch. I once asked him how he lured punters away from his chief rival, the historic steam yacht, Gondola. “Ah well,” he said, “I tell them the best view of the Gondola is from The Coniston Launch.” The same may be true of Hall’s Fell and Doddick.

            Hall's Fell Top
            Hall’s Fell Top

            A man with a north east accent is similarly wrapt. He tells me he normally climbs Blencathra by Hall’s Fell or Sharp Edge but decided to try Doddick today for a change. He’s not dissappointed. I confess to chickening out of Sharp Edge because of the wind (which sounds lame because here in the lee of the mountain, there isn’t any). He smiles and assures me it’s not as bad as people make out, then as we start up the slope, he admits he’s regretting the six pints he had yesterday afternoon while watching the rugby.

            St John's in the Vale from Doddick Fell
            St John’s in the Vale from Doddick Fell

            Our paths continue to cross as we climb the narrow ridgeline. When I reach Doddick Fell Top, I gaze back over the ascent. He’s two steps behind and looking beyond me.

            “Sharp Edge”, he nods.

            I turn, and there it is, towering like an impregnable wall over Scales Tarn. Its blue slate sides look well nigh vertical, and a tiny figure strides nervously along its battlements. Just then, we’re buffeted by a huge gust. My companion looks at me with a smile and nods, “Aye, bit windy today”. Then, as one, we glance back to check the solitary figure is still there and not floating in the tarn below.

            Sharp Edge
            Sharp Edge
            Sharp Edge
            Sharp Edge

            The unseasonal weather has inspired people to pull on their boots, and Blencathra’s summit is crowded. A large group is posing for photo, so I make friends with their dog. We’re on tummy tickling terms by the time his grinning owner reclaims him. I stare down the spine of Hall’s Fell Ridge, falling abruptly away toward Thelkeld below. It promises thrills and adventure, but the day is young, and there are other summits I want to roam.

            Hall's Fell Ridge from the summit
            Hall’s Fell Ridge from the summit

            I set off over the Saddle toward Atkinson Pike. On its eastern flank, lies Foule Crag and Sharp Edge, but to the west, a blue slate scree slope (known imaginatively as Blue Screes) drops to a flat plateau of upland moor—Mungrisdale Common. If Wainwright thought the southern face of Blencathra, Lakeland’s grandest object, he found Mungrisdale Common its least impressive. Indeed, he’s positively rude about it, claiming it “has no more pretension to elegance than a pudding that has been sat on”, and that its “natural attractions are of a type that appeals only to sheep”. But I’ve been reading William Atkins’ book, The Moor, and it’s left me with a deeper appreciation of these boggy, desolate wastelands.

            While our moors are as hazardous as our mountains, we conceive of their dangers differently. Literature reinforces this: lofty crags are noble; to scale their heights, heroic; to die trying, worthy. Moors are bleak, lonely places, populated by outcasts; to drown in the bog is the ignominious fate of the wretched.

            Atkins’ book teems with tales of men and women who have battled to turn moors into fertile farmland. Yet time and again, the attempt is futile and leads to ruin, even madness. For centuries, our peat bogs were seen as useless waste ground. Today, with the reality of global warming, we’re waking up to their value. We learn in school that plants take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen, but when plants die they release all that stored carbon back into the atmosphere. The sphagnum moss that covers our wetlands is an exception. When it dies it forms the peat that lies beneath, and peat traps all the carbon it collected during its lifetime. Or at least it does if it stays wet. Drain our moors and we release the carbon. Protecting our wetlands is now a task of significant environmental importance.

            As a carbon sponge, Mungrisdale Common’s diminutive size means it hardly registers in significance compared with the vast peat bogs of Exmoor, Dartmoor, The Peak District or North Yorkshire, yet as I step off the blue scree and on to the squelchy ground, I look at the green and red sphagnum with a new-found appreciation.

            Finding the summit is more problematic. Wainwright declares that “any one of a thousand tufts of tough bent and cotton-grass might lay claim to crowning the highest point”, which means, I suppose, that walkers bagging the Wainwrights need only set foot on the Common to claim it. I decide it deserves more respect, and set off along the broadest of the visible paths heading for what I hope is a patch of imperceptibly higher ground.

            Cloud has now swallowed the top Blencathra, but here on the Common, I’m still in sunshine, and the landscape assumes an air of the Wild West. Admittedly, cacti and Comanches are in short supply but there’s something about craggy mountains rising from a broad sweep of straw-hued flatland that evokes John Wayne. I’ve been to Denver a couple of times and always marvel at the plains running flat as a pancake all the way to Kansas, while in the opposite direction the vast wall of the Rocky Mountains rises out of nowhere. Skiddaw is no Pikes Peak, but it’s a giant in Lakeland terms, and it looks “mighty fine” (as they might say over there). The Common compliments Great Calva and Lonscale Fell to similar effect, and I conclude that AW must have been in a unusually unimaginative mood to resist to such charms.

            Mungrisdale Common
            Mungrisdale Common

            I find a cairn which I count as the summit and turn heel for the Glenderamackin Col. At the col, the paths to Bowscale Fell, Blencathra and Bannerdale Crags intersect with a fourth that follows the course of the fledgling river down into the valley.

            The Saddle from Bannerdale Crags
            The Saddle from Bannerdale Crags

            Bannerdale Crags looks unexciting from here, a nondescript grassy hillock basking in the shadow of Blencathra’s saddle. That changes entirely when you reach the summit. Here the views are utterly uplifting. To the east, Souther Fell rises over the infant River Glenderamackin, a last noble outpost of the Northern Fells. Beyond is the broad flat sweep of the fertile Eden valley, hemmed by the distant indistinct wall of the Pennines. Immediately to the north, the Tongue rises to the neighbouring peak of Bowscale Fell, and from here the pièce de résistance, the crags themselves, sweep round to meet it, a crescent wall of charcoal cliffs plummeting to apricot slopes beneath. It makes for an inspiring walk, and everyone I pass along its sweep has the same beatific smile.

            Souther Fell from Bannerdale Crags
            Souther Fell from Bannerdale Crags


            Bannerdale Crags
            Bannerdale Crags
            Bannerdale Crags
            Bannerdale Crags

            On the summit of Bowscale Fell, I meet a man who’s sweating and puffing from the ascent. He’s come all the way up from the valley, past Bowscale Tarn, which, according to Wordsworth, is home to a pair of “undying fish”.

            “That doesn’t get any easier”, he exclaims.

            “Oh, I know”, I reply. “They get higher with age.”

            “They certainly do!”, he grins, and staggers off for the sanctuary of the summit shelter.

            I wander back down to the Glenderamackin col with the dark Saddle dominating the skyline and follow the stream down into the valley between Bannerdale Crags and Scales Fell. Above me on my right, Sharp Edge looms, looking no less daunting from this angle. Daunting but inspiring, and I find myself whispering, “next time”.

            Sharp Edge
            Sharp Edge

            I leave the path where it rounds the bottom of White Horse Bent, cross the steam by the footbridge, and climb to the col where Scales Fell and Souther Fell meet. From here, the path leads down Mousthwaite Comb and back to Scales, where I left my car.

            But Souther Fell is right there, the last bastion of the Northern Fells, and with the weather so amenable, aching legs would seem a small price to pay for making it a big day in the north.

            Souther Fell from Bannerdale Crags
            Souther Fell from Bannerdale Crags

            In 1745, twenty six men and women swore they’d seen a ghost army marching over Souther Fell. For more on that, my ascent of Hall’s Fell Ridge and the legendary Celtic king who is said to lie beneath Blencathra, click here…

            I did eventually get to walk over Sharp Edge. If you’d like to read that account, here’s the link:

            http://www.lakelandwalkingtales.co.uk/blencathra-via-sharp-edge/


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              Here’s where the story ends

              Paw Prints of the Plague Dogs part II

              News bulletins, artillery fire and the shadow of Sellafield conspire to recreate the atmosphere of Richard Adams’ 1977 bestseller, Plague Dogs, as I continue to follow Rowf and Snitter’s footsteps through the fells. It’s an adventure that takes me off the beaten track in the Duddon Valley, and out to the coast at Drigg, where the story reaches its dramatic finale.

              Seathwaite Tarn, Dow Crag, Caw & Brown Haw

              It’s as if Seathwaite mine has been swallowed by the mountain. The entrance to level no. 1 is buried under a bed of spoil. You could easily miss it, your attention seduced by the precipitous face of Dow Crag reflected in the still waters of Seathwaite Tarn, or the sheer slopes of Brim Fell, Swirl How, and Great Carrs plunging to enclose the valley like a steep sided bowl. Even when looking its way, your gaze would likely lift above to the imposing crags of Grey Friar. 

              Seathwaite Tarn and Levers Hause
              Seathwaite Tarn and Levers Hause
              Grey Friar
              Grey Friar

              But the keen-eyed might notice the remains of two small walls extending from the rubble like the outstretched arms of an avalanche victim. These ruins demarcate the cutting. I climb up and pull away a few loose stones from the top to reveal the hollow behind—the dark of a tunnel entrance. You’d need a JCB to excavate it, but readers of Richard Adams’ The Plague Dogs have a clue to its whereabouts. It sits behind a small plateau of grass, “about the size of a lawn tennis court” on top of a spoil heap; this terrace, at least, is just as Adams described.

              Seathwaite mine level no. 1
              Seathwaite mine level no. 1

              The Plague Dogs is the story of Rowf, a big black mongrel, and Snitter, a small fox terrier, who escape a vivisection lab, fictionally located on the east shore of Coniston Water. The dogs have been subjected to harsh experiments. Before his incarceration, Snitter remembers a happy life, tragically cut-short when his loving master was hit by a lorry. When he and Rowf escape, he imagines the outside world will be a familiar place of houses, gardens, dustbins and lampposts, populated by kindly men and women, who will give them a happy home, like the one he used to know. Their initial encounters are discouraging, however, and the pair flee into the Coniston fells, a frighteningly alien wilderness, where they realise that they must learn to live as wild animals. This old copper-mine tunnel is where Rowf and Snitter first take refuge.

              In a previous post, Whitecoats, I trace the first leg of their journey, using the maps and illustrations contributed to the book by Alfred Wainwright. Today, I pick up their path again.

              Earlier, I met the farmer from Tongue House Farm. He was driving a flock of Herdwicks on to the fellside. I was walking up the narrow lane from Seathwaite village when the sheep charged out of the farm drive. My presence stopped them in their tracks, and in a flash, his sheepdog was beside me, blocking their path and sending them the other way.

              Herdwicks
              Herdwicks

              “That was lucky,” said the farmer, as he arrived at the rear, “there’s not usually someone there to turn them. It’s always the same. If there are two options, they always go the way you don’t want them to.”

              Tongue House Farm
              Tongue House Farm

              As he took off up the lane on his quad bike, I gazed across at the farm house. It features in the story, and the occupant in the book is a real-life former tenant, Dennis Williamson. After years of struggling to make a go of things, Williamson is now just about comfortable, so it’s with some alarm that he finds one of his ewes lying dead on the path at Levers Hause. This was Rowf’s first kill, but it was a rookie error to leave the carcass where Williamson so easily finds it.

              Fortunately for the dogs, they’re not the only occupants of the tunnel. In the dead of night, an elusive presence tries to steal the sheep’s leg that Snitter dragged here. Rowf jumps up aggressively. Snitter is close behind, but when the shadowy creature starts to talk, the dogs are astonished, “for the voice… was speaking, unmistakably, a sort—a very odd sort—of dog language.”

              The animal is the tod, a shrewd, sharp-witted fox. He speaks in a broad rural Northumbrian dialect, and scorns at the dogs’ naivety, “By three morns, the pair on yez’ll bowth be deed”. All the same, he’s impressed with Rowf’s ability to kill ewes, so he offers to school them in survival, if they share their kills with him. On top of Dow Crag, the tod teaches the dogs to kill a sheep by driving it over the precipice (this way, its death looks like an accident). He shows them how to raid chicken runs and snatch ducks from the stream. But when Rowf kills a ewe on Tarn Head Moss, five hundred yards from the tunnel entrance, the tod is incensed: “Forst ye kill on th’ fell—reet o’ th’ shepherd’s trod, clartin’ th’ place up wi’ blood like a knacker’s midden. An’ noo ye kill ootside wor aan nyeuk! Thon farmer’s nyen se blind! He’ll be on it, sharp as a linty. Ye’re fee th’ Dark, nee doot, hinny. Yer arse’ll be inside out b’ th’ morn.” (Translation: now you’ve killed outside our own lair. That farmer’s not blind. You’re as good as dead.)

              Great Gully, Dow Crag

              Despondent, Rowf considers giving himself up, but the tod knows better, “Yer nay a derg noo, yer a sheep-killer. The’ll blaa yer arse oot, hinny. Howway let’s be off, or ye’ll bowth be deed an’ dyeun inside haaf an hoor, ne bother.”

              The tod leads the way up above the reservoir, below the summits of Dow Crag and Buck Pike, and down to the Walna Scar quarries. From there, they climb over Caw to a cave on the slopes of Brown Haw.

              Two paths lead that way from here: one follows Far Gill up to Goat Hawse, over the summit of Dow Crag and along the ridge line. The other tracks the southern shore of Seathwaite Tarn. The animals’ route is somewhere in between. Looking up, I see only crags, sheer and unassailable, but the OS map shows that the incline eases above them, and a strip of gentler terrain runs below the spine. There are no paths here, but if I follow the course of Near Gill to its source above crags, then walk on a bearing to Bleaberry Gill, the stream will take me down to a wall that leads to the quarries. At one point, Adams says the dogs are nine hundred feet above the reservoir road; I count the contours; this looks about right.

              Seathwaite Tarn from copper mine
              Tarn Head Moss

              The path across the squelching bog of Tarn Head Moss is no more than a line of flattened reeds. I leap the beck and cross the sketchy trod that leads up to Goat Hawse. I ford Far Gill and start my pathless ascent beside Near Gill. It climbs steeply beside the crags. Where they finish, the slope relents and the stream curves round into the wetter ground above. Green sphagnum moss carpets the spongy peat. I check the compass and track below the ridge.

              The moorland is moist, but firmer than the valley bottom. Hassocks of straw-coloured grass anchor the hummocks of soft moss. Elsewhere are red stalks of bog cotton, its white candyfloss flowers long gone. Harter Fell rises across the valley—a mossy pyramid, upper reaches defended by charcoal crags. Its lower slopes are swathed in russet, striped with yellow and coppiced with evergreen. Underfoot, clumps of rare red sphagnum now compliment the green.

              Harter Fell from Dow Crag Fell
              Harter Fell from Dow Crag Fell

              I cross a brow and start to descend. The distant wall is in sight below, with the Walna Scar quarries beyond. Ahead, there is a break in the long rampart of hillside where the slopes of White Pike drop steeply away. The high ground rises again to the summits of Pikes and Caw, but through the gap, I can see silver inlets of the Irish Sea. The sky above is a rolling ocean of cloud – raging white breakers and darker swells.

              Bleaberry Beck
              Bleaberry Beck
              Clouds over Dunnerdale
              Clouds over Dunnerdale

              I stray northward to overlook the reservoir road. From here, the tod spots Dennis Williamson, walking purposefully toward the mine, shotgun in hand.

              When I reach the Walna Scar quarries, I have a dearth of daylight hours left to me so turn down to Seathwaite. I return at first light, when the grey fluffy clouds above the fell have orange underbellies. Across the valley, the Scafells are flood lit red. Harter Fell wears incandescent robes of gold and green, and in silhouette against the flaming sky, the slate ruins of quarry buildings are dark satanic mills.

              Caw from the Walna Scar road
              Caw from the Walna Scar road
              Scafells at first light
              Scafells at first light
              Walna Scar quarry buildings
              Walna Scar quarry buildings
              Walna Scar quarry buildings
              Walna Scar quarry buildings

              A Herdwick ewe eyes me with suspicion. She carries a red smit mark on her back. The tod understands that smit marks are shepherds’ marks. He points out to Rowf and Snitter how the colours used here are different from those on the ewes near the copper mine. If Rowf were to kill here, it wouldn’t further antagonise Williamson.

              Under White Pike, the path traverses the soggy sump of Yaud Mire, and I leave it to scramble between the crags to the summit of Pikes. Caw lies across another boggy depression; a trig point stands on a slender rocky plinth to crown its highest point.

              Caw summit
              Caw summit
              Grey Friar from Pikes
              Grey Friar from Pikes

              The descent to Long Mire Beck is steep and slippery. Ahead, on the slopes of Brown Haw, I spy the cave that becomes the dogs’ new hideout. Once I reach it, however, I realise it’s an illusion; what I took for an entrance is just shadow cast by the low winter sunlight. I hunt further along, but the cave eludes me. I meet a walker, striding with the easy confidence of someone who knows his way. I ask if he knows of a cave, but the only one he can think of is a quarry tunnel on the north-western face of Caw. He’s curious at my question, so I ask if he’s read The Plague Dogs.

              “Rowf and Snitter?” he grins, his face suddenly animated with memories of childhood.

              I show him a photo of the Wainwright map that gives the cave’s location. We agree it’s pretty much where we’re standing.

              I never do find it, but I climb to the tops of Brown Haw and Fox Haw (which seems appropriate), then return to Seathwaite on a track that the dogs will come to know.

              Brow Haw from Caw
              Brow Haw from Caw

              ~

              When further sheep are found dead, and word gets out that two dogs have escaped from the Lawson Park laboratory, Dennis Williamson kicks up a fuss. Mr Ephraim, a gentleman’s outfitter, organises a hunt, hoping the publicity might boost trade. Unfortunately, he doesn’t know one end of a shotgun from the other, and his inexperience results in a tragic, fatal accident. Snitter is seen running from the scene. When the story reaches the offices of the London Orator, a notorious tabloid, it’s the opportunity they’ve been looking for. Their owner is keen to discredit the government. There has been some controversy about the public funding for Lawson Park. If the Orator can discredit the lab, they can embarrass the Secretary of State. An unscrupulous but brilliant young reporter, named Digby Driver, is dispatched to Cumbria with a remit to dig dirt on the lab and spin the story of the killer dogs into a national scandal.

              As the heat rises in Dunnerdale, the tod leads the dogs over Crinkle Crags and Bowfell, through Langstrath to Wythburn and up on to the Helvellyn range. From here, Sticks Pass offers access to the farmsteads of Glenridding.

              Rowf and Snitter are caught raiding a chicken coup. The farmer has a shotgun, but inexplicably, he backs away in fear and encourages the dogs to escape. Unbeknown to them, Digby Driver has published some shocking revelations. As part of top-secret research for the MOD, Lawson Park has been cultivating a strain of bubonic plague. There is no way the dogs could have been infected, but fact never got in the way of a good headline and now, in the public mind, Rowf and Snitter have become the Plague Dogs—public enemy number one; pawns in a political game.

