Tag Archives: Fell walk

Fell Walk, General, Natural History, Nature

A Big Day in the North

April 28, 2019 George Kitching 11 Comments

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…

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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”.

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.

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…

Sympathy For The Devil

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/

Fell Walk, General, Nature

Fire and Water

February 23, 2019 George Kitching 15 Comments

Sunset Over Morecambe Bay, In Snow

Snow covered Coniston Fells beckon, but a computer glitch and an ill-fated Christmas shopping trip, worthy of Father Ted, rob me of a day on their slopes. As a consolation, I climb Hampsfell to watch the sun set over Morecambe Bay. It turns into one of the most magical fell walks I’ve ever experienced.

December 9th, 2017 and the snow was falling, clothing the peaks in an alluring blanket of white. From my kitchen window, I can see Dow Crag, and in winter, when the trees are stripped of leaves, I can also make out a little of the Old Man of Coniston’s shoulder. By mid-afternoon they were looking positively Alpine, promising all kinds of winter adventure. It was too late to get out today, but Tuesday would be my birthday, and with uncharacteristic foresight, I’d booked the day off work. I checked the Met Office mountain forecast: sunshine and excellent visibility; and with only two days to go, there was just a chance it might be right.

Sheep at the foot of Hampsfell — Across the fields

I was buoyant. Borderline ecstatic. And then it happened. Or at least it didn’t. Sandy switched on her laptop, and nothing responded. Zilch, nada, not a flicker. I’m unusual in being a software developer who hates computers. It’s nothing personal, I just spend so much of my day immersed in them, I try to avoid them in my spare time. I fumbled for an excuse, but it wasn’t forthcoming, and Sandy was panicking, so I felt compelled to help.

My wife is a freelance journalist and animal photographer. She had two important photoshoots to process in the coming week, and her laptop is a vital tool. Luckily it was still under guarantee, so I got out my phone and looked up the nearest Apple Dealer (I know nothing about hardware).

“There’s one in Lancaster”, I announced triumphantly. “They can book you in on Tuesday.”

“But I’m at the Westmorland Gazette on Tuesday”, she said, far from consoled. “We’re on a deadline. I’m busy all this week”. Then she added, “Don’t you have the day off on Tuesday?”

My heart sank faster than a Sunderland supporter’s on the first day of the season; or Sue Lawley’s when Wainwright told her he didn’t much like music, at the start of half an hour of air time she was supposed to fill with his choice of Desert Island Discs.

“There are some nice shops in Lancaster”, Sandy offered brightly. “You could do some Christmas shopping”.

It was supposed to be a positive suggestion, but the very thought filled me with dread. I have form, you see. Once in Newcastle, with a few hours to kill, I tried a spot of seasonal gift hunting, unsupervised, but it turns out I’m terrible at it. I just wondered around John Lewis like an automaton, unable to find the way out. When I finally did, it led straight into Fenwicks and the nightmare started again. It was like an episode of Father Ted, except there wasn’t a party of priests in the lingerie department that I could follow. (I know this because I looked). When eventually I escaped into fresh air outside the Grainger Market, I seriously considered buying everyone sausages.

Tuesday arrives, and The Apple Dealer can’t see me until 11:30, so with that and the drive, and the fruitless Christmas shopping, and wandering around Sainsbury’s like an automaton, I don’t get home until 2:30pm. The sky is an unbroken expanse of blue, and the snow-capped Coniston Fells in the distance look magnificent. But they’re half an hour away—by the time I get there, there’ll only be about an hour of daylight left.

Determined to salvage something from the remains of the day, I wonder about Hampsfell. Hampsfell is a small hill that separates Cartmel and Grange. A tiddler compared to the Coniston Fells, but it punches above its weight with its rare limestone pavements and panoramic views of both the Lakeland fells and Morecambe Bay. Wainwright suggests it might appeal to the semi-retired fellwalker: “It is a hill small and unpretentious yet endowed with an air of freedom and space that will recall happy days on greater heights. It is a place for looking northwest, indulging memories, and dreaming.”

I’d be on the summit in time to watch the sun set. Sunset over the bay, on a beautiful snowy day, from a summit made for dreaming—that has to be something special.

I layer up, pull on my boots, grab gloves, hat, headtorch and microspikes and set off. The magic starts almost immediately I step outside the front door. The snow is little more than a dusting of icing sugar on the surrounding fields, but it’s enough to turn the landscape into a Christmas card. A robin hops about the hedgerow and the spire of Field Broughton church rises from a hollow across the meadows to complete the scene.

I wander up narrow country lanes and on to a bridleway, then a follow a path across a field to a stand of trees above. Sheep graze on scattered patches of exposed grass, their shaggy fleeces like mounds of driven snow. As I climb higher through Hampsfield allotment, the low orange sun blazes like a fireball through a lattice of branch and twig, a giant bonfire amid the deepening white blanket. Galloways roam the open fell side, their coats a swatch of seasonal colour: black, red, yellow, and cream, matching the silhouettes of the naked trees, the autumn bracken and the winter grass. As I approach the summit, something is happening across the valley…

On top of Hampsfell stands the Hospice, a squat stone tower with an open door and an open fireplace; a gift to travellers from the pastor of Cartmel in 1846, and a testament of thanks to beauty here experienced here daily. As Wainwright astutely observes, “Outside, over the doorway, is an inscription that will be Greek to most visitors.” Translated from the Greek (for Greek it is), the inscription, “rhododactylos eos”, means “the rosy fingered dawn”. Her cousin, the rosy fingered dusk, is at play now.

North-west over Cartmel valley, beyond a brown swathe of winter woodland, the Coniston Fells rise like a frozen tundra, artic blue in the dimming light; but they are transforming before my eyes—awaking, warming as if softly stage-lit in anticipation of an imminent first act—their chiselled contours now reflect a warm pink glow. Behind them, the sky is a wan, ethereal yellow, sparsely streaked with wisps of mauve.

As I turn south and climb between snow softened escarpments to the limestone-paved plateau, black skeletal branches of stunted, windblown hawthorn trees bow in unison toward the Hospice, a dark tower before a horizon of deepening orange.

In the short distance to the tower, the colours shift and blend again as the sky overhead darkens. To the east, over the Kent Estuary, Arnside Knott is little more than a soft Prussian blue suggestion below a strip of sky, pink as oyster shells. The reflective snow bestows a strange ambience. The stone fence posts that guard the Hospice are black shadowy sentinels, chained together to repel the shaggy cows that roam like ancient bison.

This is a landscape so familiar yet altogether new. It’s as if I’ve crossed into a parallel universe—somewhere I may have glimpsed on the cover of a 1970’s prog rock album. Folk tales of a faery kingdom that the unwary traveler may pass into and return a haunted, altered man seem suddenly less fantastical.

Yet, the real drama is happening to the west, where the orange sky intensifies over Bardsea and Barrow. In the sea beyond the dark peninsula, I can just make out tall thin poles, little more than fine grey pencil lines. Using the zoom on my camera, I discern the blades of the wind turbines. This is the offshore wind farm, Britain’s largest. Or at least it is in the parallel world I’m used to. Here, with imagination uninhibited, they are an encroaching army of Martian fighting machines from H G Wells’ War of the Worlds. And they must have opened fire, because all of a sudden the sky and water alike burst into flame.

In between, a low bank of cloud, the thick smoke of the conflagration, engulfs the peninsula, forming a soft grey barrier between the incandescent sky and its mirror image in the waters. All that’s left of the land beyond the Leven estuary is a thin black strip of shoreline. And before my eyes, a new civilisation emerges. The formless cloud bank resolves into an acropolis of colossal towers, slate grey but licked with yellow, still fresh from the furnace that rages above and below.

Beyond the Hospice, the snow covered limestone gives way to snow covered scrub. I climb a stile over a dry stone wall and follow a white path lined with a Mexican wave of wind-bowed hawthorns. The south eastern horizon is salmon pink, below quilted cloud the colour of Herdwick shearlings. Copper rivulets snake across dark sands to reach the silver sea beyond.

Slowly, the blaze in the west softens to amber afterglow and becomes a slender strip of pale gold beneath a charcoal sky. The cloud city levitates and starts to disperse, and beneath are pin pricks of light, like tiny candles, from the miniature human conurbations of Barrow, Bardsea, Dalton and Ulverston.

I’ve been reading the memoirs of Flookburgh fisherman, Jack Manning. He knew these patterns of lights like the back of his hand. They were crucial landmarks when out on the sands, on horse or tractor, scooping shrimp or cockle in the dead of night before the tide’s return.

As I watch the ever changing light show from the subsidiary summit of Fell End, I’m aware of little puffs of steam rising in the dark. I hear a soft footfall and a snort, and I realise I’m not alone. As my eyes adjust, I discern the shapes of sheep grazing quietly on the slope below.

The snow is so reflective I leave my head torch in my rucksack. I return to the wall and find the stile has vanished. I’m momentarily perplexed, but when I retrieve the torch and switch it on, the stile materialises right in front of me. It must be darker than I thought.

And it’s growing darker by the minute; the torch beam accentuates the gloom, but I can no longer see without it. I pass the Hospice and begin the descent back to Hampsfield Allotment.

Suddenly, I notice something strange in the darkness up ahead. Two little points of light hover above the path. I can’t think what they could be. I’m not given to superstition but with my imagination so stoked it would be easy to start believing in the supernatural. They look like disembodied eyes and they hold their position at around head height. Try as I might to find a terrestrial explanation, none presents itself.

When I’m no more than a few yards away, I hear the breathing and see the vapour from the invisible nostrils. Slowly her outline materialises. A big Galloway cow, black as the night. She’s staring intently at me, probably wondering what the approaching ball of light might be. When she realises it’s only me, she loses interest, but doesn’t relinquish the path. I give her wide berth, more from respect than fear. Somehow, I sense no tension here. Nothing threatens the peace of this enchanted landscape on this frozen winter evening.

