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

White Winter Hymnal

January 28, 2018 George Kitching 14 Comments

The Old Man and the Raven

After days wrapped in a Christmas cocoon of lethargy and overeating, the sun returns and I head up the Old Man to savour the snow-capped splendour of the Coniston fells. On Raven Tor, I find my inner pagan.

Long before a star shone over a stable in Bethlehem, December 25th was the pagan festival of Midwinter – the winter solstice or the shortest day. It celebrated the rebirth of the sun god and an end to his lingering death, manifest in the ever-declining daylight. From here on, the days would lengthen, and warmth and fertility would return.

A deity who dies and rises again. That sounds somewhat familiar.

In our secular world, Christmas still bears the trappings of a Christian festival, albeit one at sea in a mass consumer bonanza. But we’re a nation of many faiths, and most of us are agnostic. That’s not to say that Christmas doesn’t mean anything. Even us unbelievers can get behind a season of peace and goodwill, and of course, we enjoy the bank holidays. But it resonates in a profounder way, which has everything to do with its pagan roots. However much our high-tech global reach divorces us from natural cycles, we can’t escape the seasons. We are of the planet and respond to its rhythms in a primal way that daylight bulbs, and strawberries in December, and 24-hour TV can do little to dissipate. Indeed, the December telly guides are full of retrospectives, celebrating the dying year: top 50 news stories, films, records, books, celebrity gaffes, you name it. We look back, take stock, make resolutions for the year to come; let go the stresses of the preceding months; make merry and recharge. Death and rebirth: a spiritual impulse as old as man.

In our Gregorian calendar, the winter solstice falls on December 21st, but let’s not split hairs. Christmas Day, 2017, is so overcast, it feels like the shortest day. Wrapped in a warm cocoon of family, lethargy and overeating, it’s full of good cheer and comfort and a welcome retreat from the dank, dark drizzle outside.

The sun god sleeps on through Boxing Day but makes an appearance the day after, when the temperature plummets and the snow falls, causing widespread traffic chaos. Unfortunately, we’re driving home to Cumbria. The roads on our route are clear, but it seems everyone in the country has picked this day to travel. With diversions and roadworks, we spend nine hours in a nationwide traffic jam.

We arrive back on Wednesday night, unpack, light the fire and put our feet up. I’m due in work on Friday but have tomorrow free. The forecast is clear, cold and sunny. It’s time to break out of the cocoon.

I wake later than intended, stuff warm layers into a rucksack and head for Coniston. I park in the village and head up the track beside the Sun Inn, a fitting temple to the god who’s very much in evidence today. I make a mental note to pop in later and offer my devotions.

The path climbs beside the waterfalls of Church Beck, passes Miners’ Bridge, and emerges from the trees into dazzling light at the foot of the Coppermines valley. Straight ahead, beyond the spoil heaps of the slate quarry, stands Raven Tor, the spur that juts out from Brim Fell and separates the two mountain corrie tarns of Low Water and Levers Water. Low Water lies to its left, enclosed by Brim Fell and the Old Man; Levers Water to its right, enclosed by Swirl How and Wetherlam. The mountains are cloaked in snow. It’s enough to make your spirit soar.

I follow the path to Crowberry Haws and join the quarry track up the Old Man. This is the tourist route. The “back way”, by Goats Water, under the imperial cliffs of Dow Crag, boasts the greater natural splendour. By contrast, this route reveals the scars of industry. Even so, it holds interest. Only the fallen tower of the aerial tramway and its rusting cables, slumped across the path like slain iron snakes, are foreign bodies. Everywhere else, human intervention has simply shaped and rearranged what is naturally here. A neat wall of slate encloses the track on the approach to the old quarry, where stone buildings lie in tumbledown ruin. Slowly the Old Man reclaims what is his, erasing our imprint, and reasserting his natural form. His scars are healing. In a thousand years, there will be little trace of us. For now, there is heritage, softened by the elements and slowly integrating back. This was once a thriving industry that supported the village below; testimony, if you like, to the Old Man’s benevolence to those at his feet.

Slate quarry ruins - The Old Man Of Coniston — Slate quarry ruins – The Old Man Of Coniston

Slate Quarry - Old Man of Coniston — Slate Quarry – Old Man of Coniston

Beyond the quarry, a stream has turned the steps to ice. A few of the ill-equipped soldier on, seeking out the snowy edges. Others turn back. The rest of us sit down and pull Microspikes over our boots. Once attached, the going is easy. There is a satisfying crunch as the little teeth bite into the ice and hold firm.