              Driver has the Secretary of State in check, and just as intended, awkward questions are asked in the House. To save his skin, the minister employs an age-old politician’s trick—misdirection. If he can be seen to act decisively, perhaps the concerns about funding and who knew what about the plague research will all go away.

              Two battalions of paratroopers are dispatched to Cumbria, and the minister means to preside, in person, over the Plague Dogs execution.

              Back in Dunnerdale, Snitter watches helplessly as the tod is torn apart by hounds. With the army closing in, he and Rowf make one last brilliant move. By night, they flee over Harter Fell and down into Boot, where they hide out in a wooden crate; exhausted, they fall asleep. When they awake, they’re moving. Unknowingly, they’ve stowed aboard L’ile Ratty, the steam train that runs between Eskdale and Ravenglass. Rowf and Snitter are heading for the coast.

              Harter Fell from Park Head road
              Harter Fell from Park Head road

              If he knew, Dennis Williamson would undoubtedly be delighted. He bitterly regrets raising the alarm. The dogs were no trouble at all compared with the human circus that has followed. He knows the plague hysteria is nonsense and wholeheartedly hopes the dogs escape. It’s a faint hope, however. They’re spotted in Ravenglass, and the army units are mobilised.

              Ravenglass and Drigg

              It’s out of season when I cross the footbridge in Ravenglass station. L’ile Ratty isn’t running, but an open carriage, like Rowf and Snitter’s, is parked in the siding below.

              All the way here, the car radio was reporting on the furore unfolding in Westminster. Theresa May has just presented her Brexit plan to parliament, and her ministers are queuing up to resign. Pundits are particularly bemused by the departure of Dominic Raab, who helped negotiate it. As the papers spin the story to favour whichever faction best suits their agenda, it dawns on me that this has all the hallmarks of Adams’ novel. Plague Dogs is how he saw the British political landscape in 1977; forty-one years later, it seems little has changed. Vox pops with members of the public reveal attitudes not dissimilar to Dennis Williamson’s—whatever it was we wanted, it wasn’t this.

              The rivers Irt, Mite and Esk commingle in the Ravenglass estuary. The tide is out, leaving moored yachts beached and the river channels exposed. This is just how it is when Rowf and Snitter arrive. They escape the village by running across the mudflats and swimming the River Irt to reach the Drigg sand dunes. My route there is a little more circuitous. I follow a country lane from Low Saltcoats to Hall Carlton and cross by the packhorse bridge at Holme Bridge. From here, a path runs over fields to the sleepy coastal village of Drigg. Beside the quaint rural station, a road leads down to the beach.

              Ravenglass estuary
              Ravenglass estuary
              Ravenglass estuary
              Ravenglass estuary

              Before I reach the shore, I pass something altogether more menacing. High security fences topped with rolls of barbed wire protect the Drigg low level nuclear storage facility. A sign warns that armed guards patrol at unpredictable times. Another says that the site is protected under section 12b of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005. This is all very evocative of eighties’ TV drama, Edge of Darkness, about a low-level nuclear storage facility that’s illegally processing weapons-grade plutonium. Swap a nuclear facility for a laboratory researching germ warfare, and we have a scenario not a million miles away from The Plague Dogs.

              Behind the Drigg facility is Sellafield, the nuclear reprocessing plant that really was designed to extract plutonium from spent fuel rods. It’s visible through a gap in the sand dunes. Someone has positioned a bench such that you can sit and look at it. This may seem bizarre, but it’s perhaps indicative of the regard in which Sellafield is held around here. It’s rejuvenated the area, providing large numbers of people with well-paid jobs. To others, though, it is a Sword of Damocles, hanging over our heads by the finest of threads.

              Drigg Low Level Nuclear Waste Repository

              By the time I reach the beach, the nuclear facilities are hidden by the dunes. What’s here instead is a breathtakingly beautiful stretch of coastline, a nature reserve and a site of special scientific interest, a haven for natterjack toads, stonechats, sandpipers, skylarks and all manner of marine life. The tide has turned but a wide stretch of sand is still exposed, riven with delicate channels and intricate rock pools, studded with shells—cockle, razor clam—and patterned with the honeycomb stencilling of lug worm colonies.

              Drigg Beach
              Drigg Beach
              Drigg Beach
              Drigg Beach
              Drigg Beach
              Drigg Beach

              I walk the one and half miles to Drigg Point, lost in the lazy, wild wonder of the beach. But as I reach the headland, my reverie is broken by an explosion. Across the estuary, a red flag is flying. The artillery are conducting large calibre gun testing on the Eskmeals range. I look back to Ravenglass and the route Rowf and Snitter took to get here. For them too, armed troops are closing in.

              Drigg Beach
              Drigg Beach

              The sun slips behind a bank of cloud, and the sky darkens. Out to sea, slender shafts of golden light pierce the gloom and spotlight the white crests of waves. The horizon is a band of ethereal yellow. All of a sudden, the scene assumes a drama befitting of the book’s dark heart.

              Drigg Beach
              Drigg Beach

              And that dark heart is human. It asks us hard questions about ourselves and our relationship with the natural world. Near the end, Snitter has a revelatory vision:

              “The world, he now perceived, was in fact a great, flat wheel with a myriad spokes of water, trees and grass, forever turning and turning beneath the sun and moon. At each spoke was an animal—all the animals and birds he had ever known—horses, dogs, chaffinches, mice, hedgehogs, rabbits, cows, sheep, rooks and many more which he did not recognize—a huge striped cat and a monstrous fish spurting water in a fountain to the sky. At the centre, on the axle itself, stood a man, who ceaselessly lashed and lashed the creatures with a whip to make them drive the wheel round. Some shrieked aloud as they bled and struggled, others silently toppled and were trodden down beneath their companions’ stumbling feet. And yet, as he himself could see, the man had misconceived his task, for in fact the wheel turned of itself…”

              But the novel is also an allegory about how we treat each other. The Brexit vote was howl of protest at a disengaged elite, governing in their own interest—out of touch with the hardships faced by ordinary people. Average incomes have flat-lined over the past ten years, and we’ve been hurt by savage cut-backs, implemented in the name austerity, to bear the cost of bailing out our banking system. In the run up to the referendum, the finger was pointed at immigration, but the causes of our current situation are multi-faceted and far-reaching. They stretch back to the 1980’s and the deregulation of the money markets that sent the value of the pound skyrocketing and did for British manufacturing. They encompass the takeover of the City of London by large American investment banks, and forty years of ripping up employment law in the hope that leaving everything to the free market will bring prosperity.

              And it has. To some. We’re now the sixth richest nation in the world, but 20% of all that wealth lies in the hands of just 680,000 people, while almost twice than number are obliged to use food banks. Can we really lay the blame for all of that at the feet of the ordinary individuals who are now being spat at in the street and told to “go home”? They’ve become the scapegoats, the Plague Dogs, callously used by media moguls to sway public opinion in favour of political initiatives that advance in their own agendas. With the current farce unfolding in Westminster, the guns sounding across the estuary, and the shadow of Sellafield on the sands, the atmosphere of Adams’ novel is perfectly evoked.

              I sit down on a dune and gaze out at the encroaching waves. In my mind’s eye, a small fox terrier and a black mongrel stand before them. To stay on land means certain death, but to swim out to sea seems like suicide. An optimist to the last, Snitter wonders whether they could reach the Isle of Man. Rowf doesn’t like the sound of that, but Snitter has heard tell of another place, a better island, the Isle of Dog. It has to be out there somewhere. Perhaps, just perhaps, they could reach it. Despite his suffering, Snitter has always been sustained by hope, and it sustains him now as he leads his friend out into the icy waters.

              The Irish Sea
              The Irish Sea

              The book and the film conclude differently. I’ll divulge neither denouement, but they both play out in my head as I sit on the beach and gaze over the Irish Sea—for according to Wainwright’s final map, right here is where the story ends.

              Drigg Beach
              Drigg Beach


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                Whitecoats: On the Path of the Plague Dogs, Part I

                Raven Tor, Levers Hause and Seathwaite Tarn.

                In Richard Adams’ 1977 bestseller, Plague Dogs, Rowf and Snitter are two dogs subjected to cruel experiments in a vivisection lab. When an unsecured catch and a loose bit of wire afford a means of escape, they find themselves in the Coniston Fells. Adams describes the landscape in vivid detail, and original editions of the book are illustrated in characteristic part sketch/part map style by one of Lakeland’s greatest apostles. Inspired by the story, I put on my boots and set off on the path of the Plague Dogs.

                I’ve never read Watership Down. I was seven when it was published, but it didn’t cross my radar until the film of 1978. By then I was thirteen, and I’d just discovered Black Sabbath. I had long hair and a full-length leather coat from Oxfam, which I thought made me look like Geezer Butler. My mum had a different take. It was only after a year of people telling me the same thing that I came to accept that she might actually be right: the padded shoulders, pinched waist, faux fur collar and the particular arrangement of buttons meant it was unquestionably a woman’s coat, and if it made me look like anyone, it was Bet Lynch.

                My teenage tunnel vision dismissed Watership Down as a cartoon about rabbits, soundtracked by Art Garfunkel and clearly aimed at girls; not the sort of thing a pimply, pubescent Prince Of Darkness should be watching, even if he was unknowingly experimenting with cross-dressing.

                Eventually, I ditched the coat but never recovered sufficient good sense to read the book or watch the film. Now, at the tender age of fifty-two, I’m desperate to put that right because I’ve been utterly bowled over by The Plague Dogs.

                Plague Dogs by Richard Adams
                Plague Dogs by Richard Adams

                The Plague Dogs was Adams’ third novel. It tells the story of Rowf and Snitter, a big black mongrel and a little fox terrier who escape from a vivisection laboratory and make for the hills. At first, they incur the wrath of local farmers whose sheep they kill in an attempt to stave off starvation, but when an unscrupulous tabloid journalist, with a remit to embarrass the Secretary of State, gets involved, the story snowballs into a national furore, inflamed by an unsubstantiated allegation that the dogs could be carrying the bubonic plague. Questions are asked in the House, and the army is despatched to assassinate our innocent canine heroes.

                It’s a rollicking adventure, an emotional rollercoaster and a biting political satire, but it’s also a passionate anti-vivisection statement. The cruelty and utter pointlessness of the procedures beggars belief, yet in his preface, Adams confirms that “every ‘experiment’ described is one which has actually been carried out on animals somewhere”.

                It’s not a wholly one-sided picture, however. No sooner do we sense that Stephen Powell, a young scientist at the lab, is becoming increasingly uncomfortable with his work than we learn his young daughter is suffering from a terminal illness. It’s Powell’s desperate hope that animal research will yield a breakthrough before it’s too late to save her.

                And yet the experiments are as barbaric as they are futile: Rowf has been subjected to a succession of near drownings, repeatedly submerged in a tank of water and only revived once he goes limp and sinks to the bottom. He has never known men other than the “whitecoats”. Despite his traumatic experiences at their latex-sheathed, disinfected hands, he still wants to be a good dog and please his masters; but he can’t face another day in the immersion tank. Snitter’s story is even sadder as he remembers a blissfully happy home life before his beloved master was knocked down by a lorry—an accident for which Snitter blames himself. The details are incoherent because the whitecoats have cut open Snitter’s head and rewired his brain to confuse the subjective and the objective. As a result, he suffers disorienting confusion and bouts of vivid hallucination. In his lucid moments, however, he’s smart. Smart enough to notice an unsecured catch and a loose bit of wire. Smart enough to figure out how he and Rowf might escape. When they do, it’s into a landscape very familiar to lovers of Lakeland.

                The real Lawson Park was a remote fell farm on the eastern bank of Coniston Water; now it’s an artists’ retreat, run by Grisedale Arts. Never in reality has it been any sort of research lab, but it’s the fictional location of Animal Research (Scientific and Experimental), A.R.S.E. for short—the setting for Rowf and Snitter’s inhumane treatment in the interests of science. When they make a break for hills, they find themselves in the Coniston Fells, which Adams renders in rich detail.

                Coniston Fells
                Coniston Fells

                My friend, Gillian, grew up in Coniston and suggested I should read the book for this very reason. “You could walk the routes and write about it in your blog”, she said. It sounded a fine idea, so I searched for The Plague Dogs on Amazon. I was one click away from buying the current paperback, when a customer review caught my eye.

                “Before buying a copy of The Plague Dogs I took out a request from the library and ended up with an older edition. It was a wonderful hardback – the illustrations of the Lake District by the late Alfred Wainwright complimented Adams’ rich, vivid prose perfectly. Sadly though, the illustrations have been removed from this recent (2015) re-issue.”

                The original hardback was illustrated by Wainwright? This was the edition I had to have. Google found me a second-hand copy for £1 + £3.99 p&p. It arrived two days later, and it looked wonderful. As well as hatched pencil drawings of the fells, there were eight characteristic route maps, rendered in the same part sketch, part map style, familiar to readers of AW’s Pictorial Guides. Indeed, for Wainwright fans, the book is a welcome supplement.

                Page 46
                Page 46

                Wainwright was also an ardent anti-vivisectionist, and Adams says in the preface, “I seriously doubt whether an author can ever have received more generous help and co-operation from an illustrator”.

                It’s in the early hours of a crisp autumn morning that Rowf and Snitter make good their escape. As the sun rises, they find themselves on the wild expanse of Monk Coniston Moor. Snitter is appalled. What have the men done? “They’ve taken everything away, Rowf—the roads, cars, pavements, dustbins, gutters—the lot. How can they have done it?”

                The pair head down hill, cross the road and trot along the shore of Coniston Water. Here, Snitter is entranced by how still everything looks beneath the surface. Would his racing mind be as calm if he was in there? Rowf is terrified of the water, however, and remonstrates with his friend not to go in. “You can’t imagine what it’s like”.

                Monk Coniston Jetty
                Monk Coniston Jetty

                Coniston Water
                Coniston Water

                Buoyed up by the sight of houses in the distance, the fugitives head along the road to Coniston village, but Snitter is overcome by one of his turns and has to lie down. A car stops, and two men get out to help, but when they try to pick Snitter up, Rowf assumes they are trying to recapture him and return him to the lab. He springs forward in attack and frees his friend, and the pair run for the village.

                Coniston village
                Coniston village

                Rowf is understandably wary of men, but Snitter knows they’re not all like the whitecoats. On the streets of Coniston, he remembers shops. In his former life, these were places where people made a fuss of you and gave you treats. They try their luck in a butchers’ shop. The friendly but fastidious proprietor comes over. He means no harm and crouches to greet them, but his hands smell of disinfectant, he’s carrying a knife, and a pair of scissors protrude from the pocket of his WHITE COAT.

                The two dogs flee up the walled lane beyond The Black Bull and out into the Coppermines Valley. On page 46, Wainwright documents their route, and on a bright November morning, this is where I pick up the trail.

                Track to Coppermines Valley
                Track to Coppermines Valley

                Church Beck
                Church Beck

                Track to Coppermines Valley
                Track to Coppermines Valley

                Above Miners’ Bridge, the Old Man, Brim Fell, Swirl How and Wetherlam are ablaze, lit orange and blue in the first light of morning, just as Adams describes. I follow the track beside Low Water Beck to the Youth Hostel. Here I pause to check the map and imagine the scene. As I do, I hear a faint patter and something soft brushes my leg. It’s a black dog. After a startled double take, I make friends with an excitable border collie, who can’t hang about because he’s just spotted a big stick. His loving owners are laughing as they catch us up, “that’ll be the first of many, today”, the woman grins. Proper masters, as Snitter might say.

                Miners' Bridge
                Miners’ Bridge

                Church Beck waterfall
                Church Beck waterfall

                Border Collie, Coniston Youth Hostel
                Rowf?

                The main track swings right along the lower slopes of the Black Sails ridge, but I turn left towards the quarry, its marbled face, a dark daubed cubist canvas below the tufts of russet scrub. The road is blocked by a gate. It’s padlocked, but perhaps only to vehicles. Beyond, the word “Footpath” has been scrawled on a slate. I climb the bars and start up the faint grassy trod to which it points. Above the spoil heaps, I join the path from Crowberry Haws. Two slate cairns stand guard, and a Herdwick grazes unperturbed.

                Quarry, Coppermines Valley
                Quarry, Coppermines Valley

                Quarry, Coppermines Valley
                Quarry, Coppermines Valley

                Wetherlam from Boulder Valley
                Wetherlam from Boulder Valley

                I cross the footbridge into Boulder Valley and pause by the Pudding Stone. The path continues to Levers Water, but immediately above, Brim Fell towers, craggy and intimidating. Anxious to escape the reach of man, it’s up these steep slopes that Rowf and Snitter start. I feel duty-bound to follow, although perhaps not strictly in their paw steps. They have me at a disadvantage: for one, they’re dogs—replete with four legs and a low centre of gravity; and two, they’re fictional, so they have the intrinsic power to do whatever Adams’ imagination invents. He has them climbing on the line of Low Water Beck, clambering up its boulders, skirting its shallow falls and splashing through its brown pools. His co-conspirator, Wainwright, plots the path. But from where I’m standing, the beck is an angry cascade, crashing down a severe ravine. I see no way up for a meagre middle-aged mortal.

                Low Water Beck ravine
                Low Water Beck ravine

                In his Pictorial Guide, Wainwright advocates a mildly more man-friendly route, which climbs a grassy rake on the opposite side of the crag. I detect what might be a path leading to the crag’s foot. It proves something of a mirage, and I’m quickly off piste, but I track around the bottom of the rocks toward the strip of mossy green. A brief scramble provides a short-cut, and soon I’m clambering up steep and slippery grass. It’s hard going, requiring hands and feet, and I can see why AW advises against it for descent. But it’s not far from the beck, so I feel I’m being as true as I can to the plot, and besides, I’ve always wanted to try this ascent, AW promises it furnishes a fuller understanding of the fell’s true structure.

                Simon's Nick, Coppermines Valley
                Simon’s Nick, Coppermines Valley

                I reach an old mine level, where the curled ends of rail tracks protrude like vestigial limbs. Here a path of sorts emerges; it’s a steep rocky staircase, skirting a river of loose stone, but the going is firmer than before, if no kinder on the calves. Eventually, the gradient relents, and I’m confronted with a vision that fills Rowf with dread—the limpid corrie tarn of Low Water, a pool of primeval tranquility, a dark oasis of serenity below the plunging slopes of the Old Man, but to poor traumatised Rowf, a huge, menacing immersion tank.  He races away up the slope to the summit of Raven Tor. I sip coffee, catch my breath, and just as Snitter does, I follow.