Just over half an hour later, I turn they key in my front door. I’m back where I started three hours earlier, yet in some intangible sense, I’m still half a world away.

Art, Fell Walk, General, History

Mountains and Margarine

January 20, 2019 George Kitching 20 Comments

Bonington, Beatrix, Kurt & the Borrowdale Caveman

Castle Crag in autumnal splendour and the museums of Keswick and Ambleside spark a train of thought about four Lakeland luminaries and the landscape that inspired them.

Man vs Mountain

The curator pops her head around the corner to say she’ll be shutting up the till in a couple of minutes—if there’s anything I want from the shop. She glances at the screen and adds, “you’ve got time to see it through to the end”. Then she smiles, and I wonder if she can tell that I’m fighting back tears.

I dare say I’m not the first. I’m in Keswick museum, at the Man vs Mountain exhibition, watching a short film about Chris Bonington. Chris is recalling how he reached the summit of Everest for the first time at the age of fifty. The last difficult part of the climb is the Hillary Step. As Chris started up it, he began to doubt whether he still had the upper body strength required. All of a sudden, he sensed his old climbing buddy, Doug Scott beside him, offering words of encouragement and spurring him on. Whilst he was fully aware this was something his mind was constructing to help him dig deep, it worked: he found the resolve and his muscles didn’t fail.

From the top of the Hillary Step onwards is relatively easy (apparently), but as Chris trod the snow in the footsteps of the others, his mind filled with memories of the friends he’d lost. Men like Ian Clough, with whom he conquered the north face of the Eiger. Their faces fill the screen, and Chris wells up as he remembers collapsing in tears on the roof of the world. You’d have to be harder than the Eiger and colder than the Hillary Step not to be moved.

Ten minutes ago, he had me crying with laughter as he read out a letter from his former employer, refusing him leave to embark on a mountaineering expedition. Chris worked for a foodstuffs manufacturer and the letter has all the hallmarks of CJ giving Reggie Perrin a dressing down. His employer concluded that this request was hardly likely to be a one-off, and repeated absences for this sort of thing would almost certainly conflict with the young Bonington‘s career as a business executive. It was time he made a choice between mountains and margarine!

For all his far-flung adventures since choosing summits over Sunshine Desserts, it’s Cumbria that Chris calls home. He has said of the Lake District, “It may not be the most beautiful place in the world, but it is as beautiful as any place in the world”. Of course, it’s Lakeland for a reason, and today, torrential rain has driven me indoors, but yesterday, the District more than lived up to such an accolade.

The Professor of Adventure

It’s autumn, “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness”, and twenty-four hours ago in Borrowdale, Keats’s words found their full expression. As I walked through the woods beside the River Derwent and climbed to the top of Castle Crag, the trees were in their majesty, robed in leaves of amber, honey, mustard and flaxen against the purple fell—a last parade of pomp before winter’s winds strip them bare. Swathes of undergrowth were fire brick and barn red. The quarry-cut faces of slate-grey escarpments thrust from the flora like stalagmites, aspiring to kiss the volatile sky—all wisps of smokey mist and darker banks of rain-cloud, punctuated with shafts of soft yellow light. Over Derwent Water, Blencathra’s crenelated ridge was pale sunlit gold.

On the way to the summit, I stopped for coffee with the ghost of another Lakeland legend. A cave above a spoil heap, on the eastern slope of Castle Crag, was home to Millican Dalton. Like Bonington, Millican made a life-changing decision to quit his job as a London insurance clerk and live free, becoming a self-styled Professor of Adventure.

Millican Dalton's Cave Entrance — Millican Dalton’s Cave Entrance

After selling his house, he overwintered in Buckinghamshire in a log cabin, but spent his summers in the Lakes, initially under canvas, but from around 1914, in this old quarry cavern. During WWII, when his Buckinghamshire home was a little too close to the Blitz, he spent the winter here too, obliged to put out his campfire at night at the behest of the blackout wardens.

In his book, Millican Dalton: a Search for Romance and Freedom, M. D. Entwistle reproduces an interview from a January 1941 edition of the Whitehaven News. It helps paint a picture of the cave as it was in Millican’s time—pots and cooking utensils, salvaged from village dumps, packed neatly in their places, and huge icicles hanging from the entrance. Dalton himself cut a dashing figure in his Tyrolean hat and home-made clothes—lightweight, functional but never quite finished. This wildman of the woods was anything but reclusive. On the contrary, he was well-known and well-liked around Keswick and would trade climbing lessons and adventures for Woodbines and copies of the Daily Herald.

Where the path swings away from the River Derwent, it forks. The left-hand prong climbs below spoil to a shallow waterlogged cavern. A little way above is Dalton’s cave, a split-level affair with a larger lower chamber and an upper room which Millican called the attic. Here was where he slept. Yesterday, I sat on a stone shelf beside his bed, which had been given a fresh mattress of bracken—maintained, it seems, by an invisible devotee. It’s easy to imagine Millican’s presence; easier still, to understand the cave’s appeal. Water dripped hypnotically from the entrance, but the interior was dry. I stayed a good while in quiet meditation, soothed by a pervasive sense of calm.

Millican Dalton's Cave — Millican Dalton’s Cave

I have a friend who is something of a modern day Millican. Like Dalton, he’s gregarious and works with people—that’s what makes him tick—but he loves the solitude of wilderness too. He has a house but only retreats within its walls for the worst of the winter. For the rest of the year he camps wild, moving his tent every two days to avoid leaving an imprint. His eyes sparkle as he describes the joy of living so close to the wildlife.

People talk about getting close to nature as an escape, but when we’re out in the landscape, it feels much more as if we’re getting closer to reality—closer to who we really are. Modern living divorces us from the natural order and can fill us with all kinds of unnatural, trivial neuroses. The landscape restores a sense of belonging, but it also triggers a survival instinct: nature does not owe us safe passage; we must keep our wits about us; we will survive or fall by our judgements. The more challenging the terrain, the more intense that feeling. Ultimately, it’s more liberating than intimidating, because nature’s threats bear no malice, they’re just part of a system that, deep down, we fully understand. Bonington and Dalton simply took it to another level.

Both men quit their regular jobs to do what inspired them. By contrast, Kurt Schwitters was forced out of his because of what inspired him. He would eventually find refuge, fresh hope and a new muse in Lakeland, but it took a circuitous route to get here.

Mier Bitte

Schwitters was born in Hanover and studied art at the Dresden Academy. In the chaos surrounding the First World War, he felt conventional modes of artistic expression were no longer relevant:

“In the war, things were in terrible turmoil. What I had learned at the academy was of no use to me and the useful new ideas were still unready…. Everything had broken down and new things had to be made out of the fragments; and this is Merz. It was like a revolution within me, not as it was, but as it should have been.” – The Collages of Kurt Schwitters, Dietrich, Cambridge University Press 1993

Merz was a term coined by Schwitters to describe his technique of building ‘psychological collages’ from fragments of found objects: bus tickets, bits of wood, wire, newspaper cuttings. The pictures attempt to understand the world by assembling something new, witty, poignant or thought-provoking from its broken and discarded pieces. Mier Bitte hangs in Kendal’s Abbot Hall Art Gallery. It takes its name from the words that appear in the top right-hand corner, a corruption of the German for “me please”. Or is it? If you look closely enough, you can almost make out the letters that have been covered up—cut from an advert for Yorkshire Premier Bitter.

Picture With Turning Wheel comprises a set of wheels that only turn clockwise—an allusion to right-wing drift in German politics that gained momentum between the wars. When the Nazis took power, Schwitters was denounced as a degenerate. He was relieved of his contract with Hanover City Council; his works were removed from public galleries and ridiculed. Kurt feared for his safety when the Gestapo summoned him for interview. He fled to Norway. His wife stayed behind to manage their properties and visited regularly at first, but eventually they became estranged.

In 1940, the German army invaded Norway, and Schwitters escaped to Britain where he was interred on the Isle of Man. The camp was home to a number of artists and writers. Schwitters was a popular figure and a mentor to young creatives, but some accounts suggest he worked tirelessly to shut out depression. His internment ended in 1941, and he moved to London, where he would become a major influence on British Pop Artists like Peter Blake and Richard Hamilton, as well as their American forerunners, Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg.

In 1942, he visited the Lake District and found a volcanic landscape that reminded him of beloved Norway. He moved to Ambleside three years later and set up a studio in an old stone barn near Elterwater. Schwitters was a Merz artist and his studios were his Merzbau: more than just workshops, they were installations, transformed into works of art in their own right, walls, columns, ceilings becoming Merz sculptures. His original Hanover Merzbau was destroyed by Allied bombing, and his second in Norway burnt down. The Elterwater barn was the only survivor.

After his death, Schwitters’ legacy languished, and for a while, he was largely overlooked. The barn fell into disrepair. Eventually the Tate Gallery and Richard Hamilton got involved and airlifted one sculptural relief, spanning an entire interior wall, to a new home in the Hatton Gallery, Newcastle.

In recent years, Schwitters’ reputation has enjoyed a renaissance. In 2011, Lakeland builder, Mike Hodgson, was commissioned to build an exact replica of the Elterwater Merzbau in the forecourt of the Royal Academy—a reminder to the artistic establishment that the arts have flourished beyond the boundary of the M25.

This morning, I visited the Armitt museum in Ambleside to see a small exhibition of Schwitters’ oil paintings. Schwitters never entirely abandoned what he learned at the Academy. He continued to produce figurative work alongside his Merz experiments, if only because these were easier to sell. This small collection comprises richly evocative pictures of Ambleside and the Lakes. Bold and expressive, the paint so thick it’s almost sculptural in its textures, these canvases take you deep into the landscape beyond the walls. This is the work of a man who understood this wild terrain: the rough fell pasture and the craggy pinnacles, the haunting light and the white rendered farm houses, the twisted wind-blown trees and the drama of brooding weather fronts. In the dramatic shadow play of late afternoon, light dimming, leaves blown in spirals by the brutal buffets of a bracing wind, a thin veil of mizzle softening focus, hard lines blur, blending building, tree, shrub, scrub and hill; in these paintings, Ambleside’s iconic Bridge House is organic, tree-like, growing from the foliage behind; the gables of a grand Grasmere residence are siblings to the crags of Silver How; and the shifting patterns of light unite lake, leaves and fell in one ephemeral sweep of green and white.