By the time I reach Low Water, the hand of man has withdrawn and the landscape is altogether wilder. Today, it is a realm of shadows, where dark waters ripple in vivid contrast to the snowy slopes that surround. Here and there, the sun god penetrates and turns the water bronze. I walk along the shore and stare up at Raven Tor, a bright and regal perch, swathed in a thick cloak of virgin snow.

I return to the main path and climb the steep zig zags that lead to the Old Man’s summit. In places, the path is a uniform sheet of ice and I watch a spike-less man opt instead for the snowy slopes. We meet where he re-joins the stone pitching. He bemoans the fact the mountain is steeper now than five years ago. I smile, and he recounts his last walk in here in snow. He didn’t have spikes then either, so to avoid coming back down this icy section, he made a round of Brim Fell to Raven Tor, then found a way down its flanks to Low Water. I trace his route with my eyes and a vague notion hatches into a plan.

With height, the lower reaches of Levers Water appear beyond the Tor; a second dark pool to balance Low Water; two black eyes to the Raven’s nose. Beyond, the snow-kissed summit of Wetherlam rises from an umber midriff.

The sun god reigns supreme on top. Out from under the Old Man’s shoulder, the light is magical; the god himself, a white star in an expanse of azure. Below the blue, a fluffy blanket of cloud is trimmed in soft yellow. Golden rays sparkle in the crystalline snow. The summit’s beehive cairn is an altar where hooded figures bow to Sol Invictus, the unconquered sun, a deity reborn in youthful vigour.

Beyond the trig point, the snow-capped ridge sweeps on over Brim Fell. A few well-wrapped wanderers are hastening this way. I’m the only one striding outward. Its soon becomes apparent why. A different elemental force takes charge on Brim Fell. A bitter wind sweeps over the Duddon valley from the Irish Sea, blowing stinging snowflakes in horizontal sheets. Despite a hood, a hat and a tightly wound woollen scarf, my face takes a lashing and I’m buffeted by gusts. It’s brutal but exhilarating. Past the summit cairn, I hurry toward the edge. Once over the parapet and on to the Raven’s outstretched wing, I’m protected, and I pause to drink in the scene.

Coniston Fells ridge - Scafells behind — Coniston Fells ridge – Scafells behind

I’m entirely alone. A few small silhouettes of people are visible on the Old Man’s summit, but here is virgin territory. Well almost. I find one set of footprints and follow them for a short way. For a brief minute, I glimpse a hooded figure on the slopes below, just above the shore of Low Water. But in a blink, he’s gone, and soon after, so are his tracks. The sun dances over the untouched snow, knee-deep now. I imagine I’m exploring uncharted ground as I descend the Raven’s wing to her shoulder, following the line of rocks and grassy tufts that just protrude, in the hope of avoiding unseen fissures. I climb the Raven’s neck to the cairn perched on her head. Across Levers Water, Black Sails ridge stands proud, a muscular right arm to the head of Wetherlam. The amber rocks of the Raven’s cairn crown her white mantel. There’s about two hours of daylight left but the light is already softening, assuming the warm glow of afternoon. I’m toasty from the exertion, but after five minutes of taking photos, I’m blowing into my gloves to warm my frozen hands.

The snow has drifted into soft deep blankets on the slopes that fall away to Low Water. I follow a tinkling stream for most of the way down, then veer left for a gentler descent. At the bottom, I leap a beck at its narrowest point and climb to the shore path, where I stood earlier. Cold, dark and tranquil, Low Water is a pool of primeval mystery, snugly enclosed in the arms of the Old Man and the Raven.

Low Water - Old Man — Low Water – Old Man

I cast a last reverential glance at these snow-clad Titans then return, past the quarry, to the world of mortals. In the Sun Inn, a fire crackles in an old, black, cast-iron range; a tiny Sol Invictus bestowing light and warmth as the sky outside darkens. I sup a welcome pint of Loweswater Gold and watch the flames dance around the logs. I’ve never thought of myself as religious, but today I’m in touch with my inner pagan.

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.

Millican Dalton's Cave — Millican Dalton’s Cave

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

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

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

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, Natural History

Summer’s Almost Gone

November 12, 2017 George Kitching 13 Comments

The Kentmere Round

The Kentmere valley is a slice of heaven. It was gifted to Richard De Gilpin in 1206 as a reward for slaying the Wild Boar of Westmorland, and it remains one of Lakeland’s most remote and most beautiful spots. The river Kent begins life high in the fells that ring the valley head. A circuit of these peaks is a long and exhilarating hill walk, known as the Kentmere Round. As I follow the route on a glorious late summer day, I discover the valley is home to a vanishing lake, and also, it seems, a vanishing mountain.