                Looking back down from Brill Fell ascent
                Looking back down from Brill Fell ascent

                Raven Tor
                Raven Tor

                Beyond the summit, the ground drops abruptly to Levers Water. Strangely, despite its larger size, the tarn holds no fresh dread for Rowf. It’s just as well because Snitter spots a line of sheep by the western shore. They’re being pursued by two border collies and a man. The man is whistling and calling to the dogs, encouraging them to chase the sheep, and the dogs are listening and responding. Man and dog, working as a team. Here at last is a proper master. All he and Rowf have to do now is bound down the fell side and join in. If they chase the sheep too, perhaps the man will give them a home, and food, and a happy life away from the whitecoats.

                Levers Water from Raven Tor
                Levers Water from Raven Tor

                My descent is more circumspect. The slopes below the col look precipitous. In his Pictorial Guide, AW shows a route beside Cove Beck. I follow a narrow trod over the spine of Gill Cove Crag, in the shadow of Brim Fell’s summit, and as the contours diverge, I descend through increasingly soggy ground. Eventually, I hear the sound of running water, and the beck appears, a narrow scar trickling elusively through scrubby moorland.

                Beyond, a cairn marks the path up to Levers Hause. Between here and the waterline, Rowf and Snitter make their ill-fated attempt to gain a master by chasing his sheep. Luckily, his sheep dogs reach them first and vent their anger in broad Cumbrian:

                “Art out of the minds, chasing yows oop an’ down fell, snappin’ an’ bitin’?”, fumes one. “Wheer’s thy farm at? Wheer’s thy master?”.

                When Snitter explains, “we haven’t a master. We want to meet yours”, the answer is unequivocal: “He’ll fill thee wi’ lead”.

                I turn and follow the forlorn fugitives’ escape route up steep rocky steps to Levers Hause. Here, the dogs ruefully acknowledge they’ll find no welcome in the world of men. They must become wild animals. Still stoked from the chase, Rowf attacks a mountain ewe. He makes the kill, but takes a fair battering in the process. With his hunger satiated, exhaustion takes hold, and the big black mongrel lies down in the bog myrtle to nurse his injuries. Meanwhile, Snitter despairs at the bleakness of their prospects. As his synapses start to misfire, he scampers down the steep slopes to the Duddon Valley in a firestorm of neurotic confusion.

                Levers Water from Levers Hause path
                Levers Water from Levers Hause path

                A right of way runs from Levers Hause to the far shore of Seathwaite Tarn. Or at least it does on the map. There’s little sign of a path on the ground, and the gradient is frightening. I’d have to be as mad as Snitter to attempt it, and yet somehow, I do. I climb down a little way to test the going, stepping sideways from grassy tuft to stony shelf. Emboldened, I soldier on. Part way down, I imagine a path, but it’s just a loose spray of scree, too shallow to offer much support. Zigzagging avoids the severest sections, and earlier than I’d reckoned, I’m approaching the tumbling waters of Tarn Beck.  Here, the ground grows marshy; the valley bottom is a quagmire, red with reed beds as it reaches out to Seathwaite reservoir. I keep to a contour to stay out of the worst. The sun is streaming over Dow Crag, bleaching the fell sides and blinding me with its glare.

                Seathwaite Tarn from Levers Hause
                Seathwaite Tarn from Levers Hause

                Tarn Beck

                Duddon Valley and Seathwaite Tarn
                Duddon Valley and Seathwaite Tarn

                Here, Snitter does what I decline to do. Lured by the fevered machinations of his scrambled mind, he breaches the beck and splashes through the boggy ground on the other side. The kindly man in the brown tweed coat that he imagined was there is an illusion, but as the fit passes and the world comes back into focus, he spots something else. Something welcome. Something real. Just shy of the reservoir he finds a small spoil heap:

                “On top was a levelled space of turf and small stones, perhaps half the size of a lawn tennis court. It was completely empty, but on the further side, where Great Blake Rigg, the south face of Grey Friar, rises like a wall was a symmetrical, dark opening, lined and arched with stones”.

                I’m looking at it now (through binoculars).  It’s an old level of Seathwaite copper mine, and in the book, it becomes a temporary home for Rowf and Snitter. Here, they meet the tod, a wily fox, well-versed in the ways of the wild.  His savvy, calculating instinct for self-preservation contrasts markedly with the dogs’ innocent loyalty. He’s appalled by their naivety and sees them as a liability, likely to draw the attention of farmers and their shotguns. Yet, in Rowf he also sees a valuable asset: there’s not many a wild Lakeland beast can bring down a full-grown ewe.  The dogs might have their uses after all, and an uneasy alliance is formed.

                Rowf and Snitter's new home

                Rowf and Snitter’s new home

                Short winter daylight hours dictate that here, for now, I must take my leave. But as I make the day’s last ascent out of lonely Dunnerdale and up to Goat Hawse, the peace is broken by an alarming bark, fuelled with feral bloodlust. A chilling chorus of murderous howls swells into an amplified echo, and on the lower slopes of Grey Friar, I make out a swarm of white dots moving fast across the fell.  With binoculars comes comprehension: fuzzy points resolve into a pack of foxhounds. They’re coursing an aniseed trail. It’s profoundly unsettling because it’s a scene straight from the book. In all my years on the fells, I’ve never witnessed this, yet later in the story, Snitter sees the self-same thing.  Only this time, it’s not aniseed they’re hunting… it’s the tod.

                To be continued…

                Read the second part of my journey along the path of the Plague Dogs here:

                Here’s where the story ends


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                  The Beauty of Buttermere

                  Rannerdale, Black Sail, Haystacks & High Stile

                  Buttermere is a valley of astounding natural beauty. A journey around its hills and hostelries uncovers stories of Dark Age battles, confidence tricksters and a shepherdess whose face and misfortune wooed the nation.

                  “I’m sure it’s her”, says Tim emphatically. We’re intently watching a girl swim across Crummock Water. This isn’t as lecherous as it might sound: we’re on the summit of Rannerdale Knotts, so she’s far enough away to render any essential features scarcely discernible. Indeed, the idea that she’s a “she” is, at best, wildly speculative, which does kind of call into question Tim’s sudden conviction that she’s the author of a wild swimming blog he’s been reading.

                  “How do you know?” I ask.

                  “She has a trademark orange toe float”, he explains.

                  She is indeed trailing something orange. I get the concept of a water-tight container in which to put your keys, phone, flip flops, T shirt and shorts, but why on earth would you tie it to your toe? Evidently, I think this out loud.

                  “TOW float, duck egg!”, exclaims Tim, in disbelief. “T.O.W. as in something you tow behind you, not something you tie to your toe.”

                  (Ever wished you’d thought it through before asking a question?)

                  Crummock Water from Rannerdale Knotts
                  Crummock Water from Rannerdale Knotts

                  In spring, Rannerdale Knotts is famed for the abundant bluebells that carpet its flanks. It’s also supposed to be the scene of an epic battle, where indigenous Celts and Norse settlers joined forces to see off the invading Normans. According to legend, the bluebells sprang from blood of the vanquished. Now, in August, they’re long gone, replaced with ubiquitous bracken, but the colossal mountain backdrop of Grasmoor, emerging from cloud, is enough to inspire visions of Valhalla.

                  Grasmoor from Rannerdale Knotts
                  Grasmoor from Rannerdale Knotts

                  Dark age warriors are centuries departed, but a Herdwick lamb peeks over the crenellations of a little rock tower, looking every bit the king of the castle. According to one theory, the Herdwicks came over with the Vikings, so perhaps this one’s guarding the top against marauding French ewes like Charmoise or Charollais. I can’t speak for Tim’s lineage but my Dad’s forays into family history suggest ours was a Viking name. The lamb regards us with relaxed indifference; perhaps he senses a common bloodline.

                  Herdy Lamb on Rannerdale Knotts
                  Herdy Lamb on Rannerdale Knotts

                  It’s late Thursday afternoon. We arrived in Buttermere as the rain stopped and took advantage of brightening horizons to climb up here. The air is seldom sweeter than after rain, and as the emerging sun vaporises the damp, this exquisitely beautiful valley works profound enchantments.

                  A couple of hours later we’re sitting outside the Fish Inn. In Wordsworth’s time the pub was home to Mary Robinson. A shepherdess and muse to the Romantic poets, this landlord’s daughter was known as the Beauty of Buttermere. Writer and journalist, Joseph Budworth described her thus: “her face was a fine oval face, with full eyes and lips as sweet as vermillion”, (which is a bit strong, given she was only fifteen at the time).

                  Budsworth’s words made Mary famous, and men came from far and wide to set eyes on her. By the time she was twenty-five, she’d attracted the attention of a dashing aristocratic colonel by the name of the Augustus Hope. Hope swept Mary off her feet with a proposal of marriage, which she gladly accepted.

                  All was not as it seemed, however. When Coleridge waxed lyrical about the wedding in a London newspaper, friends of the real Augustus Hope, unmasked Mary’s husband as an impostor. In reality, he was James Hatfield, a confidence trickster and bigamist, already wanted in connection with a string of thefts and forged cheques.

                  Hatfield fled to Wales, where he was apprehended, then convicted and hanged in Carlisle, leaving Mary with a baby that tragically died of pneumonia. But her story tugged at the nation’s heartstrings, and Mary was crowdfunded out of hardship; she later happily married a Caldbeck farmer.

                  It’s not the Beauty of Buttermere that’s fanning the ardour of the stag party at the next table, it’s Ursula Andress. They’re all getting misty-eyed and nostalgic about “that scene” in Dr. No, where she emerges from the waves in “that bikini”. All bar one that is. The young lad at the end, who’s half their age, has no idea who they’re on about. He has to endure a round of hectoring on how he has missed out in life, and he resigns himself to making do with his generation’s Bond movie equivalent—Daniel Craig in budgie-smugglers.

                  Up the road in the Bridge Inn, It’s a dog that stealing hearts. A beautiful, big (and I mean BIG) Gordon setter, who’s brought his own blanket and dragged it under a table barely large enough to accommodate him. He now lies napping to the universal dotage of the bar.

                  Back at the Buttermere Youth Hostel (our home for the night), we sit outside on a wooden bench, sharing a hip flask of single malt with some young Scottish lads. They’re on a road trip around the north of England. As night falls over the water, and nothing but the distant sound of waterfalls and the occasional hoot of a Herdwick disturbs the tranquility, they don’t take much persuading to abandon tomorrow’s trip to Hadrian’s Wall and spend another day in heavenly Buttermere.

                  We awake to heavy rain, but heartened by an improving forecast, we resolve to wile away a lazy morning in the village. We decamp from the hostel to Croft House Farm Cafe for cake and the finest wines known to humanity (well coffee at any rate). Outside, amid the procession of wet people, the Gordon setter from the Bridge drags his owner along the pavement.

                  Around lunchtime, we wander up to the church, not sure whether the rain is really easing or if it’s just our wishful thinking. Inside, a small plaque in the window commemorates the surrounding fells’ greatest apostle, Alfred Wainwright. The inscription invites us to raise our eyes to Haystacks, where his ashes lie. As we do, the rain stops.

                  Haystacks from High Crag
                  Haystacks from High Crag

                  We’re staying at the Black Sail Hut tonight. Once an old shepherd’s bothy, it’s now England’s remotest Youth Hostel, tucked away in the wildest corner of neighbouring Ennerdale. With the forecast holding good, we’ll take in Haystacks en route.

                  We grab our rucksacks and head down to the waterline and the path that tracks the south-western shore, under the wooded lower slopes of Red Pike and High Stile. In the warm humidity, with low cloud wisps hugging the fells, Buttermere assumes a tropical demeanour. After weeks of drought, the downpours have brought forth a multitude of green, the air vital with the scent of fresh growth. The cloud rises above fell tops, and bands of purple heather colour their upper contours. Ahead, the plunging profile of Fleetwith Edge emerges teasingly by degrees: mists disperse to reveal a daunting ridge, resplendent in precipitous drama. Buttermere, becalmed, is a platinum mirror, a fuzzy-edged reflection of everything above.

                  Buttermere

                  High Snockrigg over Buttermere
                  High Snockrigg over Buttermere

                  Fleetwith Pike
                  Fleetwith Pike

                  Buttermere reflections
                  Buttermere reflections

                  When we reach the water’s end, we follow the stream to Gatesgarth farm and track around the nose of Fleetwith Pike to find the path that climbs from Warnscale Bottom.

                  I lose Tim momentarily as he stops to admire a dry-stone wall. This is becoming a regular occurrence. Tim lives in Sheffield and does occasional work for a friend who runs a walling business. He’s developing an artisan’s eye for craftsmanship. He tells me the Human League’s Phil Oakey is often to be seen about the city, looking every bit the country gent in immaculate tweeds walking immaculately groomed dogs, but Tim’s boss has come to dread their encounters. Not that Oakey isn’t friendly and convivial, quite the opposite, he’s just so interested in the art of walling, he’ll talk so long and ask so many questions that it’s impossible to get any work done. This plays out in my head like a Viz cartoon: “Oh no, it’s Phil Oakey”—wallers with deadlines diving for cover behind their half-laid structures as a rueful Phil saunters by, singing Don’t You Want Me Baby.

                  The path climbs steadily above Warnscale Beck. Across the stream, Haystacks’ northern face is a sheer wall of crag. Height brings fresh perspectives on Buttermere below, molten silver now as a blanket of cloud hangs above. In the distance, arcing right, Crummock Water glistens under brighter skies pregnant with promise.

                  Buttermere the from path to Dubs Bottom
                  Buttermere the from path to Dubs Bottom

                  False promise as it turns out. By the time we reach Dubs Bottom it’s mizzling. We shelter in Dubs Hut bothy to see if it blows over, but as the drizzle sets in, we retrieve waterproofs and juggle layers to affect a balance between dryness and heat exhaustion. Then we head out.

                  The stream is in spate and the crossing at the ford, precarious. An enterprising soul has turned a narrow plank into a makeshift bridge and we try our luck on it. It’s something of a balancing act, being so thin and bending worryingly in the middle. Once across, we climb through the crags into cloud.

                  Today, Innominate Tarn is a scene from Arthurian legend, its solemn waters evaporating into mist. This is where Wainwright’s ashes were scattered, and we pause to pay our respects. In the murk, this most beguiling of fells has its other treasures well-hidden. We strike out for the summit but peak too early (literally), and with the fog thickening, it seems sensible to head down. Discernible landmarks recrystallise as we approach Scarth Gap, and by the time we reach Black Sail Hut, the rain has stopped and there’s a hint of sun.

                  We’ve stayed twice before, and I’ve blogged about each visit. The first, A Walk on the Wild Side, starts at Wastwater and recalls the murder of Margaret Hodge, dubbed The Lady in The Lake by the press, when her body was discovered by a diver. The second, Back to Black Sail, riffs on the close resemblance of one of our fellow guests to Danny, the drug dealer from Withnail and I. James, the warden, greets us like old friends and reveals he’s been reading the posts.

                  “You’re not detectives, are you?”, he asks with a smile. “There’s always a murder or something nefarious”. He glances at the register, “I’ve put you down as Sheffield and Steel”.

                  Tim heads off for a shower. I buy a nice cold beer and take it outside, where two parties of women are already basking in the peace and disarming beauty of valley. One lot are from Whitley Bay and full of stories of the Northumbrian trails. The others are up from Kent for a weekend “off grid”. I can see from their faces, Ennerdale is already working its magic.

                  They’re also two Proseccos in, so when Tim emerges from shower in nothing but a skimpy towel, he has to run a gauntlet of wolf whistles. (Move over Daniel Craig). Tim dives for the sanctuary of the men’s dorm and meets Dermot, a lovely guy who’s walked over from Borrowdale by way of Sty Head.

                  Over supper and a few drinks, the conversation flows easily. There’s much laughter and much discussion of tomorrow’s plans. Most of us are heading for Buttermere via routes of varying ambition.

                  When he finishes his shift, James joins us for a drink and we learn that he grew up round here, went off to university, but came back— so strong was the lure of the valley. Working with people and keeping this close to nature is his ideal. He speaks with such passion about the landscape and the wildlife. He talks about stumbling upon abandoned SAS camps: the SAS conduct field training here, and when they make a camp, they construct fantastic windbreaks from woven branches—a lucky find for walkers or wild campers. Take note, however: if an iron tripod is still in place over the fire ashes, it means they’re coming back. James is sure he must spend hours in their crosshairs when they’re conducting sniper training.

                  In the morning, I write in the visitors’ book, “That concludes our enquiries for now, but further investigations will be necessary—Sheffield and Steel”.

                  We step out into sunshine and head up to Scarth Gap. Near the top, we catch up with the party from Kent. They’re staying another night and plan to spend the day exploring Buttermere. As we exchange goodbyes, June, the chief wolf-whistler, says earnestly, “Last night was so nice, I really hope the conversation this evening is as convivial”. A little further on we bump into Kathryn, a friend of mine, who says she’s just seen a group of teenagers heading for Black Sail with a massive ghetto blaster, blaring out bass-heavy beats and auto-tuned inanities. Oh no. I’m sorry, June.

                  We’re heading for Buttermere too, over the High Stile range, but with a clear sky above, we’re compelled to revisit Haystacks first. The summit is not so coy about revealing its riches today, and we join a procession of pilgrims all scrambling up its stony paths to wander  around its heather-clad plateaux, climb its rocky turrets and linger by its glistening tarns. Across Ennerdale, Pillar is a redoubtable giant, thrusting forward a muscular shoulder; over Warnscale, Fleetwith Pike and Dale Head wear matching cloaks of purple and viridian.

                  Pillar
                  Pillar

                  Buttermere is deep metallic blue as we return to the col, shadowed by the waves of cloud rolling over High Crag. As we reach Scarth Gap, they clear, revealing High Crag’s sheer pyramidal profile.  There’s no other way up but straight. It’s a relentless slog, but strangely exhilarating. We get into an impromptu relay with a Geordie couple as we take turns at pressing on and pausing to rest. At the top, the views rob what little breath the ascent has left us.

                  Buttermere from Haystacks
                  Buttermere from Haystacks

                  High Crag
                  High Crag

                  Ahead, the higher summit of High Stile is crowned with cotton wool. As we approach, we climb into the cloud. It’s thin and wispy and not as oppressive as yesterday, but still a tad disorienting.  In the gloom, we meet a couple who have lost their bearings. Like us, they’re aiming for Red Pike, but they’re walking back towards High Crag.  We check the map and take a compass bearing, and all set off together in what we hope is the right direction.  We find reassurance in a line of cairns, and as we start to descend from High Stile’s summit, the cloud lifts and Red Pike lies before us. The way as far as the summit is easy, but the descent to Bleaberry Tarn drops down loose scree as steep as the slopes of High Crag. It’s not without its thrills, but it’s still a relief to reach the water’s edge, and we sit awhile, watching the ripples lap the rocks.