Ruskin said, “Mountains are the beginning and the end of all natural landscape”. A pulmonary edema ended Schwitter’s life at the tender age of sixty, but he died in the shadow of the Lakeland fells: they had become a happy final refuge from the chaos and turmoil he strove to capture through Merz.

In their own ways, Bonington, Dalton and Schwitters have all been champions of Lakeland, but in the adjacent room hangs the work of a woman, who may just have been the greatest champion of them all.

Mrs Heelis

The exhibition comprises a number of scientific drawings and watercolours of fungi. Painstakingly accurate, they have long served as a reference for the correct identification of species, but they are also exquisitely beautiful artworks. The artist was a woman and an amateur mycologist. The daughter of an eminent London lawyer and a socially ambitious mother, she may have seen scientific research as a way out of the rather straight-jacketed existence of a dutiful Victorian daughter—permitted a tightly circumscribed choice of activities until her mother could find a respectable match for her to marry.

Her uncle was a distinguished chemist and arranged a meeting with George Murray, the Keeper of Botany at Kew Gardens. They struck up a friendship, but Murray remained sceptical about the woman’s theories on the nature of lichens. Her uncle attempted to go over Murray’s head by arranging a meeting with the director of Kew, William Thistleton-Dyer. It was not a great success—Thistleton-Dyer was dismissive and patronising.

Undeterred, and with the help of her uncle and George Murray, the woman submitted a paper on “On the Germination of the Spores of Agaricineae” to the Linnean Society. At the time women were prohibited from attending Linnean Society meetings, so her paper was presented in her absence. By all accounts, it was well received, but the society felt it needed more work before they would agree to publish it. The changes were never made, and the paper was lost.

There is some debate as to whether this was a case of a promising young mycologist being stifled by a misogynistic establishment, or whether an amateur with a slightly inflated view of her own work’s importance simply lost heart when confronted with legitimate demands for greater scientific rigour. Perhaps the paper simply got put on the back burner when the woman found a more fruitful path to freedom.

She had enjoyed some success with her designs for greetings cards, featuring animals dressed in human clothing. In 1901, she developed the story of one such character into a book, which publisher, F. Warne, published to widespread success. Lovers of the Lakes must be thankful that the doors of the Linnean Society slid shut at the right time. If Beatrix Potter had forged a successful career as a mycologist, the Lake District might look very different today.

Beatrix used the profits from her first book, The Tale Of Peter Rabbit, to buy Hill Top farm in Near Sawrey. It became the inspiration for several of her later, equally successful stories, but it also kickstarted her interest in farming and conservation.

Much to the dismay of her mother, Potter married a humble Hawkshead solicitor, William Heelis. With William’s help, and motivated by the work of family friend and National Trust founder, Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley (once described as “the most active volcano in Europe”), Beatrix began buying and conserving other Lakeland farms, including the huge but run-down Troutbeck Park. The Heelises’ objective was to protect the land from the property developers who were quickly waking up to its commercial potential.

Beatrix’s coup-de-grace came when the vast Monk Coniston estate was put up for sale. She realised this might be the writing on the wall for the traditional Lakeland fell farms that surrounded Coniston and Hawkshead. She petitioned the National Trust to buy the land and preserve it in the national interest. They lacked the funds to do so, so she made them a deal. If they bought half the estate, she would buy the other half, and she would manage it for them until her death, at which time, she would bequeath the Trust all her land. Without her intervention, the National Park, as we know it today, might not have been possible.

As I drive out of Keswick under Skiddaw’s vaulting peaks, and journey beside the black primordial waters of Thirlmere, Grasmere, Rydal and Windermere, glinting inscrutably in the encroaching darkness, my mind is full of four Lakeland luminaries and the ancient landscape that inspired them. I may never climb Everest or live in a cave in Borrowdale. It’s unlikely I’ll be persecuted by fascists or facilitate the formation of a national park. But for many of us, the months ahead will hold their own challenges. As they loom on the horizon, some might even seem as insurmountable as Everest. To meet them head on may mean stepping far outside our comfort zones; but if I’ve learnt anything in the last two days, it’s don’t be afraid to fail; and always, choose mountains over margarine.

Fell Walk, General, Literature, Natural History

Here’s where the story ends

December 26, 2018 George Kitching 12 Comments

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.

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.

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.

“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.”

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.)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

Fell Walk, General, Literature

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

November 25, 2018 George Kitching 20 Comments

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.

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.

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.

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”.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Fell Walk, General, History, Legend

The Beauty of Buttermere

October 28, 2018 George Kitching 8 Comments

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?)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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?

Fell Walk, General, Natural History

The Deer Hunter

September 16, 2018 George Kitching 14 Comments

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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”.

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.

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.

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/

Fell Walk, General, History, Legend

This Land is Your Land

August 19, 2018 George Kitching 7 Comments

A Dragon’s Back and a Right to Roam

An away trip to the Peak District, to walk the iconic profile of Chrome Hill, provokes a rumination on the right to roam, the mass trespass of 1932, and the fact I owe my life to the Ramblers’ Association. En route, we get spooked by the Quiet Woman in Earl Sterndale and have a chance encounter with the Sundance Kid.

Revolution

In 1917, the tyranny of the Russian Tsar had fallen to the hammer and sickle in a matter of months, but in Britain, a slow-burn revolution smouldered. Every inch as rooted in class conflict and social injustice, its aims were humbler: they demanded not the overthrow of the ruling elite, but the right to roam; the right for open access to land that had once been common, but for the last four centuries had been systematically enclosed—taken from the many and given to the few. Enclosure had swept away the old feudal system, where land was worked collectively for subsistence, and created a nation of landless poor and landed gentry. The land itself had become a commodity to be owned and worked for profit. Protest songs didn’t start with Bob Dylan—in England, a sixteenth century bard penned this:

Hang the man and flog the woman
That steals the goose from off the common
But leave the greater felon loose
That steals the common from the goose.

With industrialisation, the massed ranks of rural poor flocked to the cities to work the mills, mines and factories of the industrial north. New hardships, diseases and health problems awaited. By the beginning of the twentieth century the physical and spiritual benefits of the great outdoors were widely appreciated. In increasing numbers, men and women would escape the urban sprawl at weekends to seek out clean air and green space, and increasingly, they found their way blocked. England’s green and pleasant land had become a playground for the rich elite, populated with game and shooting lodges. Commoners were not welcome.

“We ramblers, after a hard week’s work, in smokey towns and cities, go out rambling for relaxation and fresh air. And we find the finest rambling country is closed to us … Our request, or demand, for access to all peaks and uncultivated moorland is nothing unreasonable”. So spoke Benny Rothman in his own defence at Derby Assizes. Twenty-one-year-old Benny was on trial for helping organise the mass trespass of 1932: on April 24^th, over four hundred men and women left Sheffield and Manchester to walk together in protest over Kinder Scout, in what is now the Peak District. The land was owned by the Duke of Devonshire, and he deployed a band of keepers armed with clubs to forcibly deter the trespassers. A full-scale fight broke out, and the keepers were easily overwhelmed. But the judge’s sympathies lay with the landowner, and Benny was jailed, along with four of his friends.

The sentences caused outrage and fuelled popular support for the right to roam. In 1935, the Ramblers’ Association was formed to advocate for walkers’ rights at a national level and to promote the benefits of rambling to ordinary people. Their efforts eventually bore fruit: in 1951, the Peak District became England’s first National Park. It was known as the “lungs of England”. By the end of the decade, the Lake District, Snowdonia, Dartmoor, Pembrokeshire Coast, North York Moors, Yorkshire Dales, Exmoor, Northumberland and Brecon Beacons had all followed suit. It took until the year 2000, however, for the Countryside and Rights of Way Act to secure open access for the public to all uncultivated upland and downland.

Away Trip

This is on my mind for two reasons: I’m driving south on the M6 for a weekend’s walking in the Peak District with my friend Tim; and the other night, my mum mentioned that my granny and grandad met on a Ramblers’ Association walk in the Lake District. I never knew. A love of treading the Lakeland fells had evidently skipped a generation in our family, but now my mountain passion seems less like an aberration and more a resumption of an older family tradition. My granny came from the mining village of Astley, near Manchester. She was warm, outgoing, outspoken and would laugh easily and heartily. My grandad was a southerner—serious, reserved, shy and meticulous. They complimented each other perfectly, but they most likely would never have met had it not been for the Ramblers’ Association—so without the Ramblers’ Association, I wouldn’t be here.

Beyond the urban sprawl of Greater Manchester, I crawl through Glossop. Under an overcast sky in dimming light, it appears drab and austere. I give way to a pedestrian at a pelican crossing. He’s in his early twenties, shoulders hunched, belly spilling over his belt, lank, greasy hair, plastered thinly across a forehead that wears the perennial look of defeat; his T-shirt bears the moniker, “the Sundance Kid”.

As Glossop’s answer to Robert Redford recedes into the distance, something magic happens: the buildings stop, the road leads uphill past a sign for “Snake Pass”, and without warning, I’m launched out into the sublime sweep of lonely, windblown, wilderness that is the Dark Peak. I’ve made this journey many times, and the soaring rush of exhilaration that kicks in at this point never ever diminishes. I think of Benny Rothman and how hard he fought for the right to roam here.

From here on, the drive is pure joy. The stresses of the week evaporate as this dramatic landscape casts its spell. Eventually, beyond the mesmeric glint of the Ladybower reservoir, the bright lights of Sheffield appear. Soon after, I’m knocking on Tim’s door, which he opens in a pinny with a bottle of wine in hand. This is good news—he’s a great cook.