The Wild Boar of Westmorland

Drive along the Crook Road from Plumgarths to Bowness and you’ll pass high-end hotels with names like The Wild Boar Inn and the Gilpin Lodge. Their billboards tempt the well-heeled traveller with warm hospitality and fine cuisine, but their names recall a time when this journey risked much more than a waxing waistline and damage to your wallet.

At the start of the 13th Century, a holy cross stood at Plumgarths and a chantry chapel on St Mary’s Isle, Windermere. Both sites were stops on the pilgrim trail, but it took a righteous faith to make the journey between them for the woods around Crook were inhabited by a ferocious boar with a fearsome reputation for attacking unfortunates who happened across its path.

Mercifully, deliverance was at hand. Richard De Gilpin, known as “Richard the Rider”, had accompanied the Baron of Kendal to Runnymede for the signing of the Magna Carta. His assistance was invaluable as the baron could neither read nor write. However, for De Gilpin, the sword would prove mightier than the pen. On his return to Westmorland, he tracked the boar through the forest to its lair near Scout Scar and engaged it in a fierce battle, eventually slaying the beast and emerging as a hero. The Baron of Kendal was so grateful, he rewarded Richard with the lordship of the manor of Kentmere.

Kentmere Tarn

De Gilpin had been gifted a slice of heaven. Kentmere is one of Lakeland’s most beautiful and remote valleys. Both the valley and the town of Kendal take their names from the river Kent, which has its source high in the fells at the valley head.

Say the words “Lake Windermere” to any good pedant and they’ll tell you that the prefix is redundant as “mere” means “lake”. A hundred years ago, you’d have been forgiven for thinking Kentmere was a misnomer – its mere had vanished. Curiously, industrial interests have been responsible for its reappearance.

Kentmere Tarn lies on private land near the foot of the valley. Its shallow waters provide an ideal habitat for algae known as diatoms. When diatoms die, their organic matter decomposes leaving their hard silica skeletons, called frustules to sink to the bottom and form a layer known as diatomite. Over the centuries, the tarn silted up with diatomite, turning it into a boggy marsh. In the 1840’s, it was drained to improve the surrounding farmland, but the exercise was largely unsuccessful, and the land reverted to marsh.

Diatomite has significant heat-insulating properties and in the 1930’s, commercial operations began to extract the substance for use in insulating boards. Extraction ceased in the 1970’s, when it became cheaper to import, but forty years of dredging had restored the mere. Well stocked with trout, it is now the preserve of angling clubs.

The Kentmere Fells

A fine mountain ridge runs from the Garburn Pass, which links Kentmere and Troutbeck, to the Nan Bield Pass, which once linked Kentmere and the lost village of Mardale Green. Defined by the conical peak of Ill Bell and its smaller mirror-image in Froswick, the skyline is iconic; equally recognisable from the West Coast Mainline or the beach at Bardsea.

Beyond the Nan Bield Pass, the ridge swings around over Harter Fell and Kentmere Pike to Shipman Knotts to form a horseshoe. The full circuit is a long but exhilarating hill walk, known as the Kentmere Round; and it’s my mission for the day.

A single-track road runs out of Staveley, crossing over the River Kent and roughly tracking its bank for about four miles until it reaches the picturesque village of Kentmere. Parking is limited, but it’s only 06:30 am and there are a couple of free spaces by the village hall. Twenty years ago, I might have considered it a “result” to be crawling into bed at the time I crawled out of it this morning. These days, I can imagine no finer time to be out.

It’s August – high summer – a time of dusty tracks and straw-coloured grass, wilting and yellowing as long warm days edge lazily toward autumn…

Only that doesn’t really happen anymore. Such notions are wistful nostalgia for halcyon summers, long-since lost to the vagaries of climate change. In recent years, August has become the rainy season. But today is a rare exception. The sky is a clear expanse of cobalt, streaked with slender strands of cirrus, and thanks to all the rain, the meadows are green and vibrant, retaining something of their spring vitality.

From a paddock, a huddle of herdwicks eye me with idle curiosity; birdsong fills my ears and the day feels pregnant with possibility. Faint wisps of mist cling to the valley’s pockets as I start up the Garburn track, passing the monumental Badger Rock: a prodigious rhyolite boulder and a popular challenge for rock climbers. I pass old gnarled trees, with twisted roots protruding, and craggy outcrops, dressed in purple heather. The stony track climbs steadily at first, then more steeply after Crabtree Brow. After about a mile and a quarter, it reaches the crest and I turn right on to the grassy path that climbs to the summit of Yoke.