                  Buttermere from Red Pike
                  Buttermere from Red Pike

                  A succession of walkers passes us, then we notice someone waving.  It’s Dermot.  He’d been thinking of walking over Brandreth and Fleetwith Pike to Honister, then ascending Dale Head and wending his way back to Buttermere over Robinson and High Snockrigg. In the sober light of morning, he clipped his ambition and basically followed our route, but ascended Haystacks from the back, via the Coast to Coast route that climbs to the col with Brandreth.  It’s great to see him again. He joins us by the shore, and after a while, we make the descent to Buttermere together. On the way down we discover Dermot was at university in Sheffield.  He asks about all his favourite haunts, and Tim updates him on which are long gone, which have changed beyond recognition and which are still much the same.  We swap walking stories, marvel at the magnificence of Buttermere and Crummock Water and plan new adventures: Fleetwith Pike, The Newlands fells, Mellbreak, Ard Crags, Whiteless Pike and Grasmoor.

                  Buttermere and Fleetwith Pike
                  Buttermere and Fleetwith Pike

                  Below Grasmoor, lies Rannerdale Knotts. In six or seven months, it will be blue with flowers budded on the blood of fallen Normans. When you gaze on the utter beauty of this valley, it’s no mystery the Celts fought so fiercely to defend it.

                  Cumbria was one of the last strongholds of the Ancient Britons. When the kingdom eventually fell to the waves of European invaders, many of its Celtic poets, chieftains and churchmen fled to Wales. And England became England. Angleterre: land of the Angles (German) and the Saxons (German), and later, the Vikings (Scandinavian) and the Normans (French).

                  Grasmoor and Rannerdale Knotts
                  Grasmoor and Rannerdale Knotts

                  Which, I suppose, begs the question: does the truly hard-line position on freeing ourselves from Europe and regaining our sovereignty mean kicking us English out of England and giving it back to Wales?

                  Rees-Mogg’s a decidedly Welsh-sounding name, don’t you think?


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                    The Deer Hunter

                    The Nab & the Rut

                    In Martindale, it’s antlers at dawn as Britain’s largest land mammals fight for the right to party, and I pay a tribute to a sly old fox for inspiring me to walk The Far Eastern Fells.

                    On a chilly October morning, Ullswater is the colour of cold steel, ridged with dark ripples where it laps the jetty, a moody pool, carved from the frozen earth by a river of ice, and a keeper of mysteries. A small huddle of pilgrims has gathered on the pier at Glenridding, ready to set sail across its brooding waters in search of an ancient rite.

                    Ullswater Steamer
                    Ullswater Steamer

                    The red deer is the largest British land mammal; stags stand well over a metre at the shoulder and weigh up to 190Kg.  11,000 years ago, they came to Britain from Europe, and their meat, hides and antlers provided Mesolithic man with an important source of food, clothing and tools. With the advent of agriculture, much of their natural habitat was lost, and they disappeared from many parts of England, but they remained well-established in Scotland. The Victorians bolstered the population by cross-breeding them with wapiti and sika; numbers and distribution have increased ever since, but some pure-bred red deer herds still remain in England.  The oldest inhabits the Martindale Deer Forest, which is maintained by the Dalemain estate as a sanctuary.

                    Autumn brings the breeding season, known as the rut. Between September and November, stags return to the females’ territory and do battle for the right to mate.  It’s a winner takes all scenario, so testosterone levels run high. The victor gets to sow his seed throughout the herd, while the losers spend a celibate year drooling over pictures of pretty hinds, pouting provocatively from the pages of The National Geographic, distributed by gamekeepers to maintain their interest and prevent them from taking up alternative hobbies like stamp collecting or computer games. During the rut, the males establish dominance by roaring and strutting like Steve Tyler on steroids; but if that doesn’t work, they fight—sometimes, to the death.

                    The Deer Forest isn’t accessible without specific permission from the estate. Luckily, we’re on a special expedition arranged by the RSPB in conjunction with Ullswater Steamers, so clearance has been granted. As we board the steamer, I realise we’re a motley crew, clad in autumnal hides of microfleece and Gore-Tex; dominance appears to be established not by the size of antlers but by who has the biggest binoculars. And I’ve forgotten mine, so I’m already at the bottom of the pecking order.

                    As the steamer glides over primordial waters, the world of concrete and tarmac dissolves. An isolated shaft of sun embroids a bright golden braid on the sombre fell side below Helvellyn, and a sense that we’re venturing somewhere older, wilder, more primal pervades.

                    Ullswater
                    Ullswater

                    On the heather-clad slopes below Place Fell, belted Galloways graze; then a ripple of excitement runs through the boat as pair of antlers appears on the skyline. A slender stag makes a fleeting appearance.  He’s only young—too small to entertain serious hopes of quenching his ardour this year.

                    Galloways and young stag
                    Galloways and young stag

                    An RSPB steward directs our attention to the crags above.  He’s spotted a peregrine. Massed ranks of binoculars are raised in unison.  My wife, Sandy, a professional photographer, aims a long telescopic lens. I fumble with the zoom on my little compact camera in an effort to join in. It comes as no surprise to anyone that I fail to spot it.  The steward takes pity and lends me his eyeglasses. As a flock of ravens appears, he explains peregrines and ravens are arch-enemies. They compete for the same eyries, and ravens will often join forces to mob an invading falcon.  I see an opportunity to improve my standing within the group as I’ve actually witnessed this.  I recount standing on the summit of High Street, not far from the trig point, and hearing a raucous squawking overhead.  I looked up to see a peregrine pulling ahead of pursuant mob of angry ravens, all apparently vying to peck at its tail feathers. The peregrine was much faster, and in a few wingbeats had gained a good lead, but just as I thought the action was over, it did something I wasn’t expecting. With a dazzling display of aerobatic agility, it performed a tumble-turn and sped back, like an Exocet missile, straight at the unfortunate raven it had ear-marked as victim. The ravens dispersed instantly, the target only just getting out of the way in time.

                    The steward nods knowingly. “Quite a spectacle that, isn’t it?”, he says with a grin. “I’ve seen it where the raven didn’t get away. It ended in a sickening thud and a flurry of black feathers.”

                    Ullswater shoreline
                    Ullswater shoreline

                    Howtown
                    Howtown

                    We disembark in Howtown, where a minibus awaits to ferry us up the hill to a track below Beda Fell, where three more stewards have set up telescopes: one pointing up the slope, and one pointing across to The Nab.  I wait my turn on the latter. When it comes free, the steward directs my gaze to the lower slope where a large herd of hinds is encamped.  It’s all very laid back: they’re lying down, basking in the autumn sunshine (or at least they would be, if there was any).  The resident stag sits smugly amid his harem, awaiting challengers. He doesn’t seem overly concerned—probably because he’s the cervine equivalent of Arnold Schwarzenegger, a huge muscular brute with a formidable pair of antlers.  Up wind, on the other side of a broken-down wall, are two young hopefuls. They’re recumbent too, desperate to keep out of Arnie’s sight while they summon the courage to take him on.  I wouldn’t bet on that happening any time soon.

                    As we chat, the steward tells me they’ve be running these excursions for a few years. It hasn’t always gone to plan…

                    Since we wiped out the wolves and bears that once roamed our forests, the red deer have no natural predators. If left unchecked, their numbers would grow unnaturally large, and the health of the herd would suffer. As a consequence, some culling is necessary. It’s a fact that doesn’t sit well with those of a sensitive disposition, but on balance, having the free run of Martindale and taking your chances, occasionally, with a skilled gamekeeper armed with a rifle and a remit to reduce numbers by removing the weakest, sounds a better deal to me than being cooped up on an intensive farm, then being shipped to the abattoir. I don’t know whether the Dalemain Estate offers paying clientele the opportunity to shoot deer for sport, and quite why anyone would take pleasure in killing such magnificent creatures is utterly beyond me.  I have no issue with humane culling, or with killing animals to eat, but if I had to do it, I’d be choking back the tears.

                    …As such, I can fully imagine the horror of the nature lovers who took this trip, a year or two back, and heard shots, then had to stand aside for an estate quad bike towing the blood-spattered carcass of a hind.  (Consequent discussions between the estate and the RSPB have resulted in a less distressing coordination of activities.)

                    It’s all hotting up on Beda Fell where another herd is grazing. Their stag is similarly reposed, but perhaps, not for long. A young contender has appeared on the skyline. He’s sniffing the air and assessing the situation. I take my turn on the telescope. A girl in an RSPB jacket asks me if I have an iPhone. She explains it’s possible to point your phone’s camera at the telescope’s eyepiece and get a reasonable close-up picture. I try, but all I can see is a ball of white light.

                    “Follow the light”, she explains, “and when you’ve got it centred, take the pic”.

                    It’s a lot harder than it sounds. She smiles sympathetically and asks if I’d like her to have a go. She takes my phone, waves it at the eyepiece for a couple of seconds and skilfully snaps the stag.

                    “There’s a knack”, she says with a smile. “I’ve had a lot of practice”.

                    Red Deer Stag
                    Red Deer Stag

                    Suddenly, the young male starts down the slope. The action causes a commotion in the herd and the incumbent stag jumps up to meet his challenger. He’s even bigger than Arnie. The young contender takes one look and suddenly remembers he might have left the gas on. He tries to slink away nonchalantly, as if this was his intention all along, and those hinds? Just not his type. We don’t have to be budding David Attenboroughs to realise we’re unlikely to see locked antlers today. It matters little. Just being in the presence of these majestic creatures is edifying.

                    ~

                    A year later, I’ll climb Rough Crag on High Street to a cacophony of red stag roars, the wind lifting their war song out of Martindale and into the peaks where it resonates around the crags that surround Blea Water and Riggindale, disembodied and amplified, the bloodcurdling battle cry of invisible duellists, berserk with hormonal rage.

                    It’ll be another nine months, before I stand on the summit of The Nab…

                    ~

                    I set out later than usual, hoping to give low cloud a chance to lift. I park in Hartsop, round Gray Crag and follow the stream up to Hayeswater to climb the slopes below the Knott. I’m heading for Brock Crags and Angletarn Pikes, but I can’t resist bagging three more Wainwrights first. As I reach the summit of the Knott, a wispy veil hides High Street’s upper reaches, but to the north, the low white blanket has cleared Rest Dodd.

                    Beyond lies The Nab. As Wainwright astutely notes: from below, it resembles the cluster of Dodds that ring the head of Ullswater. Its steep sides rise to a slender dome, with Rest Dodd a second hump, like the back of a Bactrian camel. From above, however, you realise Rest Dodd is the Daddy, and the Nab, no more than an impressive façade.

                    The Nab
                    The Nab

                    The Nab from Rest Dodd
                    The Nab from Rest Dodd

                    Down the ridge from the Knott, I turn up Rest Dodd’s grassy slopes. As The Nab sits entirely within the deer sanctuary, there’s no direct public access from below. The top, however, is open access land, so you can legally gain the summit from here. That said, there are conditions. The Dalemain website suggests: “the area may be closed at times between September and February for deer management and possibly at other times as required. To avoid any disappointment it is important to check that access will be available before your visit.”

                    It’s a request worth following for your own sake, as well as for that of the deer—it may save you from being skewered by a randy stag or shot by a stray stalker’s bullet. Unfortunately, I didn’t know this at the time so plead ignorance as my defence.

                    What deters most walkers from crossing to The Nab is the substantial peat bog that lurks in between; AW describes it as “one of the worst in Lakeland”. I hate boggy ground and derive no pleasure from picking a painstaking path across a soggy morass, testing every step and somehow still ending up with bootfuls of black water. Luckily for me, it’s mid-July and Lakeland is in the middle of a prolonged drought. The deep peat hags are bone dry, and I cross without so much as a damp sole.

                    On the summit, I see no deer, but I do acknowledge a debt to Wainwright—not just for fuelling a fledging passion with sketches that perfectly capture the character of each fell; not just for his flights of poetic eulogy and stabs of wicked humour; but also, for his diligence and detail in dividing these hills into coherent clusters and devoting a book to each. The majority of my walks in the past twelve months have been devoted to the Eastern and, particularly, the Far Eastern Fells. Looking out from here, I relive a year: Rampsgill Head and High Raise in the amber light of autumn; Steel Knotts, Wether Hill, Loadpot Hill, Arthur’s Pike and Bonscale Pike in baking June sunshine, sweetened by a summer breeze. To the west is Beda Fell, and the site of the RSPB excursion.

                    Beda Fell from Rest Dodd
                    Satura Crag from Rest Dodd

                    In a while, I’ll look out from Brock Crags over Pasture Beck and remember the start of spring on Stony Cove Pike (before a dicey descent, down frozen rock steps to Threshthwaite Mouth, suggested winter hadn’t quite departed); or sheltering from a biting breeze behind the Thornthwaite Beacon and breaking a trekking pole on the steep wet grass of Gray Crag. From Angletarn Pikes, I’ll recall the Dovedale round in snow, when the air was as crisp and new as the year.

                    Gray Crag from Brock Crags
                    Gray Crag from Brock Crags

                    Brothers Water & Dovedale
                    Brothers Water & Dovedale

                    I’m not short of mementos, I have photos, I have blogs, but while I’m able, I shall never tire of renewing my relationship with these summits. I’ve heard people lament finishing the Wainwrights and wonder what to do next. Come back! They’re never done. Do you imagine they suffer diminishing returns? There’s a man who walks the Old Man of Coniston every day. And every day, he gains something new from the experience.

                    So inevitably, I’ll return to The Nab. Perhaps next time, I’ll ask permission; but I will stick to the Rest Dodd route; direct ascents from the deer sanctuary are out of bounds for good reason. The animal lover, Wainwright, makes the plea, “PLEASE DO NOT INTRUDE”, beside a sketch of a stag.

                    Only, where Wainwright is concerned, it’s rather a case of do as I say and not as I do—as the sly old fox adds this:

                    “The author carried out his explorations surreptitiously, and without permission (not caring to risk a refusal); he was not detected, but this may possibly have been due to his marked resemblance to an old stag, and other trespassers must not expect the same good fortune. Walkers in general should keep away. The keen ‘peak-bagger’ who is ‘collecting’ summits over 1886’ must settle the matter with his conscience, and, if he decides he cannot omit The Nab, he may best approach it unobtrusively (but with permission) by way of the ridge from Rest Dodd, returning the same way. The following notes on direct ascents will therefore be of little interest to anybody but deer with a poor sense of direction.”

                    Red Deer, Martindale
                    Wainwright in Martindale

                    Sources/Further reading

                    The British Deer Society (2015). ‘Red Deer’. Available at:

                    https://www.bds.org.uk/index.php/advice-education/species/red-deer (Accessed Sept 2018)

                    Richards, Mark (2014). ‘Park and Stride—The Martindale Skyline’. BBC Cumbria, November. Available at:

                    http://www.bbc.co.uk/cumbria/content/articles/2006/07/21/parkandstride_8_martindale_feature.shtml (Accessed Sept 2018)

                    Wainwright, A. 1957: A Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells—Book Two, The Far Eastern Fells. 50th Anniversary Edition. London: Frances Lincoln, 2005.

                    + the imperfect memory of the author, which may, at times, be prone to flights of poetic fancy.

                    Practical note:

                    I believe the Dalemain Estate is now more amenable to granting permission than perhaps it was in Wainwright’s day.  Their web site even gives details of permitted routes from Martindale (although you must phone first). For details and contact numbers, visit:

                    https://www.dalemain.com/house-and-garden/the-nab/


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                      Away from the Numbers

                      Grey Friar, Great Carrs, & Dow Crag from Seathwaite

                      It was to be my 100th Wainwright. Not quite halfway, but a minor milestone nevertheless. The day begins inauspiciously with a series of farcical calamities worthy of Basil Fawlty, but en route to the Seathwaite reservoir, the disarming beauty of the Duddon valley works its magic. After a splendid ridge walk, I celebrate in the rural charm of the Newfield Inn—the scene of a violent riot, 114 years ago, which ended in the fatal shooting of a navvy. Hard to believe these days, but I’m on my best behaviour just in case.

                      It’s not as if I was expecting fanfares, a red carpet and a Champagne breakfast on the terrace. That would be ridiculous—we haven’t got a terrace. But on a morning that marked a minor milestone in my fell walking career, I did, at least, want things to go smoothly.

                      It wasn’t to be. I awoke to find the cat had thrown up over the sofa cushions. He’d even managed to hit a car rug perched over the arm. The scatter pattern suggested he’d been projectile vomiting while spinning like a whirling dervish. Was he violently ill or possessed by a legion of demons? It didn’t look like it.

                      I’ve seen enough episodes of CSI to know how to work a crime scene, and here I found grass and a sizeable clump of matted fur (quite possibly not his own). Cat lovers will know that grass is an emetic which cats imbibe deliberately to shift fur balls. The ensuing upchuck is relatively controlled, so this extravagant distribution was clearly a matter of choice. The proud perpetrator was now standing by his bowl, demanding his breakfast.

                      After half an hour of intensive fabric cleaning, I stuffed Wainwright’s Pictorial Guide to the Southern Fells into my rucksack and set off for Seathwaite.

                      I’ve lived in Cumbria for twenty years and I’d never been into the heart of the Duddon valley. I’ve gazed down on it many times from the tops of the Coniston fells, ever struck by its lonely beauty. In autumn, the Seathwaite reservoir had shone like a sapphire on a baize of burnished gold. Today, the fields and trees are a swatch of fresh June green, licked into life by the early morning sun. I could easily lose myself in carefree reverie, but I need to concentrate because I’m not entirely sure where I’m going.

                      The Duddon valley
                      The Duddon valley

                      Herdwick lamb in the Duddon valley
                      Herdwick lamb in the Duddon valley

                      After Seathwaite, the map shows a fork in the road, with the right-hand prong giving way to the old quarry track that leads up to the Walna Scar Pass and on to Coniston. The reservoir track starts from the same point. Sure enough, the road forks where expected and there is even a sign saying “Coniston, unfit for cars”. But as the winding single-track road narrows to no more than my car width, I start to question why it is I think there is off-road parking at the end of it.

                      The road ends abruptly in a gate—with no parking space anywhere to be seen. A farmer on a quad bike is approaching from the other side. He clearly wants to come this way. I recall a distinct lack of passing places and the road is too narrow for a three-point turn. There’s nothing for it but to reverse back to the farm I passed quarter of a mile back.

                      Parking sensors are wonderful things, but they don’t know the difference between dry stone walls and cow parsley. Given the abundance of foliage overhanging the verges, my dashboard is lit up like a Christmas tree and my ears are ringing from the continuous high-pitched beep. I reach the farm, but I’m too close to the opposite wall to back in. I effect a painfully faffing five-point manoeuvre, while trying to avoid the eye of the farmer, who I sense is laughing heartily. Eventually, I manage to let him past. He gives a cheery wave and speeds off down the lane, no doubt dying to get home and tell his wife all about his encounter with Mr Bean.

                      I follow him back to the Seathwaite road. On the edge of the village, there are four parking spaces. One is still free. Perhaps my luck is changing.