Over dinner and several glasses of wine, Tim rattles off suggestions for tomorrow’s adventures. Kinder Scout is mooted, but intriguingly, he also ponders going further afield, to the White Peak, to walk the Dragon’s Back.

I keep a careful eye on the time. Tim’s kitchen is built on a wrinkle in the space-time continuum. I’ve been caught out many times before: if you let the hands of his clock reach half past midnight, you’ll look up a couple of minutes later to find it’s half past three (which doesn’t make for the best start to a day out rambling). I sneak off to bed at twenty-nine minutes past twelve.

The Dragon’s Back

Over breakfast, the Dragon’s back idea wins out, and we set off for the Dove valley near Buxton. The Peak District is a single National Park but encapsulates two very different terrains. The northern part, which juts up against Sheffield, is the Dark Peak, a dramatic expanse of untamed moorland: savage, intimidating, unkempt, and in early spring, still looking every bit the desolate winter scrub. Huge swathes of earthen colour—bands of brown, yellow and rust—are punctuated by long escarpments and outcrops of gritstone, weathered into smooth, rounded, surreal-looking formations like piles of pebbles on a giant’s beach.

As we cross into Derbyshire and Staffordshire, the aspect changes character completely. We find ourselves amid gentle rolling hills and green pastoral valleys. This is the White Peak—the Dark Peak’s prettier, softer sibling. Yet as we crest the top of a hill and head towards Longnor, Tim directs my gaze right, to an astounding sight, quite out of keeping with its surroundings. It’s as if two colossal dinosaurs, hibernating beneath the valley floor, have awoken and thrust their arched backs up through the earth, their spines ridged with jagged plates; and due to some inscrutable ancient mystery, they have become fossilised in the process, their skins turned to grass, and their armour plate into limestone pinnacles.

These are the iconic profiles of Chrome Hill and Parkhouse Hill, known collectively as the Dragon’s Back. In 1997, writer Jeff Kent brought Chrome Hill to wider attention, when he discovered it boasts a double sunset. If viewed from Parkhouse Hill or Glutton Bridge, on or around the summer solstice, the sun appears to set, then re-emerges and sets again. In an ideal world, we’d have read Jeff’s book, and we’d be visiting on the summer solstice to observe the spectacle. As it is, we’re two months early and I won’t find out about the phenomenon until I browse Wikipedia, a few weeks later. Nevertheless, I can’t wait to get my boots on when we park in Longnor.

The long easy walk-in takes us to Hollinsclough, past its chapel, and down through fields to a stream, where the dampness of the grass sends me tumbling for an early mud bath. The going gets firmer as we gain height. After a prolonged winter, the recent rain and warm April sunshine lend a spring vitality to a day that might almost be summer, were the trees not still bereft of leaves.

We reach a brow and Chrome Hill rises before us in all its quirky, spiky magnificence. We sip coffee at its foot then start to scramble up between its craggy pinnacles, minding our step—wet limestone is nearly as slippery as wet grass.

At 1394 feet, Chrome Hill stops some way short of a mountain, but on character alone, it outranks grassy domes more than twice its height. The Hill has a mountain personality and a mountain’s power. The narrowness of its ridge emphasises the steepness of its sides, and the rolling pastures of the White Peak stretch out forever below.

On the summit, two men and a dog are gazing out over the expansive views. We’re all beaming with the sheer exuberance of the experience (especially the dog).

The descent is severe, and we worry how we’ll stay upright, but these south-east slopes have been sun-kissed for several hours, so the grass is dry and the going proves easy enough. At the bottom, the slimmer, sharper, lower ridge of Parkhouse Hill rises enticingly, but there’s no right of way shown on the map, and we’re unsure of its status. Later, we’ll learn that it has been classified as open access under the 2000 act, but it was long disputed, and I realise the right to roam is not just the story of Benny’s battle from a previous century, but still very much a living, burning, contentious issue.

Our route meanders beside meadows alive with bouncing lambs and grazing ewes. You can almost feel the surge of new life bursting from the ground, and to walk amongst it is an emotional tonic just as much as a physical one. We find a bench-like boulder beside a dusty country lane, under trees chirruping with bird song, and tuck into our grub. Tim’s local baker has supplied a pork pie of Brobdingnagian proportions, forged with a finesse that would embarrass Heston Blumenthal. Tim has also packed veritable house bricks of Yorkshire brack, smothered with butter to a depth that James Martin would readily endorse. After gorging greedily on this fine fare, Tim checks the map and starts to chuckle.

“Guess where we are”, he says.

“I’ve no idea”, I reply.

“We’re in Gluttondale”, he smirks.

The Quiet Woman

After a couple of miles, the lane leads into a village. Tim, who’s a couple of yards ahead, stops abruptly and looks up with purpose. I follow his lead and my eyes meet a pub sign that’s immediately disquieting. It takes a minute to work out why. The artwork is slightly garish, bearing the hallmark of Hammer House of Horror film poster from the 1970’s. The pub is called the Quiet Woman and bears the inscription, “soft words turneth away wrath”, beneath which is a crude painting of a woman, presumably the landlady; only, something is missing… Oh yes, it’s her head.

The sign seems to be implying that a woman should be seen and not heard, and the most effective means of achieving this is decapitation. The exterior of the building is dark-beamed, and the windows latticed. Their glass reflects the afternoon sun, rendering them utterly impenetrable. It makes the Slaughtered Lamb in American Werewolf look positively hospitable. Suddenly, eerily, it feels as if we’ve arrived in Royston Vasey. In actual fact, it’s Earl Sterndale, which, as names go, is even more intimidating.

The story behind the pub sign is every bit as dark as you would imagine. The original landlady was an incessant nag and gossip, known locally as Chattering Charteris. Her relentless mithering proved too much for her beleaguered husband, who cut off her head. Far from provoking outrage, his action won the wholehearted approval of the villagers who clubbed together to pay for her headstone.

Someone is waving at us from one of the tables on the beer terrace out front. It’s one of the guys from the summit of Chrome Hill. They seem to be enjoying themselves, but perhaps they haven’t seen the sign, and now they’re walking unknowingly into a terrible trap, like Edward Woodward in the Wicker Man. Or perhaps they’re locals, and they’re in on it. We smile wanly and hurry on in the faint hope that our gender might spare us from the village executioner.

A little further on, a woman leans over the fence of a paddock where two children and a dog are trying to corral some young lambs. She greets us warmly and we chat. It’s a delightful scene that quickly dispels the darker suspicions of moments ago. Well almost. What if it’s a buttering up exercise, a diversionary tactic to lull us into a false sense of security, while the men of the village sharpen the axes or weave the last canes into the body of the wicker man?

We take our leave and walk on briskly past the arresting pyramidal hill of High Wheeldon, through a quagmire of mud and cow muck, and back to the safer environs of Longnor, where we risk a relaxing pint in the Market Square. Or at least, I do. Tim has a Coke, because he wants to stop on the way home to introduce me to a new micro pub in Sheffield, called the Itchy Pig (or the Itchy Anus as it’s affectionately known).

Just as we’re leaving, the two guys and the dog from the Quiet Woman arrive in the square. We wave less cautiously this time, relieved to see they’re still sporting their heads.

Outside the Itchy Anus, Tim insists we sit in the car for thirteen minutes, until the clock strikes six and the parking becomes free. Well when in Yorkshire…

Inside, I order two pints of a particularly fine IPA and some chilli pork scratchings.

“They’re hot”, says the barman, looking me right in the eye. “Very hot.”

I nod and carry them back to our table where we dig in. I look around and clock the barman staring over, waiting to gauge our reaction. I smile and hope he can’t see the plumes of steam that are now pouring out of my ears, and the fact that my face has turned crimson. I have it on the good authority of a contact in the chilli trade that Heston Blumenthal, with the help of an MRI scanner and a hapless sous chef, has proved that hot chilli activates the areas of the brain associated with happiness.

So, perhaps it’s the pork scratchings, or perhaps it’s escaping execution in Earl Sterndale, or perhaps it’s the grateful recognition that men like Benny Rothman have won us the freedom to roam edifying natural phenomena like Chrome Hill, but after an inspiring journey through Staffordshire, Derbyshire and Yorkshire, I’m believe I’m grinning like a Cheshire cat.

Sources/Further Reading

The Ramblers’ Association. (No date). General History. Available at http://www.ramblers.org.uk/about-us/our-history.aspx (Accessed Aug 2018)

Eric Allison (2012). The Kinder Scout Trespass: 80 years on. The Guardian, 17 April. Available at

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/apr/17/kinder-scout-mass-trespass-anniversary (Accessed Aug 2018)

Fell Walk, General, Ghost Story, History, Legend

Reconstruction of a Fable

July 22, 2018 George Kitching 7 Comments

The Fairfield Horseshoe and the Skulls of Calgarth

In which I walk the fine mountain ridges of Fairfield Horseshoe, tell the spooky story of the Calgarth skulls, bag a free beer in Rydal, become a social pariah in Ambleside, and learn a life lesson from Laurence Fishburne.

The Skulls of Calgarth

As I drive through Troutbeck Bridge, I pass a sign for Calgarth Park, offering two-bedroom supported retirement apartments. Viewings are available. I’m sure both my age and my bank balance disqualify me (although one is depressingly nearer than the other). All the same, I’d be tempted to have a peek—the building has an interesting history, and a sinister backstory.

The house is an elegant lakeside villa—all Georgian pillars and neatly manicured lawns—overlooking Windermere. It was built by Bishop Richard Watson in 1790. In its early years, it played host to such eminent neighbours as Wordsworth, Southey and Coleridge. During the First World War, it was transformed into a hospital, and later became a children’s orthopaedic unit, specialising in TB and polio.

When Bishop Watson bought the estate, it already had a hall, but he didn’t much like the look of it. Perhaps it was the cold and austere demeanour. Perhaps he was a forerunner of Kevin McCloud’s Grand Designers and fancied something modern, handsome and hospitable. Or perhaps, he knew about the skulls.