Beyond the walled green meadows and dark woods of the Troutbeck valley, the long blue ribbon of Windermere snakes south toward Morecambe Bay; the sea, a silver haze, dissolving into the horizon. Across the valley, Red Screes rise above the Kirkstone Pass. Yoke’s eastern face is the formidable cliff of Rainsborough Crag, but on top it is a grassy hill, remarkable mostly for its views. From the summit on though, the ridge assumes a mountain countenance. The path makes a small dip then ascends to the imperious peak of Ill Bell.

A trinity of well-built cairns stands guard; little stone towers that bookend the vista over Windermere. This is a majestic grandstand. Ahead, the ridge sweeps on over Froswick to the wide grassy plateau of Thornthwaite Crag, then curves east over High Street’s shoulder to Mardale Ill Bell – Ill Bell’s namesake – which thrusts out a grassy spur in greeting.

The spur is Lingmell End and it splits the valley head in two. Beyond, lies the Nan Bield Pass, but on this side, Gavel Crag and Bleathwaite Crag enclose the deep bowl of Hall Cove, where the river Kent springs into life. You can trace the nascent stream as it cascades down the fell side to feed the Kentmere Reservoir.

Imagine for a moment, that you’re standing near an old stone bridge in Kendal watching the river gently lap its arches. Games of bowls play out before the Georgian opulence of the Abbott Hall Art Gallery. The scene is one of civic order and serenity; the river a benign presence, whispering an ambient lullaby. Out here though, you realise the Kent is born a wilder beast. When engorged and enraged by a storm like Desmond, it’s not hard to imagine how it could burst its banks and wreak violence on a trusting community that had mistakenly considered it tame… And how it would take a lot more than De Gilpin’s sword to stop it.

Thornthwaite Crag and Hall Cove — Froswick, Thornthwaite Crag, Hall Cove & Lingmell End

Beyond the summit, the stony path drops steeply to the saddle. A fell-runner stops to say hello, breaking her arduous jog up the slope. She’s the first person I’ve seen.

Froswick’s summit stands ever so slightly west of Ill Bell and gives an even grander view down Windermere. Ill Bell itself presents a steep green flank and the Kentmere Reservoir nestles at its foot. The reservoir is not a natural lake but was built in 1848 to provide a controlled water supply to a gunpowder mill, a wood mill, a snuff mill and the James Cropper paper mill, now the sole owner.

It looks half-drained. Perhaps the paper mill is conducting repairs. The water supply is no longer required for paper making, but James Cropper dutifully maintains it with an environmental focus.

Beyond Froswick, the path splits. The right fork leads on to High Street. I take the left and climb to the summit of Thornthwaite Crag, its fourteen foot cairn, known as The Beacon, a stately slate tower commanding attention. A drystone wall runs out to meet it then crumbles into a straight line of stones, stretching out into the distance like a Richard Long artwork.

Perception is easily tricked. You would swear Ill Bell is the highest of these fells – steep sides tapering to a point suggest elevation – but the flatter top of Thornthwaite Crag is higher. Higher still is High Street, the parent peak, rising in a whale-back between Hayeswater and Haweswater. Thornthwaite Crag is part of the High Street ridge, but it has its own ridge too, running out over Grey Crag to encircle the head of Hayeswater.

Gazing back, I spot the second person of the day. He’s carrying a mountain bike up the long slope from Froswick. He must have hauled it all the way from the Garburn Pass. He waves when he reaches the top, then mounts and heads off towards Mardale Ill Bell to ride the Nan Bield Pass. Providing he doesn’t catch a pedal and catapult himself into the reservoir, it’ll be an exhilarating experience. I hope so – it’s a long way to hike with a bike on your back for a thrill that will be over in minutes. Wraparound shades and a helmet can’t hide the look on his face, however. I know it instantly. It’s freedom.

The Missing Peak

After a while, I set off along the ridge towards High Street. I was up there a fortnight ago, so I’ll skip the summit and make straight for Mardale Ill Bell. Before I do, my attention is distracted by the vision to the west. Hayeswater is an azure reflection of the sky, glistening at the foot of sun-gilded slopes. Beyond, wispy clouds part to unveil the brutal bulk of Fairfield and its northern turret, Cofa Pike, dropping to Deepdale Hause to rub shoulders with St Sunday Crag. Behind them, stands the entire rank of the Helvellyn range. Blencathra commandeers the northern sky, while further west, Great Gable rises, an almighty, rough-hewn rotunda, like a prodigious, primeval St Paul’s.