                      It’s a rash hope. I open the hatchback to find the top isn’t properly on one of my water bottles and it’s emptied itself entirely into one of my boots—the one I’d put my socks in. I pour 500ml of water out of the boot and wring out the socks as best I can, then I squelch one and a half miles back up the road to the gate. I go through and just on the other side, I find the parking spaces.

                      Then, I step in a cowpat.

                      As I tramp up the reservoir track, I feel every bit like Basil Fawlty scouting around for a branch with which to give the day a damn good thrashing… But subconsciously, I start to change gear. There’s a song going around in my head. It’s The Waterboys’ Don’t Bang the Drum—it was playing on the radio on the way here:

                      “Here we are in a fabulous place
                      What are you gonna dream here?
                      We are standing in this fabulous place
                      What are you gonna play here?
                      I know you love the high life, you love to leap around
                      You love to beat your chest and make your sound
                      But not here man – this is sacred ground
                      With a Power flowing through
                      And if know you you’ll bang the drum
                      Like monkeys do”

                      The song warns of being so pumped up with our own self-importance, or perhaps with peeved indignance at the banana skins life leaves littered in our path, that we can stand in the most astounding of places and fail to realise.

                      I stop to apply sun cream, and I wake up to where I am. The epiphany strikes like an earthquake. A minute ago, the Duddon valley was a place of cowpats, frustratingly hidden car parks and wet feet. Now it’s a place of astonishing power and disarming beauty.

                      Across the valley, a conspiracy of sun and shadow renders the Scafells as an Art Deco railway poster—broad, flat, angular and stylised.

                      The Scafells from the Duddon valley
                      The Scafells from the Duddon valley

                      To the east, the sheer green slopes of Brim Fell, Dow Crag and Walna Scar form a colossal rampart to rend the valleys of the Duddon and Coniston. And straight ahead, rising over rippling foot hills, is the grassy dome of Grey Friar—the only Coniston fell I’ve yet to set foot on. Except, it isn’t really a Coniston fell at all. As Wainwright points put, Grey Friar belongs entirely to the Duddon.

                      Grey Friar from the Seathwaite reservoir track
                      Grey Friar from the Seathwaite reservoir track

                      Ticking off all the Wainwrights hadn’t been a goal. I was more interested in getting to know my favourites well—experiencing all their ascents and ridge walks. However, some gentle hectoring from my neighbours, Paul and Jeanette, convinced me that tackling the full 214 is a great incentive to explore new ground. They’re right, and since committing to the challenge, my knowledge of the peaks has grown exponentially.

                      I’ve climbed all the other mountains in this range at least twice and some (like The Old Man) as many as eight times. But Grey Friar, I’ve been saving. It will be my 100th Wainwright.

                      The OS map shows no path, but Wainwright sketches two that wend in parallel up the south western ridge. The first, a grass rake, is clearly visible from the track, but the intervening ground is marshy. AW suggests continuing to the reservoir and starting from just beyond the outtake channel. His second path is more direct and starts from the same place.

                      After a mile or so, I crest the hill and the long buttressed curve of the dam wall appears at the foot of dark shadowy slopes. As I reach the walkway that traverses the top, the sun slips behind a cloud, so now over the parapet, the dark waters stretch out—a long black placid pool, cool and inscrutable.

                      Seathwaite reservoir
                      Seathwaite reservoir

                      The reservoir’s tranquillity belies the violence in its construction. The ancient tarn was dammed in 1904, to extend its capacity as a water supply. The summer was a scorcher; the work was hard, and tempers were frayed. In such a small and remote community as Seathwaite, tensions were strained between locals and the labourers drafted in to sweat and toil. It would only take a spark to ignite the tinder.

                      In the event, alcohol proved the accelerant. According to Dick Sullivan’s book, Navvyman (Coracle Press, 1983), Owen Cavanagh had been drinking heavily since 9am. By noon, the landlord of the Newfield Hotel (now the Newfield Inn) judged he’d had enough. As Cavanagh’s rowdiness threatened to get out of hand, the landlord demanded he and his mates leave the premises. The men refused. They smashed up the pub and stole bottles of whisky, then they spilled into the street where they pelted the church and the vicarage with rocks. The publican, a barman and an engineer confronted the rioters with firearms. Shots were fired wounding three—fatally in Cavanagh’s case. The gunmen were arrested but later acquitted on the grounds their actions were legally justified in protecting property.

                      A primeval peace pervades now. The ghosts of rampaging navvies don’t haunt the fruits of their labours. I follow the walkway along the top of the dam and cross the footbridge over the main and auxiliary tarn outlets.

                      Seathwaite reservoir from the walkway
                      Seathwaite reservoir from the walkway

                      Between the crags of Great and Little Blake Rigg, Grey Friar’s slopes are more forgiving—grassy terraces peppered with rocky outcrops. Where Wainwright shows the start of his direct route, the tiniest of cairns hints at a faint path. I augment the cairn with a couple more stones—now you’ll have to blink a fraction longer to miss it.

                      Great Blake Rigg
                      Great Blake Rigg

                      In places, you have to rely on instinct and common sense to determine the line of the path. In others, it’s more pronounced, but nowhere is there any difficulty. A moderate pull up grassy slopes attains the ridge, and I make for the summit. Two cairns, a little way apart, stake equally convincing claims. Wainwright judges the north-eastern contender to be the true summit but concedes the south-western has the better views. He’s right, I pull myself up a rocky step and hunker down beside it to gaze across at Harter Fell and the Scafells.

                      Seathwaite reservoir from Grey Friar
                      Seathwaite reservoir from Grey Friar

                      Summit cairns, Grey Friar
                      Summit cairns, Grey Friar

                      South-western summit Cairn, Grey Friar
                      South-western summit Cairn, Grey Friar

                      A blue haze, like a sea mist, transforms the peaks into a mythical realm, where black spires, full of menace and foreboding, rise above dappled flanks, pretty and beguiling, and dark hollows harbour mysteries, old as the hills themselves.

                      One hundred Wainwrights under my belt is still seven short of halfway. Even so, it’s a ton, a nicely rounded sum, and it feels like an accomplishment. Grey Friars was a fine choice. It’s an underrated mountain, but away from the numbers, these are the kind that can reward the most. It’ll be a different story across on Scafell Pike. At this time of year, walkers will be arriving by the coach load. The Let’s Walk the Lakes Facebook group are tackling that today. Three weeks ago, I climbed Skiddaw with them. It was my first outing with the group, and a nicer bunch of like-minded people you couldn’t hope to meet. I wave in their direction and look forward to our next hike together. Then I set off for Great Carrs.

                      Just shy of the summit is a memorial cairn to the wreck of a Halifax bomber that crashed here in 1944. I’ve written about that at length in Ghost of Canadian Airmen, so I won’t repeat myself here, but the cairn with its cross and its plaque, together with the little wooden crosses people plant among the stones to commemorate their own departed loved ones, never fail to move me.

                      Memorial Cairn on Great Carrs
                      Memorial Cairn on Great Carrs

                      I don’t know how this looked in Wainwright’s day. It’s been rebuilt, so perhaps its appearance is more poignant now, but I find AW’s casual dismissal of it as a pile of aeroplane wreckage a tad perplexing. I’ve always suspected his curmudgeonly character was a slightly tongue-in-cheek persona: the bonhomie and humour in his writing suggests someone a little better disposed to people than is commonly supposed. But this throwaway line in the Grey Friar chapter does seem to reveal a more damaged individual, either lacking empathy, or perhaps, so used to burying his feelings he found them awkward to deal with when they surfaced.

                      I cross the shoulder of Swirl How and head over Brim Fell. The sky darkens, and it spots with rain. The hills are now a solemn grey, the Seathwaite reservoir a sombre sheen. But the dark clouds above Dow Crag are clearing and the ones overhead are insubstantial. They lack the ammunition for a proper downpour. Halfway to Dow Crag’s summit, the sun breaks through in triumph. By the time I reach the top, it’s glorious.

                      Brim Fell from Swirl How
                      Brim Fell from Swirl How

                      I read a number of walking blogs, and I enjoy Tessa Park’s, not only because it’s called Mountains and Malbec (which scores double points in my book), but because she champions the use of the ARSE CRAMPON. The concept is not entirely new, Wainwright remarks on the usefulness of the posterior, particularly in descent, but Tessa coined the phrase and she deserves a shout-out as I make liberal use of this piece of equipment in scrambling off the summit rocks.

                      Dow Crag’s buttresses and gullies are some of most dramatic features to be found anywhere in Lakeland. Its top is peppered with plunging vistas of heart-stopping beauty. Intrepid climbers perch on precarious outcrops high above the blue glimmer of Goat Water.

                      Dow Crag
                      Dow Crag

                      Climbers on Dow Crag
                      Climbers on Dow Crag

                      Goat Water from Dow Crag
                      Goat Water from Dow Crag

                      Dow Crag
                      Dow Crag

                      On the way down over Buck Pike and Brown Pike, Coniston Water is a hazy aquamarine wash to the east, while to the west, a band of barley forms a golden heart in the Lincoln green of the Duddon Valley. On reaching the Walna Scar Road, I turn right and descend past the old quarry into the pastoral perfection of Dunnerdale. Harter Fell looms ahead and Tarn Beck burbles over rocks as I meander lazily back to Seathwaite.

                      The Duddon valley from the Walna Scar track
                      The Duddon valley from the Walna Scar track

                      Tarn Beck, Duddon valley
                      Tarn Beck, Duddon valley

                      The Newfield Inn is the epitome of a charming rural pub. I sit in its pretty beer garden, enjoying the warm sunshine and a cool hoppy pint of Mosaic from the nearby Foxfield brewery. It’s impossible to imagine this was the scene of a violent riot and fatal shootings one hundred and fourteen years ago.

                      I’m quite sure the landlord doesn’t keep a loaded firearm behind the bar anymore, but just in case, I return the glass, thank him kindly and take extra care not to break anything on the way out.

                      Foxfield Mosaic at the New Field Inn
                      Foxfield Mosaic at the New Field Inn


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                        Back to Black Sail

                        Great Gable, Pillar, Steeple and Black Sail

                        Sex, fictional drug dealers and plenty of rolling rocks. Tim and I climb Great Gable and search for the iconic Napes Needle. After a misty but moving moment on the summit and a tricky descent into Ennerdale, we arrive at Black Sail Youth Hostel in time for Mexican Night and a very entertaining evening.  On the way home, we visit Pillar and Steeple, amid some inspiring mountain scenery.

                        A Coward You Are, Withnail

                        “But the path goes left.”

                        “No, that’s Moses Trod. It would take us to Beck Head.

                        “Isn’t that where we’re going?”

                        “Eventually, but Wainwright says if we carry straight on up we’ll join the South Traverse. We can take a detour right and have a look at Great Napes and the Needle, first. It’s part of the Gable Girdle – the finest mountain walk in the district that doesn’t include a summit, apparently.”

                        Tim looks suspiciously at the severe slope of loose stone. “And what does he say about this bit?”

                        I delve into the book, locate the paragraph, and read aloud, “at 1500’ Jekyll becomes a monstrous Hyde. Here the grass ends and the scree begins… ahead is a shifting torrent of stones up which palsied limbs must be forced. Only Moses Finger, 100 yards up, gives secure anchorage for clutching hands until a cairn is reached fifty swear words later…”

                        He casts a last wistful glance at Moses Trod, shrugs, and starts the painstakingly slow, slip-sliding ascent.

                        We’ve exhausted our fifty swear words by the time we reach Moses Finger, the slender middle digit of rock that sticks up insultingly. We pause and look back over Wastwater. It’s already a heart-stealing vista and little diminished by the bank of cloud that has conspired to hide the sun.  It’s rendered in sombre, muted tones, a great beauty lost in melancholy, reflective and subdued. Everything has a blue tinge – although that could just be our language colouring the air. We resume as low-lying cloud descends on the mountain above.

                        Tim at Moses Finger
                        Tim at Moses Finger

                        As the sky darkens, I wonder what qualifications you need to become a weather forecaster. Would an account with William Hill and your own copy of the Racing Post do? Or do they press gang people coming out of Ladbrokes? Arrest them for pinching those little pens and sentence them to five years hard labour with the Met Office. I hope whoever dreamt up today’s hasn’t bet the family silver on Bring Me Sunshine in the twelve-twenty at Aintree. “Dry, with sunny intervals and excellent visibility”, it said. The top of Great Gable is already lost in mist. We trudge on as it starts to rain.

                        The Great Napes is a wall of crag that stands slightly apart from Great Gable’s southern face. Wainwright describes it as a castle with side and rear walls. It is riven by gullies into four distinct ridges with names that evoke the Wild West: Arrowhead Ridge, Eagle’s Nest Ridge, Sphinx Ridge. In the Cumbrian drizzle, it’s hard to imagine Comanches hiding in the crevices, waiting to claim our scalps.

                        Great Napes, Great Gable
                        Great Napes

                        Great Napes
                        Great Napes

                        The Napes are bounded on either side by two big rivers of scree. They go by the formidable names of Great and Little Hell Gate. We reach a cairn of sorts and bear right along the South Traverse. It’s not so much a path as a line of least resistance between boulders. Before long, we arrive at the banks of Little Hell Gate, a torrent of white water turned to stone and frozen in mid flow. The loose scree is easily awakened by the soles of walking boots and ever threatens to start moving again. Halfway across, I look up toward the summit. Little Hell Gate disappears, between pillars, into a realm of mist. Or is it the smoke of hell fire? Alarmingly, a hitherto unknown masochistic side of me thinks a fine challenge for another day would be to tackle the summit this way. I’d have to work on my fitness, and I’d certainly need a larger vocabulary of profanities.

                        Across Little Hell Gate, we pick our way along the South Traverse in search of Napes Needle, an iconic freestanding rock pinnacle, oft photographed and a popular challenge for experienced rock climbers. It’s ascent in 1886 by William Walter Parry Haskett-Smith is widely held to have been the moment when rock-climbing was born as a sport, rather than just a means to an end for mountaineers. The trouble is we can’t find it. The OS map confuses us by printing its name below the path. On re-consulting Wainwright, we realise this is simply a convenient place to put the words – they relate to a small dot in the densely hatched area above the path. AW offers a clue to our difficulty: “the Needle is in full view from the Traverse but does not seem its usual self… and on a dull day is not easily distinguished from its background of rock”. I have a begrudging vision of today’s bright forecast scribbled on the back of a betting slip in a Ladbrokes pen.

                        Still unconvinced we’re in the right place, we carry on along the path as far as Great Hell Gate. Tim crosses to explore the other side. I indulge my new-found masochistic streak and ascend a little way to see if I can spot the Needle from the side. Progress up the scree is hard won. Every few feet gained are half lost as I slide back repeatedly, but the sheer, intimidating magnificence of the mountain makes it a price worth paying. Suddenly, with Tophet Bastion towering above, I glimpse the Needle. We’d been standing right underneath it.

                        Napes Needle from Great Hell Gate
                        Napes Needle from Great Hell Gate

                        We reconvene on the Traverse and I point out the Needle. It’s easy to miss head on. The classic photographs, some of which adorn the walls of the Wasdale Inn, were taken from a rocky ledge, known as the Dress Circle, on The Needle’s western side. This is where I had wanted to go, but the climb up to the base looks steep and loose, and the rain is turning the rock very slippery. It’s a further scramble to the ledge. From there, I’d planned to make a higher traverse along the bottom of the crags to re-join Little Hell Gate, just below Cat Rock (or Sphinx Rock – depending on your direction of view). Wainwright warns there is a tricky section. He says… well I won’t repeat what he says. His attitudes to women are, at times, shall we say, unreconstructed. There are plenty of brave women who wouldn’t flinch at tackling this route in these conditions, but I’m neither a woman, nor brave, and I resolve to leave it for a drier day. Tim’s not arguing.

                        The Cat Rock, Great Gable
                        The Cat Rock, Great Gable

                        We retrace our steps along the Gable Girdle and continue around the western slopes towards Beck Head. The drizzle is easing off, but the summit is still in cloud. Beck Head is the saddle between Kirk Fell and Great Gable. Our detour to the Napes has taken a lot longer than we’d allowed. Black Sail has a rigid supper-at-seven policy, so to attempt both Kirk Fell and Gable now might be to risk going hungry. Kirk Fell’s summit is cloud-free. In some ways, it’s the more attractive option, but we’ve been warned about the descent from Kirk Fell to Black Sail before…

                        We stayed at Black Sail two months ago and sat up chatting with a couple of guys from London. We christened one “Danny” for his uncanny resemblance to Ralph Brown’s character in Withnail and I. Danny is the sleazy, laid-back but dangerous drug dealer who has some of the best lines in the film: “they’re selling hippie wigs in Woolworth’s, man. The greatest decade in the history of mankind is over. And as Presuming Ed here has so consistently pointed out, we have failed to paint it black”. Tim and I love his coolly menacing riposte when Withnail rashly challenges him to a drug taking competition: “very, unwise”, he sneers.

                        Let’s be clear, our short-haired, clean-cut acquaintance looked nothing like Ralph Brown, but his voice… his voice was a perfect match… At first, I thought Tim had nodded off. He wouldn’t have been alone – after a hard day’s walk, a good meal and several beers, everyone was heading that way. But, then I noticed the half-smile at the corner of his mouth and I knew exactly what he was doing. He was semi-closing his eyes, so he could imagine it really was Danny sitting opposite, in a long leather coat, smoking a spliff, and recounting his mountain adventure in a laconic nasal drawl, laced with spite and schadenfreude. I started to do the same. It was just so delightfully incongruous that the man who invented the Camberwell Carrot should be here, telling us about Kirk Fell.

                        “But then,” continued Danny dramatically, as if describing a drug deal gone bad, “I had to descend through some pretty hairy crags to get down to the Black Sail Pass. I didn’t enjoy that greatly. I kept thinking I’d slip and break me neck.”

                        “Not the cleverest choice of route, then?” Asked Tim, if only to prove he was awake.

                        “No,” said Danny, “very unwise.”

                        Danny’s warning is only half the reason we’re favouring Gable now. Despite being under cloud, it’s still our primary goal for the day, and after exploring its dramatic cliffs, we can hardly leave the summit untouched. Besides, there’s still a chance that Bring Me Sunshine will make a late run and win by a nose.

                        Connection

                        The ridge that runs beside Gable Crag soon demands hands as well as feet. By the time we’re climbing into cloud, three points of contact are a must and extra care is needed on the slippery surface.  We meet an ashen-faced man coming down. He’s clearly out of his comfort zone, but he’s coping well.  We reassure him he hasn’t far to go before the gradient relaxes, the cloud dissipates, and Beck Head is reached.