In the sixteenth century, a humble cottage stood on the spot. It was the home of Kraster and Dorothy Cook. They weren’t rich, but they worked hard, and they ran a productive and profitable farm.

Living and working in such an idyllic location should have brought endless happiness, but there was a fly in the ointment. Their land was coveted by a rich and influential justice of the peace, named Myles Philipson. He was a greedy man. His estate was substantial, but it wasn’t enough. The Cooks had something he wanted, and it consumed him. He swore he’d acquire the land by any means.

It proved harder than he thought. Money didn’t work: the Cooks were simple, honest folk, who appreciated what they had and wanted nothing more. Philipson tried bullying, but the Cooks were strong and stood firm.

In the end, their steadfastness paid off. Philipson backed down. Indeed, it seemed he’d had a complete change of heart and deeply regretted his behaviour. To make amends, he invited them round for dinner on Christmas Eve.

Dorothy and Kraster must have felt their troubles were over, but they were rudely awakened the next morning by soldiers demanding to search their cottage—Philipson had accused them of stealing a silver goblet. It was soon found in Dorothy’s bag—precisely where the maleficent magistrate had snuck it.

The Cooks were arrested and imprisoned, awaiting trial. They must have been scared stiff, but they had faith in their own innocence and in the British justice system. Imagine their dismay when they entered the courtroom to find Philipson presiding.

Philipson declared them guilty and sentenced them to death, decreeing that all their land be signed over to him as compensation. He quickly set about demolishing their cottage and building a hall on the same spot.

From the gallows, Dorothy uttered a terrible curse: for as long as the Philipson family remained in residence, Kraster and she would haunt them night and day, and their business affairs would never prosper.

One year later, the hall was complete and the Philipsons moved in, but any celebrations were derailed when they found two skulls on the bottom stair. They had their servants throw them out and retired to bed, but they were kept awake by a terrible screaming and wailing. When they rose in the morning, the skulls were back.

Over the coming months, Myles had the skulls crushed, burned, buried and thrown in the lake. Whatever he tried failed: the infernal screams persisted, and every morning the skulls returned.

Living under such a curse quickly put paid to visitors; the family became reclusive and their business affairs suffered. In the end, Myles had to sell everything but the hall to cover his debts. He bequeathed the hall to his son, but the curse remained. Only once the Philipson family quit the hall for good, did Kraster and Dorothy lie quietly in their graves.

The Fairfield Horseshoe

Each lake has its own character: Wastwater is feral and fiercely beautiful; Coniston, tranquil; Ullswater dark and mysterious (especially when cloud envelopes the fell tops); but Windermere has grandeur. It’s a grandeur that has little to do with her flotillas of yachts or the moneyed mansions that line her eastern shore. A daunting profile dominates her northern skyline, her head cradled by a ring of high fells, a vision of strength and drama. Dressed in snow and reflected in the long mirror of the lake, the Fairfield Horseshoe is a sight to stir the blood and quicken the heart; in the spring sunshine of this May Day Bank Holiday, its slopes are gold and green, softer than in winter but every bit as inspiring.

I park in Ambleside and head up Nook Lane to Low Sweden Bridge, following a wide track that then winds its way up the lower reaches of Low Pike. A dry-stone wall meanders in from the left. The track swings right in search of a gentler ascent, but a narrow path handrails the wall, heading up over steeper ground to Low Brock Crag. This way signals greater adventure.

A short and easy scramble brings me to the crest of Low Brock Crag. Windermere commands the backward view, nestling languidly in a glacial groove—long cool and periwinkle blue.

The summit of Low Pike is further half-scramble, rising in a rocky outcrop like a bouldered earthwork, wedded to the wall, which curves away below like a castle’s outer curtain. Dropping down from this little tower, I land in its shallow moat. The ground between here and High Pike is a soggy morass. In the weeks to come, an extended heatwave will dry Lakelands’ most pervasive bogs, but for now, I have to pick my path with care.

By the time I reach the top of High Pike, the wall is broken down in places, blending ever more closely with the crag, as if born of the mountain, it aspires to revert.

After a long grassy rise, I reach Dove Crag’s summit cairn, and gaze out again over Windermere—its further reaches now visible beyond the headland, stretching out toward a white sheen of Irish Sea, blurring the distinction between earth and sky. In February, I stood on this very spot, when snow, cloud and soft light conspired to blend lake, sky and fellside in an ambient glow of pink and white. Now the soft blue haze of imminent summer inflects the lowland, and the slopes are olive green with young bracken; shafts of sun stage shadow plays across the crags ahead.

This ancient landscape of immutable rock is in a constant state of flux. Pinnacles, crevices, crags and gullies are thrown into sharp relief, then retreat into shadow; hues of red and yellow, mauve and purple streak fleetingly across the slopes, then blur and are swallowed again by dark recesses of green. It’s an animated impressionist painting of ever-shifting ephemera.

Mountains are restless chameleons. As John Berger expresses it so beautifully, in Hold Everything Dear: “There are moments of looking at a familiar mountain which are unrepeatable. A question of a particular light, an exact temperature, the wind, the season. You could live seven lives and never see the mountain quite like that again; its face is as specific as a momentary glance across the table at breakfast. A mountain stays in the same place, and can almost be considered immortal, but to those who are familiar with the mountain, it never repeats itself. It has another timescale.”

From Hart Crag and over Link Hawse to Fairfield’s rocky shoulder, the terrain grows more rugged and dramatic; precipitous crags plunge to Dovedale and Deepdale and I’m compelled to make small diversions to gain a better view.

On reaching one of Fairfield’s summit shelters, I sip coffee from a thermos and stare over at St Sunday Crag, rising like a dinosaur across Deepdale Hause. In sun, its livery is flecked with gold and purple, and streaked with stripes of exposed stone like strips of armour plate. Captured on canvas and hung in a gallery, critics would think it a stylised exaggeration, and yet the reality is more intense.

I head south, following the cairns down the western spine of the Horseshoe to the summit of Great Rigg.

Between 1955 and 1966, Alfred Wainwright published his Pictorial Guides to the Lake District, a series of seven books that document 214 peaks with hand-drawn maps, pen and ink drawings, practical direction and poetic description. The series has been continuously in print, and to climb all 214 has become known as “bagging the Wainwrights”.

The desire to bag Wainwrights now infects my judgement. Where once, I’d have been content to continue directly down the main ridge, the prospect of ticking off Stone Arthur waylays me, and I make a detour to the right, descending rapidly over ground that will all have to be regained.

It’s not obvious where the summit is as it isn’t really summit at all, just an outcrop on the ridge—and there are several. I meet a couple who are asking themselves the same question. We alight hopefully on the first contender (hopefully, because it’s not too far down the slope—but somehow, we know this would be too easy). They check their GPS and confirm the elevation is too high. We carry on together down the incline.

They tell me they’re attempting all the Wainwrights in a year, so the Horseshoe, with the addition of Stone Arthur, is like concocting several syllables from all the high-ranking Scrabble letters and landing on a triple word score—a grand total of nine ticked off for about eleven miles of effort.

When we reach the proper “summit”, the vivid blue of Grasmere beguiles below.

It’s a slog back up the slope to Great Rigg and a great relief to finally descend toward Heron Pike, with the forget-me-not fingers of Windermere and Coniston Water outstretched below. The final stretch down the pitched zigzags of Nab Scar overlooks Rydal Water, glittering like a teardrop in the green of the valley.

When I reach the bottom, fatigue kicks in, and I sit on a wall above Rydal Mount, looking at a sign for the Coffin route to Grasmere (and trying not to read it as a suggestion).

I walk on through the grounds of Rydal Hall where a girl is emptying paper plates into a bin. She looks up and smiles and says, “Do help yourself to a beer if you’d like one.”

I pinch myself to make sure I’m not dreaming, but she’s still here, and she’s gesturing behind me, where three kegs are perched on the wall.

“We’ve had a wedding reception but there’s some beer left over, so we thought we’d offer it to walkers. We’ve no glasses so you’ll have to make do with a jam jar—they’ve all been washed”, she explains brightly.

I thank her and pour myself a sparkling jam jar of Jennings Cocker Hoop. We chit chat for a minute or two, then she heads back inside. As she reaches the door, she turns and says, “take it with you if you want—we don’t need the jam jar back.”

A good cool hoppy ale never tastes better than after a long walk. Sipping this unexpected trophy, I head on down the wide Rydal-to-Ambleside path, where I pass several groups of strollers: not sweaty fell walkers now, but smartly dressed, respectable types, out for a gentle Bank Holiday peramble.

And they’re giving me decidedly funny looks. The third time it happens, I check my flies. Then it dawns on me—I’m carrying a jam jar that’s now about a quarter full of frothy amber liquid. They think it’s a urine sample. And I’m swigging it.

To Have or to Be

As I drive back past Calgarth Park, I notice that the next lane is called Old Hall Road. Out of curiosity, I turn down it. After a few hundred yards the road narrows and a large sign warns, “Private Road—Keep out”. I wonder about continuing and try to think of a cover story, but better judgement prevails.

Later, I’ll wonder if it actually said “no access”, but “keep out” is the message I get, loud and clear, and right now this feels hostile. Perhaps it’s the apparent terseness of the wording or just the abrupt end to the freedom of the fells; or perhaps it’s the recollection of a newspaper article about the scandal of London councils selling social housing to luxury property developers. Perhaps it’s because She Drew the Gun’s Poem has been playing on the car stereo, “How long before they put up a wall and call it a private city?” But all of a sudden, the story of the Calgarth skulls seems very real.

This is when I realise it’s not a ghost story at all but a morality tale about a man haunted to the edge of insanity by his conscience.

In the 1970’s Erich Fromm wrote a book called To Have or to Be. He suggested people are governed by a having orientation—the desire to possess things—or a being orientation—the desire to experience things. Those of us who tread the fells have our walking boots firmly in the being camp. (That said, perhaps our desire to bag summits and tick off Wainwrights betrays an underlying having orientation. Here, I should probably confess I got all this from an episode of CSI. I did buy the book, but I haven’t read it yet, so for now, this is coming via Laurence Fishburne.)

While the being orientation is the likelier path to happiness, Fromm predicts that our western obsession with consumerism means the having orientation will predominate. Forty years on, we’ve already travelled a long way down that road.

Beware the skulls.

Find a route map and directions for this walk at https://www.walklakes.co.uk/walk_42.html

Fell Walk, General, History

Away from the Numbers

June 24, 2018 George Kitching 12 Comments

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

Fell Walk, General, History

Jimmy Hewitson and The Howitzer

April 8, 2018 George Kitching 10 Comments

Coniston, Tarn Hows, Black Fell & Holme Fell

“Some men become national heroes for superlative acts of bravery in service to their country. Others become heroes locally, because they stand up for the underdog when the establishment runs roughshod over them.” Jimmy Hewitson was both. I hear his remarkable story from his grandson, John. It’s a story of courage, compassion and the redemptive power of the Cumbrian landscape.

Courage

On the radio, a mother bravely describes losing her son in the Manchester Arena bombing. She says, “as soon as I heard about the explosion, I knew he was dead”. Some unfathomable maternal instinct tapped into something deeper than radio silence and sensed a severed emotional connection. By morning, she knew for certain that he hadn’t been admitted to any of the city’s hospitals, but it took a full twenty-four hours for the police to confirm her worst fears.

I can’t begin to imagine how those twenty-four hours felt. What that poor woman went through. What she is still going through. Every hour must have seemed an eternity, hoping against hope she was wrong, powerless do anything but wait for that dreadful knock on the door.

Benjamin Kirkby’s mother waited almost a year.

Ben was a Coniston lad and a quarryman. When World War One broke out, Ben, like many of his mates, answered Lord Kitchener’s call for volunteers. He enlisted in the King’s Own Lancaster Regiment (now the Duke of Lancaster’s) and was assigned to 1/4 brigade. Ben didn’t see action until the Somme, on 8th August 1916; after that, he would take no further part in the war. He was killed that day, as were two of his friends, Richard Usher and Sol Robinson. Richard and Sol’s deaths were confirmed within days, but Ben was reported as wounded, then wounded and missing. It was a full eleven months before his parents heard their son was dead.

Benjamin Atkinson Kirkby (courtesy of the Ruskin Museum)

I’ve just come from The Ruskin Museum in Coniston where curator, Vicky Slowe, has been showing me a file of remembrance; it has a page for each of the soldiers. A display case holds some personal artefacts: Ben Kirkby’s commemorative scroll; Richard Usher’s death penny and the official army communique to his parents, informing them of their son’s death. It also holds a painting by Richard of a boat on a lake, presumably Coniston Water. It looks peaceful and serene, evoking a long, lazy, carefree afternoon. A happy memory he held with him, perhaps, in the bitter, bloody turmoil of the trenches.

Ben Kirkby Commemorative Scroll (courtesy of the Ruskin Museum)

Beside the display case is a Matchless motorcycle that belonged to James Hewitson, another local lad who fought beside Ben, Sol and Richard in The Somme. Vicky and I were joined by John Dodd, James’s grandson, who recounted his grandfather’s remarkable story.

Some men become national heroes for superlative acts of bravery in service to their country. Others become heroes locally, because they stand up for the underdog when the establishment runs roughshod over them. Jimmy Hewitson was both. His grave lies in the Coniston churchyard, beside the fine Celtic cross of the war memorial, designed by W. G. Collingwood, who founded the Ruskin museum and designed Ruskin’s gravestone, as well as a series of war memorials including those at Hawkshead, Ulverston and St Bees, and the plaque on top of Great Gable.

Coniston war memorial — Coniston War Memorial (courtesy of the Ruskin Museum)

In 2018, on April 26^th, a new plaque was laid beside the Coniston memorial to mark the 100^th anniversary of the action that earned James Hewitson the Victoria Cross.

Hewitson survived the Somme; by 1918, he had been promoted to Lance Corporal, and his brigade had moved to Givenchy. A photograph in the museum shows a boy, seemingly too young for the military uniform he is wearing, but his courage and daring on April 26th were outstanding. He was recommended for the Victoria Cross in May 1918, and on 28^th June, this report appeared in The London Gazette:

“For most conspicuous bravery, initiative and daring action. In a daylight attack on a series of crater posts L/Cpl Hewitson led his party to their objective with dash and vigour, clearing the enemy from both trench and dugouts, killing in one dugout six of the enemy who would not surrender. After capturing the final objective, he observed a hostile machine-gun team coming into action against his men. Working his way round the edge of the crater he attacked the team, killing four and capturing one. Shortly afterwards he engaged a hostile bombing party which was attacking a Lewis gun post; he routed the party, killing six of them. The extraordinary feats of daring performed by this gallant non-commissioned officer crushed the hostile opposition at this point.”

King George V presented James with his Victoria Cross in France, on 8^th August 1918. It must have been a day of bittersweet emotions for him, as it was the second anniversary of the Somme action that killed his friends.

James Hewitson's Grave — James Hewitson’s Grave

Defiance

When the troops returned home in 1918, the mood was very different from the surge of patriotism that had seen so many enlist, four years earlier. The men bore deep scars, emotionally as well as physically. Today, we recognise post traumatic shock disorder. Back then, it was little understood and was known crudely as shell shock. Soldiers showing symptoms in the trenches had been shot for cowardice or desertion; demobbed squaddies kept shtum and suffered in silence. Many others were conspicuous by their absence.

The survivors were less reticent when it came to demanding change. Across Britain, there was a feeling among veterans that if they were going to risk their lives fighting for their country, they wanted a say in how it was governed. The Representation of the People Act of 1918 gave the vote, not only to women, but to all working-class men.

In a politically opportunist attempt to recapture some patriotic fervour and whip up a sense of triumphalism, The War Office presented many British towns and villages with war trophies. Ulverston received a German tank which stood at the bottom of Market Street until the 1960’s (the roundabout on the A590 is still known as “tank square”).

Coniston was presented with a German howitzer. It’s hard to imagine a more clumsy and insensitive gesture to a community licking its wounds and mourning its dead than to foist upon it the very instrument of its grief. It would be an understatement to say it didn’t go down well with the residents, especially those who had served. One evening, some young veterans were enjoying a pint when the conversation turned to the hated gun. Opinion was unanimous: they’d all spent enough time staring at the front of one of those things; there was no way they wanted to stare at the back of one now. After a few more pints, they decided to do something about it.

Jimmy Hewitson was at home, but such was his standing, they decided to run their plan past him, first. Jimmy’s wife answered the door; her husband had already gone to bed. When they told her what they were planning, she ran straight up the stairs to rouse him. It took no time at all for Jimmy to shout his response from the landing, “Give me a minute to get some pants on, and I’ll give you a hand”.

The howitzer had been placed outside the Ruskin museum. Being a field gun, it was on wheels. The men got behind it and, with a lot of heaving and shoving, managed to push it down the back street, past the Black Bull, over the bridge, and down to the lake. It must have been a struggle to keep something that heavy under control on the downhill stretch. They were aiming for the steep drop into the deeper water, but in the dark, they steered to the left of it, near the stone-built jetty, and pushed it into the shallows. It didn’t sink very far.

A half-submerged howitzer wasn’t quite the act of good riddance they’d been hoping for, so one of them suggested they have a word with Prissy. Priss was the captain of the Steam Yacht Gondola that ran daily excursions up and down the lake, acting as a water bus for locals and a sightseeing experience for tourists. He was only too happy to help and told them to be ready in the morning when he’d sail the Gondola past the spot on the way to her first pick up. The next day, they tied a rope around the gun and threw the end to Priss; he towed the howitzer out into the middle of the lake, where he left it to rust on the bottom.

John was only little when his grandad died, but his older brother recalls hearing the story first hand. John does remember seeing the howitzer exhumed sometime in the very late 1960’s or early 1970’s. It was pulled from the lake, loaded on to a trailer without fuss or ceremony, and swiftly driven away to sit in some private collection.

Purification and Renewal

In his post-war years, James Hewitson dug ditches, cut hedges and repaired roads, but he was hospitalised several times for shell shock and for surgery to remove shrapnel. Like many of his peers, Jimmy’s heroism came at a high personal cost. As a nation, we were ill equipped to help. Shell shock was seen as form of a neurasthenia: a supposed mechanical exhaustion of the nerves (it’s no longer a recognised condition in western medicine). Treatments were experimental and sometimes barbaric. We can only hope Hewitson escaped our worst medical follies. Certainly, he seems to have seen some improvement in later years: he was able to attend two regimental reunions and the museum has a wonderful photograph of him as an old man astride his beloved Matchless motorbike.

On leaving the museum, I walk down through a field of charcoal-fleeced Herdwicks to Coniston Hall, on the lake shore. In the soft grey light of an overcast afternoon, the rugged grandeur of this Elizabethan building appears sculpted from the earth, rough-hewn from Silurian stone, abandoned to ivy, repurposed as farm-house, a wide grassy ramp rising to its once opulent hall stripped of its oak panelling in its rebirth as a barn. Its conical chimneys stand tall and turret-like against a pale wash of sky.

Beyond is the lake, the water gently ridged with ripples, a soft bluish pewter, silver where it escapes the shadows. I walk the shore path to Torver, and most of the way to Brown How. Underfoot, the beach is mud, stone, moss and shale, overhung with a twiggy latticed canopy of naked branches, as if lightly sketched in soft graphite where they spring from heavily shaded trunks. I pass stone boat houses and little wooden jetties where an orange dinghy and an orange buoy are isolated splashes of colour amid the soft, earthy monochrome. To the north, is the high mountain drama of the Fairfield Horseshoe, stark in snow, a skyline rigidly defined, mighty and intimidating. But here, beside the water, is tranquillity.