                        The mist is thick on top and I lose Tim momentarily. As I follow the cairns, a large, finely-chiselled form crystallises.  It’s the Fell and Rock Climbing Club’s memorial to its members lost in The Great War.  In their honour, the survivors bought Great Gable and twelve surrounding fells, and they vested them in the care of the National Trust.  Every year, on Remembrance Sunday, a large crowd assembles to pay their respects. To see this polished slab of black stone emerge from the mist is a haunting experience and intensely moving. A familiar voice expresses the same sentiment. It’s Tim. We stand and read the names.  These men are commemorated here because, in life, they loved these mountains. We have that in common. A connection. That’s all it takes to bring home the horror of what happened to them.

                        Great Gable War Memorial
                        Great Gable War Memorial

                        We take a seat by the summit, looking towards Wasdale (although we can’t see it). We’re not alone and soon we’re joined by several more. We’re all facing the same way.  It’s as if we’re in a theatre, waiting for the curtain to rise.  Then, fleetingly, it does.  A fabulous view of the lake is unveiled, and we cheer in unison. But Wastwater is a fickle leading lady today, and she refuses to entertain us for more than a few seconds. Great Gable is a chorus of deflated sighs as the cloud again descends. With an encore unlikely, we take a compass bearing and head off in search of Windy Gap.

                        Mexican Night

                        The first part of the descent into Ennerdale is steep scree.  We settle into a sliding rhythm. As the gradient eases, things get harder. The path tracks the stripling river Liza, but the heavy rainfall of recent weeks has rendered the ground a marshy swamp.  To avoid sinking, we stick to the rocks, but these are wet and slippery.  Progress is so painfully slow that the prospect of a pint before supper is receding fast. Tim looks at his watch and picks up the pace, but he’s got two walking poles and longer legs. I can’t keep up.  I slip and almost topple into the stream. “Very unwise”.  Ahead, Ennerdale is an oil painting, but I daren’t lift my eyes from my feet. It’s a long and pleasure-less slog. When the Black Sail hut finally appears, it couldn’t be more welcome. James, the manager, is delighted to see us. I think he’s anticipating a boost in the bar takings.  We manage a swift half before dinner.

                        It’s Mexican night – chilli and chocolate fudge cake. We take a seat at one of the communal tables opposite two eleven-year-olds and their grandad. It transpires the “eleven-year-olds” are actually eighteen and on a gap year before university. Grandad (who isn’t really much older than us) doesn’t belong to them. He’s lost in his own thoughts, busily annotating a copy of Wainwright, but the school leavers are very chatty. Tim points out they’re providing a rare service by justifying the “youth” in Youth Hostel. The girl laughs and tells us the YHA keep stats on how many people aged under twenty-five they attract. She knows this because she’s been working in a Youth Hostel, earning the money to go travelling before she starts at Cambridge next September.

                        They’re both fiercely intelligent, but what strikes us most is their confidence and self-assurance. Tim and I agree we’d have been nervous and taciturn had we been subjected to small-talk with middle-aged strangers at their age. Tim’s convinced we’ll see the girl on the telly in a few years’ time, interviewed as head of some major corporation or government department. She seems so pleasant and idealistic. I hope she’s famous for something positive: a ground-breaking equal-opportunities scheme, perhaps; or a planet-saving innovation; not for a corporate scandal involving cocaine, supplied by dealer from Camberwell she met while backpacking.

                        I ask where they’re heading tomorrow.

                        “Coniston,” she answers brightly.

                        “On foot?” I say, puzzled.

                        “Yes,” she beams, then senses my surprise and adds, “I know it’s a long way, but we can cut the miles down if we stay high”.

                        She means altitude – I glance around – Danny’s definitely not here.

                        But damn right it’s a long way. They could probably follow the coast-to-coast route for some of it, but that must be nearly thirty miles. I try to picture the high-level alternative, then realise I don’t have to – there’s a large map on the wall. Windy Gap, Esk Hause, Esk Pike, Bow Fell, Crinkle Crags, Red Tarn, Wrynose Pass, Wet Side Edge, Great Carrs, Swirl How, Levers Water… that would take me at least two days!

                        Because I always imagine everyone else is better at this than me, I conclude they must be ferociously fit. But, somehow, it doesn’t ring true. They tell us about their walk today. It was remarkably modest. When they reveal they gave up half way, had a pub lunch and called a taxi, the alarm bells go off. I really don’t want their first press appearances to be in the obituaries, so I try to persuade them they’re being a little over-ambitious. James appears from the kitchen and I call on him for a second opinion. He raises an eyebrow at the plan, thinks for a minute, then gently suggests they walk to Rosthwaite, or perhaps Honister, and get the bus from there.

                        The guy we took for their grandad finishes his notes, puts down his Wainwright and shuffles along to join in. He clocks our beers and starts extolling the virtues of real ale. He runs a Beers and Books club, apparently. But he’s drinking spring water – I don’t quite trust him. The conversation turns to the surrounding fells. He’s done them all. His walks are all summarised succinctly in his Wainwright. Haystacks, “grey and overcast”; High Stile, “cold and rainy”; Fleetwith Pike, “dull and miserable”. I ask if he was on Great Gable today. He denies it, but I’m not sure I believe him.

                        We’re a little concerned to learn that this Pied Piper of Precipitation plans to walk the ridge from Pillar to Haycock tomorrow. We’ll be heading over Pillar to Scoat Fell and Steeple. There is a ray of hope, however. He’s going to make a very early start. If he pulls the cloud behind him, Pillar might be free of it by the time we get up there.

                        When they all go off to bed, we join the couple in the corner, Ben and Karen (I’m terrible with names so that probably isn’t what they’re called). When James disappears, they smile sheepishly and sneak a contraband bottle of wine from their rucksack. Karen looks at ours and asks if we bought it here. When we answer yes, she explains they didn’t realise there was a bar. She feels a bit stupid now for lugging it all the way over the fells.

                        They’re in their mid-twenties, obviously infatuated with each other, and savouring this time together as Ben is working on an environmental project in the Cairngorms while Karen is in Bristol. They’ve been staying with her aunt, who is a little traditional and has allocated them separate bedrooms. Fortune has smiled tonight, however. The future captains of industry have hired the private room, so Karen has the women’s dorm to herself. We turn in for bed and leave them canoodling on the doorstep.

                        I’m awakened at around four by someone going out to the loo. He returns five minutes later, but just as I’m drifting off again, someone else comes in. I can’t see who it is, but I sense it’s Ben, the Cairngorm Canoodler. I can hardly blame him for spending the night in the women’s dorm. What amuses me is that he feels obliged to sneak back here afterwards to maintain appearances. Perhaps it’s residual guilt over the wine bottle.

                        Rewilding

                        By the time we get up for breakfast, the sun is out, and it has all the makings of a lovely day. A low-lying cloud hangs over Pillar, mind. Beer and Books set off a couple of hours ago. That should place him firmly on the summit.

                        Outside, the future captains of industry are putting on their boots and nervously eyeing the big black Galloway cattle that have come right up to the hut to graze. James appears and feeds one of the cows slices of apple, straight from his hand. The teenagers relax. I ask them if they’re going to take James’s advice about Rosthwaite or Honister. It seems they’ve scaled their ambition back further: they’re just going to walk over Scarth Gap and along the lake shore to Buttermere village and get the bus from there.

                        Black Sail Youth Hostel
                        Black Sail Youth Hostel

                        I ask James about the Land Rover emblazoned with the name of the hostel. He says it was a donation and it’s proving a godsend. Delivery trucks can’t make it up here, so they unload everything at Ennerdale Youth Hostel. James uses the Land Rover to collect. Because frozen food can’t be out of the freezer for more than thirty minutes, the drivers give him an hour’s notice so he can be there to meet them. He’s expecting a call later this morning. The teenagers shoot each other opportunistic glances. I think they’re going to ask for a lift. Ben emerges from the men’s dorm and makes a big show of stretching – hoping to imply he’s been there all night. We all wander in for breakfast.

                        Two hours later, we’re sitting on top of Pillar as the last of the cloud lifts and drifts along the ridge to Haycock. The breeze has teeth, but a stone shelter shields us long enough to watch shadows play across the slopes.  This entrancing landscape looked like a rolling sea in July. It’s still has spidery fingers of green, but broad-brushed tones of red and brown encroach as we edge into autumn.  The valley is dressed in a mossy, golden velvet, lined with the dark braid of Sitka spruce.

                        Scarth Gap, Ennerdale
                        Scarth Gap, Ennerdale

                        High Stile Range Across Ennerdale
                        High Stile Range Across Ennerdale

                        Coledale Fells Across Ennerdale and Buttermere
                        Coledale Fells Across Ennerdale and Buttermere

                        View Across Ennerdale from Pillar
                        View Across Ennerdale from Pillar

                        The spruce forests were a clumsy, insensitive intrusion.  Dense planting began in the 1920’s and displaced the sparser indigenous flora.  I look across towards Wainwright’s resting place on Haystacks.  He hated the evergreens with a passion.  I haven’t read his Coast to Coast, but Tim assures me he’s still ranting about the “dark funereal shroud of trees” when he’s all the way over in Yorkshire.  He’d be heartened to hear of the Wild Ennerdale project that’s been rewilding the valley since 2003, slowly thinning the conifer and allowing the woodland to diversify naturally.

                        Ennerdale Water’s days as a reservoir are also numbered. To ensure the survival of wildlife, including a rare mollusc, United Utilities will desist from drawing water here, altogether, by 2025. West Cumbria’s supply will be pumped instead from Thirlmere. As the damage of past decades is undone, Ennerdale is set to become a triumph of conservation over commerce.

                        Across Windgap Cove, Steeple stands like the wild, craggy spire its name suggests; or Poseidon rising from the depths, scattering a tumbling wash of surf and seaweed in the folds of his long flowing beard.  He’s bathed in brilliant light. Bring Me Sunshine has come from the back to win the day. Either that or Beer and Books has gone home early.  I hope not. He deserves to see these slopes, for once, in sunlit splendour.

                        For us, now, Steeple is calling, and we have no mind to resist.

                        Steeple
                        Steeple

                        Steeple
                        Steeple


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                          Born To Be Wild

                          Millican Dalton and Castle Crag

                          Wainwright called the Jaws of Borrowdale, “the loveliest square mile in Lakeland”. In the first half of the twentieth century, a cave on the slopes of Castle Crag was home to Millican Dalton, who quit his job in a London office to become a self-styled “Professor of Adventure”. On this walk up Castle Crag, I consider his life, visit his cave and recall a WWI Christmas story that seems to echo his essential message.

                          The Other

                          In David Guterson’s novel, The Other, Neil Countryman is an English teacher and an aspiring writer – his desk drawers are full of unpublished novels. Despite being the first Countryman to go to college, he identifies himself as someone “familiar with the middle of the pack”.

                          Countryman formed a deep and enduring friendship with John William Barry; “The Hermit of the Hoh”, as the newspapers dub him when his body is discovered in the riverside cave that had become his home.  Barry was a rich boy, privately educated and heir to a fortune. He met Neil running track and the two bonded over a slightly rebellious outlook and a love of the outdoors. Rebellion to Countryman meant cutting classes and smoking the odd joint. To Barry, ultimately, it meant rejecting civilised society and adopting a life of primitive isolation, deep in the woods of Washington state.

                          High How Woods
                          High How Woods

                          The novel is Neil’s retrospective examination of their friendship and a search, perhaps, for understanding.  John William was undoubtedly troubled and, as the pieces of the jigsaw fit into place, an impression is formed of a tormented young man, driven to an ascetic life by personal demons.

                          On a mundane Monday morning, which of us hasn’t dreamed of escaping the rat race and living a life of adventure closer to nature?  For most of us, though, the perfect outdoor expedition ends with a cold pint and a hot bath. If we hear of someone who really has gone feral, we suspect a Barry figure, replete with deep emotional scars. But John William is a fiction. The reality can be surprisingly different…

                          The Professor of Adventure

                          “Meet Mr Millican Dalton. He is one of the creatures of the wild. He lives in a cave up in one of the wooded crags that are the glory of Borrowdale… Mr Dalton is 73½ years of age, is tall, spare, hard as a fell toad and if you were to meet him you would agree that in his Tyrolese hat, decorated with a heron’s plume, his plaid drawn over a brown tweed coat, his green corduroy shorts, sinewy legs, sometimes encased in puttees and climbing boots, he looks a fine figure of a man.”

                          Millican Dalton's Cave, Borrowdale
                          Millican Dalton’s Cave, Borrowdale

                          Thus, began an article in the Whitehaven News on January 30th, 1941. It went on to quote a gloriously upbeat Millican. ‘I was a clerk in a London office. The life stifled me. I longed to be free. I gave up my job and ever since I have camped out. Today I live rent free, rate free, tax free. It’s the only kind of life worth living.’ ”

                          Dalton was born in 1867, in Nenthead, Cumbria, near the borders of Northumberland and Durham. His family moved south when he was seven and he spent many of his formative years in Chingford, Essex, close to Epping Forest, where he and his brothers embarked on endless adventures, camping and tree-climbing. Holidays in the Lake District saw Millican graduate from tree climbing to rock-climbing and experiment with raft-building. When he left school, he found the working week dull by comparison. He spoke of feeling “constricted, like a caged animal” and longed for the outdoor pursuits, which afforded him full self-expression.  A vegetarian and ardent socialist, Millican placed little value on material things (apart from Woodbines, which he smoked with a passion).  In 1904, he decided to treat his life like a “chemical experiment” and jack in the humdrum in favour of a life of adventure and romance.

                          Dalton spent his winters in the south, initially in Essex and later in Buckinghamshire, where he swapped bricks and mortar for a wooden cabin.  His summers, he spent in the Lake District, and from around 1914, moved into the cave on the slopes of Castle Crag.  Dalton became an accomplished mountain guide, building a loyal following, keen to experience his advertised “Camping Holidays, Mountain Rapid Shooting. Rafting. Hairbreadth Escapes.” He made his own clothes and pioneered lightweight camping equipment. He was an early member of the Fell and Rock Climbing Club, documenting trail-blazing ascents, such as Dove Crag, in their journals.  Unconventional through and through, Millican had little truck with the prevailing notion that rock climbing was an exclusively male pursuit. He introduced several women to the sport, most notably Mabel Barker, whose initiation took her to the top of Napes Needle. Barker went on to become something of a figurehead for women’s climbing and remained a lifelong friend of Dalton’s.

                          Millican Dalton's Cave
                          Millican Dalton’s Cave

                          In 1940, the Blitzkrieg wrought destruction on London. With his Buckinghamshire home, a little close to comfort, Dalton opted to over-winter in Cumbria.  By now, he was something of a national celebrity.  The Daily Mirror declared, “Today this seventy-three year old hermit is less affected by the war than any man in Britain”.  This was wrong on two counts.

                          Living in a cave was about the only thing Dalton had in common with Guterson’s “hermit of the Hoh”.  Millican hadn’t taken to the woods to escape from people.  Indeed, his campfire played host to a constant stream of visitors, coming to sample his home-baked bread, home-grown vegetables and engage in lively conversation with this most convivial, gentlemanly and strongly opinionated of characters. Mabel Barker recalled, “in long association, I never knew him charge anything for his services beyond a trifle for camping expenses”. What he would readily accept in lieu of money, were Woodbines and newspapers (specifically, the Daily Herald).  This was not a man, hiding from society. Quite the contrary, he had a keen interest in politics and current affairs.  Had he stuck with insurance, he might have become a middle manager.  As it was, he became a self-styled “Professor of Adventure”.

                          The Daily Mirror was also wrong to suggest Millican was untroubled by the war.  At the behest of blackout wardens, he had to put out his campfire and brave the winter nights in an unheated cave.  He obliged, but was far from happy with the arrangement, and wrote to Winston Churchill several times, demanding that he stop the war as it was impinging on his personal liberty.

                          The River Derwent, Borrowdale
                          The River Derwent, Borrowdale

                          Dalton’s opposition went deeper than a dispute over a campfire, however.  He had been in his forties when the First World War broke out, so was too old to serve in either.  Had he been younger, as a committed pacifist, he would almost certainly have been a conscientious objector.

                          Despite his gargantuan appetite for Woodbines, Millican remained fit as a fiddle all his life.  Every spring, he climbed Napes Needle, with the promise that as soon as it proved too much for him, he would retire from climbing.  He never did, but his outdoor existence did finally catch up with him.  On returning to Buckinghamshire, he inadvertently burnt down his cabin.  Millican survived the fire, but attempted to see out the rest of the winter under canvas.  January 1947 was particularly harsh, and this proved too much for his seventy-nine-year-old body.  A month later, he died in Amersham hospital of acute heart failure, pulmonary bronchitis and bronchopneumonia.

                          Castle Crag, Borrowdale
                          Castle Crag, Borrowdale

                          Today, Millican Dalton’s cave is something of a shrine for those who love the outdoors, but his appeal is broader. Like Neil Countryman, many of us find we are familiar with the middle of the pack. Hopefully, few turn out as troubled as the hermit of the Hoh; but perhaps, a little part of the Professor of Adventure lives in all of us (even if its expression has nothing to do with caves and mountains). Dalton’s story inspires because it says, “to hell with convention”, “be who are you are and live the way that makes you happy”.

                          Into the Jaws of Borrowdale

                          It’s early November, when I decide to pay the cave a visit. Between the flanks of High Spy and Kings How, Borrowdale is squeezed to a narrow passage, barely wide enough for the road and the river Derwent to co-exist. This dramatic opening is aptly named “The Jaws of Borrowdale”. Castle Crag is the impressive incisor, rising from the river on the western side. At just under 1000 feet, Bill Birkett considered it too small to include in his Complete Lakeland Fells. Wainwright took a different view, however: “Castle Crag is so magnificently independent, so ruggedly individual, so aggressively unashamed of its lack of inches, that less than justice would be done by relegating it to a paragraph in the High Spy chapter.” He goes on to describe the Jaws of Borrowdale as “the loveliest square mile in Lakeland”.

                          The River Derwent
                          The River Derwent, in the Jaws of Borrowdale

                          I climbed High Spy in June when the slopes were as green as a Granny Smith. Now, deep into autumn, they resemble a Russet or a Cox’s Orange Pippin. I park in Rosthwaite and take the track beside the Flock Inn Tearoom that leads through a farmyard to the river.  The trees are already sparsely leaved, allowing golden sunlight to gild the waters and do ample justice to Wainwright’s eulogy. I cross the pretty stone arch of New Bridge and bear right along the bank. Castle Crag rises ahead, and I can pick out the direct path to the summit. This will be my way down.

                          By the water, a herd of Galloway cattle grazes lazily on hay. I stick on the path that skirts the slope and follows the river into the trees.

                          Cattle at the foot of Castle Crag
                          Cattle at the foot of Castle Crag

                          Where Guterson depicts the forests of Washington State as a savage wilderness, High How Woods are a sylvan idyll. They would be a harsh home in winter, mind. The Daily Mirror piece had photo of Dalton in his cave, standing before a curtain of giant icicles. To camp out here in January, with no campfire, would take a hide considerably thicker than mine.