I think of Richard Usher’s painting. Is this where he came in his head to escape the harsh reality of French battlefields? I think of the lake’s benevolence in swallowing the gun, and I think of James Hewitson’s battle with shell shock; I wonder if he found solace here. Across the beach lies the uprooted trunk of a silver birch, its branches outstretched like limbs reaching out to touch the water. The Coniston war memorial is a Celtic cross. In Celtic mythology, the birch was a symbol of purification and renewal.

Two days later, I’m at Tarn Hows. After some harsh weeks of winter, spring is here, pregnant with the promise of light and warmth. In a few hours, the circular shore path will be thick with sightseers, but at half past eight, I have it almost to myself. The water is a perfect mirror, rendering the dark curtain of trees in ink wash. The shore is a Ruskin watercolour of russet and brown. I pass a bench that bears an inscription: “In memory of Jane Aldworth (1959 – 1995) who loved this place”. Thirty-six is a tender age to die. War is not the only thief of youth. I wonder what happened to her; what comfort she found here. And again, I’m struck by the redemptive power of the landscape. Purification and renewal.

I leave the shore and climb a path that joins the Cumbria Way, which I follow east for a few hundred yards, then turn left to climb to the wilder summit of Black Fell. As a landscape yawns awake from hibernation, it’s possible to experience all seasons at once. Black Fell is a perfect podium for the humble punter. The Fairfield Horseshoe is draped in thin grey clouds, like wisps of Herdwick wool; on Red Screes and the Kentmere Fells, flecks of snow cover mellow tints of autumn. Windermere is a long stretch of sombre silver, Esthwaite Water, a white shimmer, disrupted by the hatched reflections of branches. Tarn Hows is a prelude to Coniston, pale blue beyond; Wetherlam is mighty, dark and wintery, and largely lost in cloud. As I watch, Bowfell and Crinkle Crags are swallowed entirely. And yet above, a summer-like sky is blue and streaked with the slenderest wisps of cirrus. A church bell rings below in Hawkshead, and I shed an outer skin, warm in spring sunshine.

I walk on through a landscape of seasonal transition, of spring skies and winter trees, of distant snow and imminent growth. I pass a farmhouse where a woman skilfully executes a Tai Chi kata. I cross the Coniston to Ambleside road and climb the track past a paddock of belted Galloways to Hodge Close quarry. Sheer faces of rock, tunnelled with caverns and streaked with rich veins of red mineral, fall to a deep pool of copper blue. Many of the King’s Own Lancaster volunteers were quarrymen. Some may have worked here. Now it’s a playground for climbers and divers.

Beyond the quarry, I follow a path up to the old reservoir, an azure jewel in a cloak of russet and straw grass. A boggy expanse leads to the craggier outcrops of Holme Fell. I scramble up a rock step to reach the summit. Coniston Water stretches out below, a languid sheen of white sparkle. I drink coffee from a thermos and think about Jimmy Hewitson and the howitzer.

In January 2014, the then Education Minister, Michael Gove, wrote a piece for the Daily Mail in which he attacked dramas such as Oh What a Lovely War, The Monocled Mutineer and Blackadder for perpetuating “left-wing myths” that depict World War One “as a misbegotten shambles – a series of catastrophic mistakes perpetrated by an out-of-touch elite”. His point seemed to be that criticism of the war and the military tactics somehow “denigrate(s) virtues such as patriotism, honour and courage”. As Philip Hedley pointed out in The Guardian, Gove was so keen imagine a left-wing conspiracy, he conveniently ignored a significant fact: “important source material (for Oh What a Lovely War) came from the Tory MP Alan Clark’s book, The Donkeys, the title of which came from the phrase describing the soldiers as ‘lions led by donkeys’.” Gove was being disingenuous: historians may argue over the donkeys, but the courage of the lions has never been in question.

Mr Gove may not agree with the wide-held view that The Somme was the “epitome of military futility”, but Vicky told me there is some evidence that Sol, Ben and Richard came under friendly fire. I’m not really sure it would have made much difference to their mothers whether it was German, French or English hands that fired the fatal rounds. They’d have been devastated it was anyone.

If you re-read Michael Gove’s piece now, you’ll find he’s keen to draw parallels with modern challenges: “migrant populations on the move, rapid social upheaval, growing global economic interdependence, massive technological change and fragile confidence in political elites” – themes he’s revisited several times since, in the context of the European Union. In retrospect, it reads very like a politician hoping to use the WW1 commemorations to lay the groundwork for a referendum campaign. Whatever your view on Brexit or contemporary politics, manipulating the memory of ordinary men who made an extraordinary sacrifice, is cheap. It’s political opportunism, not a million miles away from placing a German howitzer in front of a grieving population. If you’d pulled a stunt like that on men like Jimmy Hewitson, Michael, I have a sneaking suspicion they’d have told you to jump in a lake.

For a map and directions for the Tarn Hows, Black Fell, Holme Fell walk, visit WalkLakes:

https://www.walklakes.co.uk/walk_111.html

Fell Walk, General, History, Natural History

Back to Black Sail

March 4, 2018 George Kitching 11 Comments

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Coledale Fells Across Ennerdale and Buttermere

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.

Fell Walk, General, History

Born To Be Wild

December 26, 2017 George Kitching 8 Comments

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.

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 30^th, 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.

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.

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.

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, 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Fell Walk, General, History, Literature

In My Time Of Dying

October 15, 2017 George Kitching 31 Comments

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.

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.”

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.

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).

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.

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.

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

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”.

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…

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Crime, Fell Walk, General, History

A Walk on the Wild Side

September 10, 2017 George Kitching 17 Comments

The Mosedale Horseshoe and a Night at Black Sail

A tough but beautiful walk around the Mosedale Horseshoe takes in some of England’s finest mountain scenery and ends with a night at the country’s remotest youth hostel, deep in the wilds of Ennerdale. It begins by the shore of Wastwater, where the sight of divers kitting up in the car park, stirs memories of a notorious 80’s murder enquiry.

The Lady in the Lake

There’s something utterly wild about Wastwater. Forget the pastoral prettiness of Windermere or Coniston, England’s deepest lake is a feral beast; savagely beautiful but ever poised to bare its teeth. On this July morning, the sky is overcast and there’s a distinct chill in the breeze. The choppy waters are gun-barrel grey, rippled with white-crested waves; dark and inscrutable, daring you to guess at the secrets beneath.

In the wooded parking area beside Overbeck Bridge, two men are preparing to find out. As they don dry suits and all manner of sophisticated diving gear, Tim remarks they must reckon it’ll be seriously cold. One of the divers looks up and smiles, “yeah, at 40 metres down, the temperature stays pretty much the same all year round”.

40 metres is the limit for diving with compressed air. Below that, special suits and gas mixtures are needed to survive. For all the lake’s imagined mystery, what most divers find is an endless expanse of mud; or perhaps, if they’re lucky, the gnome garden, introduced by an enterprising soul to add a bit of novelty to the view.

On occasion, though, Wastwater has yielded darker secrets. In 1984, Neil Pritt was diving at a depth of 34 metres when he spied a rolled-up carpet tied to a concrete block. At first, he dismissed it as the efforts of an ambitious fly-tipper, but aware that police had recently searched the lake, looking for missing French fell-walker, Veronique Mireille Marre, Neil took a closer look. His suspicions were confirmed – the carpet concealed the body of a woman.
But it wasn’t Veronique. Whoever she was, she’d been down there some time. The cold had preserved her so well, it was only a matter of days before police made a positive ID. In the meantime, the press dubbed her “The Lady of the Lake”.

When investigators removed her wedding ring, it bore the inscription, “Margaret 15-11-63 Peter”. Detectives made the connection with the case of Margaret Hogg from Guildford, reported missing by her husband, Peter in 1976. Peter was arrested. Under interrogation, he capitulated and confessed to killing his wife but claimed extreme provocation. He told the Old Bailey how Margaret had been having an affair, which she made little effort to conceal. According to his testimony, on the night in question, Margaret tired of merely taunting her husband and physically attacked him. Peter retaliated by grabbing her by the throat and squeezing hard. When the life went out of her eyes, he stopped. When she slumped to the floor, he realised she was dead and coolly hatched a plan that very nearly proved the perfect crime.

After wrapping Margaret’s body in an old carpet, Peter put her in the boot of the car with a rubber dingy, a roll of carpet, and a concrete block. Then he drove through the night to Wastwater. Had Peter rowed out a few metres further, Margaret’s body would have fallen into the “abyss” and sunk all the way to the bottom, at nearly twice the depth a diver could reach. As it was, she came to rest on a shelf just under half way down, where she would remain for the next eight years.

I’m not sure what a modern jury would have made of Peter’s defence, but in 1984, a woman’s infidelity was enough to hand the moral high ground to the man. Peter was acquitted of murder and given three years for manslaughter, plus an extra year for obstructing the coroner and committing perjury in divorce proceedings.

Veronique’s body was later found at the bottom of Broken Rib Crag. The coroner returned an open verdict, but there was nothing to suggest that this was anything other than a tragic accident.

The Mosedale Horseshoe

For all its brooding solitude, Wastwater is magnificently beautiful. The vista over lake, to the fells at its head, has been voted Britain’s favourite view. Great Gable takes centre stage, while in the foreground, resembling the hull of an upturned boat, stands Yewbarrow. Yewbarrow is the start of the Mosedale Horseshoe, an airy circuit that boasts some of the finest mountain scenery in Lakeland. Tim and I are going to walk the ridge to its highest point on Pillar. From there, we’ll descend into the wilds of neighbouring Ennerdale for a night at England’s remotest youth hostel – the Black Sail hut.

We leave the car park following the stream, cross a stile, and turn right on to a steep and unrelenting grass slope. Ahead is the formidable face of Bell Rib. There doesn’t appear to be a way up for mere mortals. Indeed, Wainwright declares it “unclimbable except by experts”, adding, “maps showing paths going straight over it are telling fibs”. Fortunately, the Ordnance Survey is less aspirational. Their route skirts left and climbs between Bell Rib and Dropping Crag. Such is the gradient, we’re looking for the fork long before we reach it.