                          The path snakes away from the river and, before long, a cave appears on the left.  This was not Millican’s, but according to my directions, his lies above. I follow a sketchy path that climbs behind it, turning into a semi-scramble over rock and a spoil heap.  On reaching the top, a cavern lies ahead, but it is shallow and dripping with water – by no means inhabitable.  I notice a better path rising from the right, which continues upwards to a more likely cave. Someone has chalked a heart and “MD” on a slate by the entrance, so I know this is the place.

                          It’s roomy and the opening provides just enough light that my head torch isn’t really needed. I switch it on anyway and the beam reveals the unexpected grandeur of the rock. I’d imagined uniform walls of slate-grey, but here, dark charcoal gives way to sparkling white crystal and strata of red, ochre and terra cotta.

                          Millican Dalton's Cave, Castle Crag
                          Millican Dalton’s Cave, Castle Crag

                          Millican Dalton's Cave, Castle Crag
                          Millican Dalton’s Cave, Castle Crag

                          I climb the loose stone staircase to the upper level, which Dalton called “the attic”.  This was where he slept; someone has bestowed his bed with a fresh mattress of bracken.  The Whitehaven News gave a vivid insight into how this looked in Millican’s time: “Everything within is ‘wondrous neat and clean.’ Cleverly packed is the cave-dweller’s camp equipment and cooking utensils, which have all been picked out of village dumps. There was a place for everything and everything was in its place. In one corner was Millican Dalton’s lying-up place. Bracken for a bed and a plaid and an eiderdown for covering. And on this deadly cold night Millican had, as is his wont, taken off his day clothes before he stretched himself out to sleep. Which of us accustomed to the luxury of a bed in a well warmed house would not have been frozen stiff?”

                          Looking up to the attic, Millican's cave
                          Looking up to the attic, Millican’s cave

                          Millican Dalton's bed of bracken, Castle Crag
                          Millican’s bed of bracken, Castle Crag

                          By the entrance, just beyond his bed, a motto is carved into the rock: “DON’T!! WASTE WORRDS Jump to conclusions”.  The inscription may not be Dalton’s, but that of a Scottish friend, whom he frequently chided for doing just that – chiselled, no doubt, as a joke after an infuriating debate.

                          Inscription in Millican Dalton's cave
                          Don’t waste words…

                          Incription in Millican Dalton's cave
                          Jump to conclusions

                          Below the cave, I follow the river through the woods, then turn left along the bridleway to Honister.  As I climb beside Broadslack Gill, Castle Crag rises in a sheer cliff to my left, while behind, the valley is a patchwork of autumnal pigment as it bows to Derwent Water and the imperious summits of Skiddaw. Just past the cliff face, a path forks sharply left, climbs a stile and zig zags up the steep gradient toward the summit.  On the way, it passes a bench and stone plaque to Sir William Hamer, the former landowner, in whose memory, his wife Agnes, bequeathed this land to the National Trust. Agnes made this bequest in 1939, at the onset of the Second World War.  Several years earlier, the couple had bequeathed the summit, in memory of their son, John, who died in World War One.

                          Castle Crag, Borrowdale
                          Climbing Castle Crag

                          The path winds through spoil heaps to the summit quarry, where successions of walkers have arranged slates into a makeshift sculpture park.  Many stand on end like tombstones to by-gone industry and the many millions of boots that have marked this passage.  Others are more ambitious in their arrangement. One resembles a creature with the back of a stegosaurus and the toothy jaw of a shark.  A large beehive cairn crowns the southern extent and marks a spectacular view, over the neat, green meadows of Borrowdale, to the wild, precipitous face of Eagle Crag. A red squirrel hops among the trees and for a while I’m undisturbed. It’s deeply peaceful and a strange, beautiful equanimity settles; a profound ease; a quiet, unruffled calm; a serene, sense of belonging.

                          The quarry, Castle Crag summit
                          The quarry, Castle Crag summit

                          Castle Crag summit quarry
                          Castle Crag summit quarry

                          Castle Crag summit quarry
                          Castle Crag summit quarry

                          Castle Crag war memorial
                          Borrowdale from Castle Crag quarry

                          No Man’s Land

                          A grassy path leads up, above the quarry, to the summit proper. Set into the rock is the memorial, not just to John Hamer but to all the men of Borrowdale who died in the trenches.  A poppy wreath from the Association of the Royal Engineers has been placed below. My Dad was a Royal Engineer. Perhaps that’s why the plaque holds my attention; or perhaps it’s the backdrop of Derwent Water; or the little wooden cross with the ballpoint inscription, “Danny Glynn”; but as I read the roll of names, I’m very moved by these young lives, cut so cruelly short.

                          Castle Crag war memorial
                          Castle Crag war memorial

                          Castle Crag war memorial
                          Castle Crag war memorial

                          Simple hilltop memorials, like this, speak louder to me than the televised parades and pageantry that accompany Remembrance Sunday. I think of Wilfred Owen’s Anthem for Doomed Youth:

                          “What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
                          Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
                          Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle
                          Can patter out their hasty orisons.
                          No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells,
                          Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, –
                          The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
                          And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

                          What candles may be held to speed them all?
                          Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
                          Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
                          The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall;
                          Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
                          And each slow dusk a drawing down of blinds.”

                          These men of Borrowdale were barely out of boyhood. Had they returned, they might have spent summers trading Woodbines for hairbreadth escapes with Millican Dalton. In years to come, they could have climbed Castle Crag with their grandchildren; and told tales of the eccentric old man in a Tyrolean hat, who lived in the woods and taught them all they knew about the fells.

                          That journey across the Channel may well have been their first outside the county. If they left seeking glory, it wasn’t what they found.  Across the fields of Flanders, they faced men just like themselves.  Farm workers, colliers, shopkeepers, railwaymen, butchers and miners.  Ordinary blokes with simple aspirations and little sway or interest in world affairs. The kind who care for family and friends and a beer or two on a Friday night; all sent to the slaughter for the blind folly of oligarchs.

                          Deep down, they knew it too: on Christmas Eve, 1914, men on both sides put down their rifles and climbed over the barricades to trade jokes, swap cigarettes and play football. Bloke-ish things that ordinary fellers do. For a few fleeting hours, a bunch of soldiers at the centre of a brutal conflict, did what Millican Dalton had done all his life. They defied the expectations of others and stayed true to themselves. In the dark heart of No Man’s Land, a brief candle of humanity shone very brightly. And that, forever, is a Christmas message worth repeating.

                          Derwent Water from Castle Crag
                          Derwent Water from Castle Crag

                          For detailed direction for this walk, visit Walk Lakes

                          For more on Millican Dalton, I recommend Matthew Entwistle’s book, Millican Dalton A Search for Romance & Freedom


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                            In My Time Of Dying

                            Haystacks and Wainwright.

                            As a teenager, my overriding aspiration was to move to the city and form a band. It was the start of a journey that would take me from the clubs of Newcastle to the pages of the NME and the very cusp of success, only to change direction and drop me in the wilds of Cumbria. En route, Jimi Hendrix would make room for a Borough Treasurer from Blackburn who disliked music, didn’t much like people, but loved the hills and whose writing opened my eyes to a whole new world. I pay tribute to this unlikeliest of heroes on top of Haystacks, the heather-clad hill where his ashes are scattered.

                            From Hendrix to the Hills

                            My heroes were all musicians: Jimi Hendrix, Pete Townshend, Gram Parsons, Paul Weller, Black Francis… I could go on.  I grew up in the country among the gentle hills of Wiltshire, but when I was 18, it wasn’t higher fells I craved, it was the city. Somewhere with nightlife and a thriving alternative music scene; somewhere I could join a band and play loud electric guitar in dark, sweaty, smoky clubs.

                            I secured a place at Newcastle University but my studies came second to my musical aspirations. After some false starts and a few years learning how to make noises other people might deign to listen to, I found friends with the right collective chemistry and we formed a band that was half decent.  We were called Hug, and together we achieved most of our teenage ambitions.  We toured the country in a transit van; played support to some of our heroes; we secured a record contract and released three e.p.’s and an album. We recorded sessions for Radio 1; and, at the start of 1991, the New Musical Express named us, alongside the Manic Street Preachers and Ocean Colour Scene, as one of their top tips for the coming year.

                            Hug 1990
                            Hug 1990. Photo by Sandy Kitching

                            Hug 1990
                            Hug 1991. Photo by Sandy Kitching

                            Unfortunately, we were the exception that proved the rule. While others on the list shot into the arena of international stardom, our journey stalled at the perimeter, performed a three-point turn and deposited us back at the Gateshead DHSS, where our hopes of evading more traditional employment were unceremoniously quashed.

                            I signed up for a course at Newcastle Poly or Northumbria University, as it had just become (supposedly an eleventh-hour name change, after some bright spark on the committee realised that rebranding it, “The City University of Newcastle upon Tyne” wouldn’t abbreviate well). I was to learn about IT, a far cry from my original vision of a career, but one that might, at least, earn me a living.

                            I hadn’t long qualified when my wife, Sandy was offered a dream job in Cumbria. I urged her to take it and set about seeking opportunities for myself, eventually securing a role with a small company developing medical software for managing people on dangerous drugs (the prescribed, not the proscribed kind). It seemed an interesting and worthwhile use of my new skills and we settled in the South Lakes.

                            Our first house was on the edge of a wood, right out in the sticks. It took a few weeks to adjust.  I’d never really understood the term, “the roaring silence” until then.  When you live in a city for any length of time you stop hearing the constant hum of traffic, but it becomes a vaguely hypnotic backdrop; a subliminal reassurance that the buzz of human activity continues as normal. To have it suddenly removed was disconcerting.  I remember lying awake, acutely aware that I could hear absolutely nothing. Then a barn owl screeched outside the open window and I nearly shot through the ceiling.  A few months later, I heard the bark of a stag for the first time and thought the Hound of the Baskervilles was coming through the wood.

                            But the countryside had started to work its magic and, before long, I felt the draw of the mountains. I invested in a set of OS maps and some walking guides, including a set of laminated cards, which I still use, although their age is now apparent from the supporting notes, which advise the intrepid explorer to “invest in a pair of walking stockings and a spare pullover”.

                            An Unlikely Hero

                            As my interest grew, I become acquainted with a name that seemed almost synonymous with the Lakeland fells.  In the Carnforth Bookshop, I chanced upon a second-hand copy of one of his books, “The Southern Fells” and snapped it up to see what the fuss was about.  The pocket-sized tome was a little dog-eared and it had obviously witnessed, first-hand, the summits it described; but it was all the more special for it. Its content, however, was a revelation: a series of pen and ink drawings, part map, part sketch that ingeniously captured the essence of a mountain and rendered it on a 2D page in such a way that the reader instantly understood its character and topography. I had always admired the way artist, David Hockney could convey so much with such an economy of line. Here too, the author accomplished a similar feat; and the accompanying text was pure, heartfelt poetry. It spoke volumes in a few simple paragraphs shot-through with warmth, humour, passion and practical advice.

                            Suddenly, Jimi Hendrix and Pete Townshend had to shuffle along to make room for a pipe-smoking, whiskered, staunchly conservative old curmudgeon, who went by the name of Alfred Wainwright. An unlikely coalition to say the least – Wainwright once assured a bemused Sue Lawley on Desert Island Discs that, “music has never played an important part in my life. It’s never been an inspiration to me. Rather an irritation, very often.”

                            Born in Blackburn, Alfred Wainwright grew up in relative poverty. His father was an alcoholic, who drank much of what little he earned as a stonemason. The young Alfred was bright and a model pupil at school, where he consistently scored top marks, but he was forced to leave at thirteen in order to support his mother.

                            He got a job as an office boy with the Blackburn Borough Engineer’s department, but continued his studies at night school and eventually qualified as an accountant, which enabled him to climb the career ladder and become Borough Treasurer.

                            If the young Wainwright’s diligent attempts to better his lot were an attempt to escape the hardships of his upbringing, poverty was not the only thing he wanted to flee. From an early age, he had shown a keen interest in walking and cartography. He produced his own maps and frequently eschewed the industrial urban environment for long days in the tranquility of the countryside.

                            At the age of twenty three, Alfred, or AW as he preferred to be known, came to the Lakes for a walking holiday with his cousin, Eric. They climbed Orrest Head, above Windermere, where they witnessed the Lakeland fells for the first time. He described the experience as “magic; a revelation so unexpected that I stood transfixed, unable to believe my eyes”.

                            A year later, AW entered into a disastrous marriage with Ruth Holden. Throughout their courtship, Wainwright kept his cap on. When he finally removed it on their wedding night, the sight of his red hair revolted her and both parties rapidly came to regret their decision. Despite the birth of their son, Peter in 1933, domestic relations did not improve and the lure of the Lakes as an escape grew ever stronger.

                            Wainwright’s biographer, Hunter Davies is convinced that had AW found happiness in his first marriage, he would have “walked far less and written nothing”. As it was, his trips to  the fells became a weekly pilgrimage and he eventually took a pay cut to move to Kendal in 1941. Eleven years later, he started writing his Pictorial Guides as a “love letter” to the landscape that held him in such rapture.

                            That AW sought solace among the summits is abundantly obvious throughout his books. He describes finding “a balm for jangled nerves in the silence and solitude of the peaks” and of “man’s search for beauty, growing keener as so much in the world grows uglier”.

                            An intensely private man, he disliked crowds and disapproved of group excursions as evidenced in his mournful description of the popular route up the Old Man of Coniston: “This is the way the crowds go: the day trippers, the courting couples, babies and grandmothers, the lot. On this stony parade, fancy handbags and painted toenails are as likely to be seen as rucksacks and boots.”  This is accompanied by a sketch of a lone walker looking to the fells while a crowd stares in the opposite direction, trying to spot Blackpool Tower.

                            By his own admission, Wainwright was a shy child who grew up to be anti-social, but the popular perception of an old curmudgeon is a little unfair. Bonhomie toward like-minded explorers runs right through his writing and his dry humour is everywhere.

                            In a personal note at the conclusion of his final Pictorial Guide, “The Western Fells”, AW lists his six best Lakeland mountains as “Scafell Pike, Bowfell, Pillar, Great Gable, Blencathra and Crinkle Crags”, then quickly qualifies the list, explaining, “These are not necessarily the six fells I like the best. It grieves me to have to omit Haystacks (most of all)”.

                            Haystacks is not technically a mountain, being just short of the requisite 2000 ft, and AW is being objective in omitting it on these grounds; but this relatively diminutive hill captured his heart more than any other. He describes it as standing “unabashed and unashamed amid a circle of higher fells, like a shaggy terrier in the company of foxhounds”… “For a man trying to get a persistent worry out of his mind, the top of Haystacks is a wonderful cure.”

                            Haystacks from Fleetwith Pike
                            Haystacks from Fleetwith Pike

                            Innominate Tarn
                            Innominate Tarn

                            The “persistent worry” of his home life continued until, in his own words, “my wife left me, took the dog and I never saw her again”. AW eventually found matrimonial happiness when he married an old friend, Betty McNally. She became not only his spouse but his walking companion. After his death in 1991, Betty carried out AW’s long-held wish and scattered his ashes by Innominate Tarn on top of his beloved Haystacks.

                            Haystacks and Fleetwith Pike

                            It’s been years since I climbed Haystacks and when I did, the top was shrouded in mist. It’s high time I return. I leave the house at 6:00 am for a glorious drive that runs the full lengths of Windermere, Rydal Water, Grasmere, Thirlmere and Derwent Water. From the high level drama of the Honister Pass, I descend to Gatesgarth with Buttermere stretched out before me, sparkling in the September sun.

                            I park the car and follow the stream through the farmyard and out toward High Crag, towering ahead. To my left, Fleetwith Edge soars up over Low and High Raven Crags to the top of Fleetwith Pike. This is my intended descent. It looks a little daunting from below, but the views will be outstanding. Between these two loftier neighbours lies Haystacks, a dwarf in comparison but no grassy hillock, its craggy rock-face hints at the interest on top.

                            I must have slept at an odd angle as I have a stiff neck which the drive has turned into a dull headache. Wainwright famously declared, “one can forget even a raging toothache on Haystacks”, so I’m sure it won’t bother me for long, but as I round a little coppice of trees, I find a sealed tray of paracetamol in the path. I don’t really believe in fate but can’t deny the serendipity and it feeds a strange feeling that I’m somehow supposed to be here today.

                            Buttermere and High Snockrigg
                            Buttermere and High Snockrigg

                            I start the climb up to Scarth Gap between Haystacks and High Crag, pausing occasionally to cast an eye back  over Buttermere and Crummock Water. On reaching Scarth Gap, I’m greeted with fine views over Ennerdale to two of Lakeland’s heavyweights, Pillar and Great Gable. Pillar’s precipitous northern slopes are bathed in green shadow, sheer and formidable. I try to trace the High Level Traverse between the crags to the magnificent column of Pillar Rock, from which the mountain takes its name. I lose the line of the path (apparently it’s not much easier to follow when you’re on it).

                            Pillar from Scarth Gap
                            Pillar from Scarth Gap

                            A cloud floats across the face of Gable, a huge dark turret rising from the valley head. Over Buttermere, the bulky mass of Grassmoor dominates, while here, across the saddle, the path climbs steeply to the rocky heights of High Crag. These are the “foxhounds” in whose company the “shaggy terrier” behind me stands “unabashed and unashamed”. I turn around and continue the climb to discover why.

                            Great Gable at the head of Ennerdale
                            Great Gable at the head of Ennerdale

                            The question is quickly answered as the ascent turns into a scramble; nothing technically difficult, but challenging enough to establish this as mountain terrain, good and proper, and the rival of any of its neighbours. On reaching the parapet, Haystacks’ treasures are revealed in full – a heather-clad castle of rocky towers and tiny tarns, leading eyes and feet in a merry dance of intrigue. Two excrescences of stone vie for the distinction of summit, although the honour is usually bestowed on the farther one, which boasts a cairn as its crown.

                            Summit cairn, Haystacks
                            Summit cairn, Haystacks

                            Cloud shadows dapple the flanks of High Crag as I look back across a small blue pond that glistens like an overture to the watery expanse of Buttermere beyond. I’m almost entirely alone, but for two distant figures perched precariously atop the turret of Big Stack, framed against the plunging crags of Fleetwith Pike. Everywhere I turn is magical and somehow otherworldly. Haystacks has all the rugged drama of its neighbours but here, in place of a desolate wilderness of boulder, is a wild beauty and a pervading sense of tranquillity.