The path ends abruptly at a steep, stone-filled gully. We put hand to rock and start to climb. At just over 2000 ft., Yewbarrow is the baby of the group, but it’s no mean mountain and won’t surrender its summit without a struggle.

At the top, a grass slope leads to a narrow ridge beyond Bell Rib. Behind us, Wastwater is a shimmer of silver beneath the whitening cloud. When we reach the crest, a dramatic cleft in the crags, known as The Great Door, frames a canvas of rich but sombre tones: the shadowed lake a dark sash of royal satin, deep and vivid blue; hemmed by the solemn Screes, their slopes mottled with daubs of gold and green, and deftly flecked with feathered brushstrokes, like copper flames that flicker up to kiss a scarf of purple heather.

Poised above the water’s edge, a dark vestigial verge of coppice, a lone patch of fur on an else clean-shaven pelt.

Cupped high among bottle-green spires, Burnmoor Tarn is a glint, a duck-egg glimmer, a hint of hidden brightness, cajoling the bashful sun to break cover.

A few easy rock steps remain between here and the summit. When we arrive, the panorama is remarkable; Pillar rises like barnacled leviathan from the mossy sea of Mosedale; sunlight gilds the green skirts of Kirk Fell and, to the east, the Roof of England is cloaked in cloud, Mickledore just visible through the mist like a gateway to Middle Earth.

Across a depression, we stride up Stirrup Crag and glimpse our onward path. Thin wisps of cloud float like wood smoke around the top of Red Pike. A faint path snakes through charcoal crags to a carpet of olive green above.

The way lies across Dore Head, some 300 feet below. If we’d studied the contours we’d have known the path that swung left, a little way back, was the easier proposition. As it is, we stick with the one we’re on and climb down the crag itself; descending abruptly through a maze of chimneys; easing down bulwarks on jagged ledges; stepping back from dead-ends that stop in sudden drops. It’s slow and a touch unnerving, but there’s only one sticky moment: a parapet I think I can shimmy down in two small stretches. But I misjudge. Now, over-committed, I’m obliged to jump – a little too far for comfort. Thankfully, I land well, with all extremities intact, and manage not to career over the next edge.

Once down, we’re slightly shocked at how severe Stirrup Crag looks from below and wonder if we’d have attempted it had we known. I later read that Wainwright left a trail of blood over these rocks and feel relieved they weren’t craving a fresh sacrifice. For some reason, Tim chooses now to mention that the Black Sail Youth Hostel cancellation policy includes a plea to the effect – “let us know if you are not coming. If we’re expecting you and you don’t show, we’ll send out Mountain Rescue.” I’m not sure whether it’s a comfort or a concern.

A party of around 15 fresh faced teenagers has arrived at Dore Head ahead of us. They took the sensible path. In fact, they may have bypassed Yewbarrow altogether. They’re now comfortably ensconced in a rest and refreshment break that looks set to extend indefinitely. If they’re going to tackle the full round at this rate, it could prove a very long day. I hope they’re not descending from here, though. The traditional way down to Mosedale is a notorious scree slope. Once the delight of scree runners, it’s now so dangerously eroded it looks concave from below. A grass rake offers an alternative but even that looks severe. I think of Veronique Marre and conclude some risks just aren’t worth taking; then try not to think about that as I look back over Stirrup Crag on the way up Red Pike.

Once on top, isolated shafts of sunlight steal through cracks in the cloud. Scoat Tarn sparkles to the south, the adamantine lustre of lost treasure, scattered in the bracken. Haycock is now in sight, while, northward, Great Gable rises over Kirk Fell, a pyramid no more, but a mighty dome, surged from the earth in an ancient eruption of volcanic violence. Beyond the summit, we perch on crags above Black Combe and eat pies, looking across to Pillar and the stiff stream of scree tapering to the col of Wind Gap.

Out of the breeze, it’s warm. Certainly, warm enough for midges to swarm around Tim. Apparently, he only had space in his rucksack for one bottle, so it was a toss-up between sun cream and midge repellent. He went with sun cream, which is probably why the sun has, so far, been so coy. Tim swears by a midge repellent that’s marketed by Avon as a moisturiser. It’s called Skin So Soft and whenever he produces a bottle, he feels compelled to assure me “it’s what the SAS use”. He retreats into the breeze and the midges turn on me, so I’m compelled to join him.

We climb the saddle to Scoat Fell and catch our first sight of Ennerdale Water, a pale sheen against the dense green of the pine plantations on its banks. The summit lies a little to our left and a fine ridge runs out to Steeple, which looks as inspiring as its name. It’s all too tempting for anyone with fire in their blood. But we’ll have fire in our bellies too and we still have some way to go before we reach Black Sail. Supper is served at seven, so to arrive ravenous and find we’d missed it would be miserable. There’s also that thing in the cancellation clause that convinces us to press on to Black Crags without detour. From there, we descend to Wind Gap and begin the tough pull up to Pillar. With the exertion, any residual disappointment at skipping Steeple turns to quiet relief.

Few labours reward so richly, however. As we reach the summit, the sun breaks through, illuminating the landscape in way that is nothing short of magical. Pillar Rock rises majestically above a sward of conifer; Great Gable is a tower of rugged glory; Broad Stand, finally free of cloud, a brutal bastion on the ramparts of Sca Fell. But as shafts of sunlight dance across the slopes, this terrain of intransigent rock manages to evoke nothing so much as a swirling Turner seascape: the white splashes of exposed rock are surf and spray; dark crags, the welling eddies; the wave upon wave of rolling peaks, a surging ocean, every shade of green.

High Crag, Robinson and Hindscarth from Pillar

All the way down to Looking Stead, I linger, attempting to capture this on camera. It’s beyond my skills and if I lavish words, it’s only to try and convey what pictures fail to tell.

At the top of Black Sail Pass, we meet a man who asks us if we’ve seen a party of 15 teenagers. They’re not late, he’s just bored of waiting. Something tells me he’s in for a long day.

Black Sail Hut

We descend into Ennerdale, where, in the remotest corner of this wildest of valleys, lies an old shepherd’s bothy: The Black Sail Hut, now a Youth Hostel and our home for the night. A warm welcome and cold beers await. We sit outside on wooden benches in the golden light of evening and watch the Galloway cattle, that roam free like big black bison, old as the hills.

Tim disappears for a shower and I watch a small figure wend her way down the long path from Windy Gap, between Great and Green Gable. When she arrives, she unshoulders her pack, grabs a beer and joins me outside. We compare notes on our routes. As we chat, I suddenly realise why she looks familiar. It’s Yvonne, a friend of my wife’s from about ten years ago. Yvonne is a high-powered consultant to head gardeners. I’ve only met her once, when she led a tour of the grounds in a Lakeland stately home, dispensing invaluable tricks and tips, some of which I wrote down and perpetually promise to put into practice. She asks about Sandy and we laugh out loud at the odds of meeting like this. Tim reappears around the corner, and the midges make a bee-line for him. Yvonne proffers a bottle of repellent. “Skin So Soft” he beams delightedly, then drops his voice an octave and adds “the SAS use it, you know”.

Great Gable from Black Sails Hut — Great Gable from Black Sail Hut

Relaxing at Black Sails Hut — Relaxing at Black Sail Hut

After supper, we sip beers and swap stories with two guys sharing our dorm. They’re old friends from London, who have moved out of the capital in different directions but meet up once or twice a year for walking holidays. They’ve been in the Lakes all week, tramping the hills and staying in hostels. There are three of them but the third has turned in for an early night. Unsurprisingly, he’s the first up in the morning. I join him for a coffee while we wait for breakfast. He tells me how they got a light soaking on top of Haystacks late yesterday afternoon.

“That’s odd” I say, “we were on Pillar around that time, looking down on Haystacks. It looked as if it was in sunshine.”

He looks puzzled, then shrugs, “perhaps it was earlier – three-ish possibly”. Very localised showers are possible in the hills, but it still doesn’t quite add up.

“We stayed at Honister Youth Hostel, last night”, he continues.

“No, you didn’t”, I shout (silently), “you stayed here. I’ve just seen you get out of bed”.

“We’ve been lucky today though”, he goes on, “it’s been dry all day”.

Incredulous, I want to scream, “It’s quarter to eight in the morning. You’ve not been anywhere yet and besides, it’s bucketing it down”… but then I realise, he’s just a day out. By “today”, he means “yesterday”, “yesterday” means the day before. Suddenly, everything makes sense. It’s pretty much the same account we got from his mates – you just have to subtract a day.

It’s an odd idiosyncrasy, but I can think of two possible explanations: he’s either a timelord or, after several consecutive days on the fells, the days begin to blur. I’ve been out for one night and I can already understand that.

Everything that seems so integral to our existence – the bustle of the working week, its routines, schedules, deadlines – simply dwindles in importance out here; it’s all fluster, all folly, all “sound and fury, signifying nothing”. Our own inflated sense of self-importance, seems equally ridiculous. Set against the timeless scale of this primal landscape, our hive and industry seem no more significant than the swarming of midges.

I scratch the bites and the simile suddenly seems poignant – we too do disproportionate damage. Wainwright called Ennerdale’s pine plantations an act of vandalism – a defacing of the indigenous landscape – but we do much worse than this. And with a climate change denier in the White House, efforts to curb our excesses are under threat.

In the 60’s, a NASA scientist called James Lovelock wrote a book called GAIA, in which he argues the Earth acts like a single living organism. Its ecosystems adapt and evolve to marginalise or eliminate threats. If he’s right, even now, the planet could be developing a natural strain of Skin So Soft to send us blighters packing.

My mind wanders back to the here and now where my new acquaintance is finishing his account. I conclude he’s a timelord and we refer to him thereafter as the Doctor.

With the cloud down and heavy rain set in, we abandon plans to climb Great Gable and head back over the Black Sail Pass. It’s an opportunity postponed, not lost, as one thing is certain. We’re coming back here.

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

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