                            Walker perched on Big Stack with Fleetwith Pike behind
                            Walkers perched on Big Stack with Fleetwith Pike behind

                            High Stile over Haystacks summit tarn
                            High Stile over Haystacks summit tarn

                            High Stile over summit cairn, Haystacks
                            High Stile over a summit tarn on Haystacks

                            Buttermere from Haystacks summit cairn
                            Buttermere from Haystacks summit cairn

                            I cross a depression and clamber to the true summit for another breathtaking panorama; then meander down through the heather, where herdwicks graze happily, to the peaceful shore of Innominate Tarn. AW’s wish to be scattered here is expressed more than once in his writings, but never as fully and eloquently as in Memoirs of a Fellwanderer, where he says this:

                            “All I ask for, at the end, is a last long resting place by the side of Innominate Tarn, on Haystacks, where the water gently laps the gravelly shore and the heather blooms and Pillar and Gable keep unfailing watch. A quiet place, a lonely place.

                            “I shall go to it, for the last time, and be carried – someone who knew me in life will take me and empty me out of a little box and leave me there alone. And if you, dear reader, should get a bit of grit in your boot as you are crossing Haystacks in the years to come, please treat it with respect. It might be me”.

                            Innominate Tarn
                            Innominate Tarn

                            Herdwick grazing among the heather
                            Herdwick grazing among the heather

                            I’m transfixed by the gently rippling waters and could easily linger all day. AW was not a religious man. He knew heaven was right here and to mingle with this soil and feed the heather was his hope for an afterlife. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…

                            Innominate Tarn
                            Innominate Tarn

                            To Wainwright, true music was here – in birdsong, or the tinkling of a mountain stream, or the sound of the wind among the peaks. I can’t argue with that. It’s perfect.

                            Innominate Tarn
                            Innominate Tarn with Gable keeping watch

                            Eventually, I wrestle myself away and follow the path as it wends down through some remarkable rock scenery to Dubs Bottom, from where I start the ascent of Fleetwith Pike.

                            Rock scenery on route to Dubs Bottom
                            Rock scenery on route to Dubs Bottom

                            Rock scenery on route to Dubs Bottom
                            Rock scenery on route to Dubs Bottom

                            The contrast could not be more striking. The intoxicating spell of a natural Shangri-La is broken by the harsh scars of industry in the spoil heaps and engineered gullies of Dubs quarry. From here, the path follows the line of an old works tramway to the head of Honister Crag, known as Black Star. Wainwright describes Black Star as “a place without beauty. A place to daunt they eye and creep the flesh”. The crag itself is not in view, but on the horizon a spoil heap rises, battleship grey, like a dark and sinister tower. If Haystacks was a fairy tale fortress, the vision ahead is the Castle of the Dolorous Guard, straight from the page of Arthurian legend. “Dub” is a Celtic word for black and right on cue, the sky darkens. It’s enough to send a slight shiver down the spine.

                            It would be remiss to imply the old quarry workings are a lamentable eyesore, however. Industrial heritage holds its own fascination, especially as it is slowly reclaimed by nature. AW understood that Lakeland isn’t a true wilderness. The hand of man is everywhere, from the intricate pattern of dry stone walls enclosing lush green grazing pastures in the valley bottoms to the shafts and tunnels of old mines that pierce the fell sides. As he put it (in describing Honister), “there is no beauty in despoliation and devastation but there can be dramatic effect and interest and so it is here”.

                            But the desolate outcrop of Black Star is not my destination and I turn left after Dubs Hut (maintained as a bothy by the Mountain Bothies Association) and climb beside a slate-filled gully to two spoil heaps where I pick up a path left, which meanders over open moorland to the summit of Fleetwith Pike. Here, one of the finest views in Lakeland awaits, looking straight down the valley over Buttermere and Crummock Water with distant Loweswater curving off to the left.

                            Buttermere from Fleetwith summit
                            Buttermere from Fleetwith summit

                            I sit and stare at this majestic scene as I eat my lunch, then begin the plunging descent of Fleetwith Edge. It’s not nearly as daunting as it appeared from below. There are some steep rock steps to negotiate and some minor scrambling, but nothing too difficult if due care is taken. The path follows well chosen zigzags and is impossible to rush, not only because you need to watch your footing, but also because it’s absolutely necessary to pause frequently and marvel at the improving vista.

                            Buttermere from Fleetwith Edge
                            Buttermere from Fleetwith Edge

                            Descending Fleetwith Edge
                            Descending Fleetwith Edge

                            At the bottom, I join the road and I’m suddenly struck by the hope that my gaitors have done their job. What if I find a bit of grit in my boot? I can’t leave AW in the car park, he hated cars.

                            I look back and notice the white wooden cross low on the fell side. This marks the spot where Fanny Mercer, a servant girl from Rugby, fell from Fleetwith Edge in September 1887 (130 years ago, this month). Her simple memorial is a sobering reminder that the fells can be treacherous as well as beautiful. It’s heartbreaking to think one so young was robbed of her life on what should have been a joyful excursion.

                            Fanny Mercer's cross
                            Fanny Mercer’s cross

                            Tragic accidents occur daily, some of much greater magnitude than the sad story of a servant girl from over a hundred years ago. And yet this simple cross remains affecting because there’s no objective yardstick for pain. That whole communities are devastated by fire, flood, disease or famine doesn’t negate the suffering of someone bruised by a failed relationship or grieving the loss of a loved one. We all have our crosses to bear, however big or small, but ironically, it’s often hardship that sharpens our senses to the beauty in the world. The most affecting songs are rooted in heartbreak and it was perhaps the pain of a loveless marriage that led Wainwright to find hope, inspiration and validation among these hills. I hope Fanny experienced a little of that wonder too, before her life was cut so abruptly short.

                            “The fleeting hour of life of those who love the hills is quickly spent, but the hills are eternal. Always there will be the lonely ridge, the dancing beck, the silent forest; always there will be the exhilaration of the summits. These are for the seeking, and those who seek and find while there is still time will be blessed both in mind and body” – A Wainwright.


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                              Ghosts of Canadian Airmen

                              Wetherlam, Swirl How & Great Carrs via Steel Edge

                              An Andy Goldsworthy sheepfold and the wreck of a wartime bomber bookend a thought-provoking walk over the Coniston fells, ascending Wetherlam by a route that evaded Wainwright.

                              Sheep Folds

                              Good art transforms a space. It introduces something new, often forged from foreign materials like canvas, paint, bronze or stone and worked into a form that redefines and enriches its setting. It can bring the outdoors in, or life to a sterile cityscape.

                              But placing artworks in natural settings can be problematic. The Countryside Code compels us to leave no trace of our presence, so the notion of introducing something man-made is counter-intuitive. Even given an artist’s skill in complementing their surroundings, it seems somehow arrogant to assume we can improve on nature.

                              And yet we do this all the time. Agriculture and horticulture are both attempts to instil an artificial order on the natural world, editing out the bits we don’t want and cultivating the bits we do. Why should a well-tended flower bed be somehow less of an aberration than a sculpture made from concrete and steel? Perhaps because the garden showcases our stewardship of nature while the sculpture is an attempt to impose something alien upon it. A wheat field and a quarry are both examples of harvesting natural resources, yet one appeals to our sense of aesthetics while the other offends it. For all their artifice, the garden and the wheat field are part of nature; born of the wild, their order is ephemeral – if left untended, they will quickly revert.

                              We may embrace art in the landscape, but we often find it less controversial when in the ordered environment of a garden or sculpture park; or perhaps, like Gormley’s figures on Formby beach, where we expect human activity.

                              Placing artworks in wilder settings takes a special skill and sensitivity. It’s these qualities that have enabled Andy Goldsworthy to succeed. Goldsworthy seldom imposes foreign objects on the landscape. Instead he works with materials that are already there, like pebbles, petals, twigs and ice. His sculptures are designed to be washed away by waves, melted by sunlight, scattered by the wind. He simply reorganises parts of the environment so they assume a fleeting new identity then lets the natural order reassert itself. Usually, the only enduring evidence is photographic.

                              Some of his works persist a little longer however. In 1987, he was commissioned by Grizedale Forest to produce “Taking a wall for a walk”, a dry-stone wall that snakes in and out of the trees as if the pull of nature had compelled it to abandon its straight, utilitarian function and revert to a more organic form.

                              Andy Goldsworthy Touchstone Fold, Tilberthwaite
                              Andy Goldsworthy Touchstone Fold, Tilberthwaite

                              Goldsworthy’s initial thought was to source the stone from a quarry but as he started to work with wallers he learned that, where possible, they try to reuse existing stones. The significance of this was not lost on Andy, “Originally I felt that I shouldn’t even touch a mossy old wall, but then this idea of an old wall becoming a new one is very important to the nature of the way walls are made… What looks like randomly placed stone has been selected, touched, worked, and when one waller touches a stone worked by another waller he knows that. There’s a wonderful connection there.”

                              Again, it was intended that slowly the work should be reclaimed by nature – clad in moss, dislodged by wind, toppled by the spreading roots of trees – until it returned to the tumble-down disarray in which it started. Ironically, its popularity is such that it has been repaired several times.

                              1996 was The Year of The Visual Arts and Goldsworthy was commissioned to create an ambitious series of works in Cumbria. His proposal was to rebuild a large number of old sheepfolds turning each into a sculpture or using it to enclose a sculpture.

                              Goldsworthy Sheepfold, Tilberthwaite
                              Goldsworthy Sheepfold, Tilberthwaite

                              In some cases, the only evidence of the original sheepfold was its mark on an old map, but by the end of the project in 2003, Goldsworthy and his team had restored and transformed nearly fifty of them. Some enclose perfectly formed stone cones; others surround boulders carefully selected for their shape and form.

                              Before the emergence of the railways Cumbria was a major highway for the movement of sheep and cattle from Scotland to Yorkshire and Lancashire. Using old maps, Goldsworthy carefully traced these old “drove” routes and constructed sixteen sheepfolds as way markers, temporarily enhancing each in turn with a small red sandstone arch that he transported all along this ancient thoroughfare, assembling and dismantling it at every stage.

                              Elsewhere Goldsworthy worked in other features that define the landscape. A striking example is the large square Touchstone fold at Tilberthwaite.  The four stone walls are inset with rectangles of local slate. Each rectangle encloses a circle. The slates in each circle are set at a unique angle, so each deflects light differently and collectively they suggest the cycles of the sun and the seasons.

                              Andy Goldsworthy Sheepfold, Tilberthwaite
                              Andy Goldsworthy Sheepfold, Tilberthwaite

                              Goldsworthy has a fascination with slate and its inherent layering. He describes it as “an extraordinary book of stone… as you lift one piece off another, you’re looking back in time really”.

                              As an artwork, The Touchstone Fold possesses the perfect geometric beauty of a Barbara Hepworth, while the way the sloping slate plays with sunlight makes your eyes dance in the way a Bridget Riley painting does. But Goldsworthy’s work has an even stronger sense of place. Tilberthwaite and Wetherlam (the mountain above) have been quarried for slate for centuries. In Thomas West’s 1779 Guide to The Lakes, he wrote of the Coniston houses, “all are neatly covered with blue slate, the product of the mountains”. Goldsworthy conceived his sheepfolds as a monument to agriculture, but The Touchstone Fold is much more than that. It is monument to the industry wrought from these slopes; indeed; a monument to the mountain itself.

                              Touchstone Fold. Tilberthwaite
                              Touchstone Fold. Tilberthwaite

                              Steel Edge

                              Steps lead up from the parking area opposite the sheepfold to a path that skirts the south-eastern bank of Tilberthwaite Gill. The first thing you encounter is a disused quarry. It’s easy to imagine quarries as ugly grey scars, but here rivers of colour run through the mineral rich rock; veins of red, yellow, green, blue and purple marbling its milky face.

                              Disused quarry, Tilberthwaite
                              Disused quarry, Tilberthwaite

                              From Elizabethan times, deep levels were driven into the sides of Tilberthwaite Gill to extract copper. Cheaper imports eventually killed the domestic industry, but the Victorians, who had just begun to revere the Lakeland landscape as a place of beauty, re-purposed the remaining wooden bridges as platforms for viewing the waterfalls. Along the path, the sound of the falls is ever present but sightings are confined to an occasional sparkle through the foliage.

                              The path crosses the head of the gill and fords Crook Beck. A little further along I come to a wooden footbridge. Crossing here would join the route that leads over Birk Fell to Wetherlam Edge. This is the ascent that Wainwright describes from Tilberthwaite, but I’m going to leave that for the way down. Up to my left lies a route that evaded Wainwright – the short, steep ridge of Steel Edge.

                              Steel Edge is named on the OS map but there is no indication of a path. A sketchy semblance of one does exist, however, and climbs beside an old mine level to the crest of the ridge.

                              Here rocky outcrops give way to a grass ramp. The ground drops steeply on either side but the back is broad, so doesn’t feel overly exposed. It’s a glorious May morning and the wintry landscapes of past months have transformed into a palette of new growth: the olive and umber of the lower fell side giving the way to the vibrant green of the lowland fields, dappled with darker clusters of forest as they roll east to Coniston Water. To the north, beneath a clear blue sky, blankets of cloud smother the hill tops like snow.

                              View from Steel Edge
                              View from Steel Edge

                              Steel Edge, Wetherlam
                              Steel Edge, Wetherlam

                              After a short while, the grassy slope terminates in a tower of rock and an easy but exhilarating scramble ensues. I climb through a gully of white stone, streaked with rust and patterned with intricate black lines like a Jackson Pollock painting. A rudimentary lesson in local geology at Coniston’s Ruskin museum suggests this might be Paddy End rhyolite, a glassy rock formed when fine particles of ash fused together in the intense cauldron of volcanic eruption some 450 million years ago.

                              Rhyolite, Steel Edge
                              Rhyolite, Steel Edge

                              Steel Edge delivers me to the largest of three tarns that skirt the Lad Stones route up from Coniston. I turn right to cover the remaining ground to the summit, pausing more than once to admire the magnificent views across Levers Water to The Old Man. On reaching the top, a jaw-dropping vista opens over Great Langdale to the Pike O’ Stickle. Wetherlam Edge drops away to Tilberthwaite below, but the day is young and I’m not done with the peaks just yet. I decide to press on over Swirl How to Great Carrs in search of a mountain top memorial to a tragic misjudgement.

                              Tarn at the top of Steel Edge
                              Tarn at the top of Steel Edge

                              Pike O'Stickle from Wetherlam
                              Pike O’Stickle from Wetherlam

                              LL505 S for Sugar

                              At 02:05 pm on October 22nd, 1944, Halifax bomber LL505, named “S for Sugar”, left RAF Topcliffe in Yorkshire on a navigational exercise. With the exception of one Scotsman, the crew were all Canadian. At 33 years old, navigator Francis Bell was by some stretch the eldest. Pilot John Johnson was 27 and the rest were aged between 19 and 21. By 6pm they had become disoriented in fog. Topcliffe dispatched a Mosquito, equipped with the latest night navigation gear, to guide the bomber home, but unaware of its proximity, Johnson took a fateful gamble. He decided to descend so Bell could get a visual fix on the ground. The Mosquito arrived just in time to see “S for Sugar” crash into the top of Great Carrs.

                              Cross for the Crashed Bomber
                              Cross for the Crashed Bomber

                              Locals rallied to reach survivors. It was an effort that would lead in time to the formation of Coniston Mountain Rescue Team. Sadly, on this occasion it ended in failure – all the crew had been killed.

                              The RAF posted sentries to guard the wreck until the munitions could be recovered. It was impractical to remove the plane itself, so it was broken into pieces and pushed down the steep cliff into Broad Slack where bits of it remain. Some items have since been salvaged and one of the Merlin engines is now on display at the museum in Coniston.

                              The undercarriage still lies on top of the mountain where a large cairn has been constructed and topped with a wooden cross as a memorial. A stone plaque bears the names the dead.

                              LL2505 Memorial, Great Carrs
                              LL2505 Memorial, Great Carrs

                              Memorial to the Crew, Great Carrs
                              Memorial to the Crew

                              I descend to Levers Hawse and climb the steep path of the Prison Band to Swirl How. From here a sickle shaped ridge curves round to the right over the plunging crags of Broad Slack to the top of Great Carrs. A little shy of the summit, the wreckage comes into view.

                              The cross stands proud against a dramatic skyline of Sca Fell and Scafell Pike. As I approach, a patch of red catches my eye. People have laid wreaths of poppies and placed little wooden crosses in amongst the stones. Some of the crosses have words scratched into them – people’s personal messages to their own departed loved ones: “Pete – gone but not forgotten”, “Dad, love Mick”. Others have photographs attached. It’s incredibly moving. I read the names and tender ages of the airmen and wonder if their families know this simple mountain memorial has become a shrine where strangers come to share their loss.

                              Mountain Top Memorial, Great Carrs
                              Mountain Top Memorial

                              Haunted

                              John “Jack” Johnson’s widow probably did, thanks to a curious tale involving a retired electrical engineer from Bath. Ken Hill was described as “level headed” and not hitherto someone likely to have given much truck to the supernatural, but after visiting the Great Carrs memorial and pocketing a small fragment of metal as a memento, he became convinced he was being stalked by the ghost of the dead pilot.

                              On the journey home, Ken felt a distinct presence in the car with him. Over time, the impression faded. Then on the day the Merlin engine was recovered from the fell side, Ken’s bedside radio started switching itself on and off at random. Hill was convinced that it was Johnson making his presence felt. Later the airman appeared, clear as day, leaving Ken with the conviction he was supposed to contact the pilot’s family. It wasn’t an easy task but after some years of trying, Hill finally tracked down Johnson’s widow, Nita, in Canada.

                              What Nita made of it, I don’t know. But whether or not you believe in the supernatural, love and loss are the deepest and rawest of human emotions and here, beside this hill top shrine, the strength of feeling is palpable.

                              Monuments

                              As I retrace my steps over Swirl How and Wetherlam the sun catches the slopes of Bow Fell and the Langdale Pikes, bathing them in a haunting light, and I think (with apologies to Rupert Brook) that if there must be a corner of a foreign fell that is forever Canada, there can be no finer spot.

                              Bow Fell from Swirl How
                              Bow Fell from Swirl How

                              Levers Water from Swirl Hawse
                              Levers Water from Swirl Hawse

                              Like many scrambles, Wetherlam Edge is probably easier to ascend than descend. I spend time weighing options, lowering myself gingerly down rock steps and scouting around for the path. Things improve as I near Birk Fell from where an obvious route leads down to Dry Cove Bottom (named with irony) and along the near side of Tilberthwaite Gill.

                              Back at the start, the shifting sun has affected a subtle transformation in the sheepfold, lighting slates that lay in shadow before. I recall Goldsworthy’s words about looking back in time – I’ve been doing that all day. It’s been a poignant, thought-provoking journey, punctuated by two monuments: one to a way of life; one to life extinguished; and both inextricably bound to the mountain.

                              For a route map and directions for this ascent and descent of Wetherlam, visit Walk Lakes. Please note, these directions do not include the detour over Swirl How to Great Carrs.


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