I’m transfixed. With the changing light, the scene is transforming, coming into ever sharper focus. I stop every few yards to take photos in the vain hope I might capture something of its splendour. I’m aware I need to bear right soon, but the sun catches Striding Edge and I’m fumbling for my camera again. I just can’t tear my gaze away.

When I do, I have a disorienting realisation – High Street has disappeared. It should be straight ahead. I wonder if I’ve missed a turn and come too far west. The summit must be further over, but I can’t work out why I can’t see it.

I cross a wall to the east side of the ridge, expecting to see the Kentmere Reservoir. And there, indeed, is water. Only it’s significantly bigger; and it’s gained an island.

There is a fell where Mardale Ill Bell should be, but it’s an entirely different shape. Everything is somehow familiar and yet completely wrong. It’s as if I’m drinking tea but expecting coffee and can’t make sense of it.

I look behind – I can see Thornthwaite Crag, but Froswick and Ill Bell are obscured by a large summit that wasn’t there before. On the left, a long ridge leads up to it, at once alien and familiar, like someone you know, but bump into out of context and can’t place. I reach for the map.

“Are you heading for High Raise?”, a cheery voice asks from behind.

I turn to see a white-haired man with a big smile and bags of enthusiasm. He sees the map and can’t help himself, he’s straight over to compare routes. “We’re missing out High Raise this time and heading straight for Kidsty Pike”, he says and nods at the shape-shifting Mardale Ill Bell.

With those words, I know exactly where I am, I’m just at a loss as to how I got here. I look back at the large fell behind me. The wall runs up over the top with a scraggy path in tow, but a better path traverses the western side, a little below the summit. This is the route I followed, so entranced by the view, that I managed to walk all the way over the top of High Street without noticing.

My new companion is scratching his head. “I can’t make out where we are on here”, he says, puzzling over the contours.

“You won’t”, I reply. “It’s the wrong map”. High Street spans the divide between two. I dig out the one that covers the northern region and fess up about my half-wittery. He chuckles and I bid him farewell as he heads for Kidsty Pike. I look down at the lake where I thought the Kentmere Reservoir should be. It’s a reservoir right enough. It serves Manchester; the remains of Mardale Green lie below its surface. It’s Haweswater.

Across the valley, the ridge has every right to look familiar. It’s Riggindale Edge – the finest way up High Street and a route I’ve taken many times – most recently, just two weeks ago. And yet then, as on every previous occasion, I turned left at the summit and returned over Mardale Ill Bell and Harter Fell. Why have I never come this way to visit Rampsgill Head, High Raise and Kidsty Pike? They look magnificent and I resolve to return.

It’s a promise I’ll keep twice in the weeks to come. The first time, I’ll meet a man from Lincolnshire in the gloom as the cloud descends. Together we’ll seek out these summits in fog. A month later, I’ll retrace our steps in the golden light of autumn. This time, the fells will echo with the bark of rutting stags…

I follow the wall back to the top of High Street.

Last Rays

It starts to cloud over as I reach the summit of Mardale Ill Bell, adding drama to the vistas over Haweswater and Small Water.

The rocky path to the top of Harter Fell looks tough as I descend to the Nan Bield Pass but its bark turns out to be worse than its bite. The path zig zags up through the crags and doesn’t test tired legs as much as I feared. Before long, I’m standing by its strange summit cairn, wrought from old iron fence posts.

From here, I follow the fence south over increasingly boggy ground. The sun retreats behind the building cloud. It’s an unwelcome reminder that summer’s almost gone. As if to reinforce the darkening mood, the top of Kentmere Pike is drab and featureless. The perfect pyramid of Ill Bell rises opposite across a plain of russet grass, but it feels autumnal now – the late summer sunshine I enjoyed on its summit seems an age ago. The wind whips up and starts to nip. I plod on through black mud, trying not to sink.

But like a feisty boar, summer’s not so easily defeated. Ahead, shafts of light pierce the gloom and hit the Kentmere valley, conjuring a vivid green oasis beyond the sombre brown of the fell. As I reach a ladder stile and start the climb to Shipman Knotts, the clouds roll back, and summer’s reign is gloriously reinstated.

Where Kentmere Pike lacked interest, Shipman Knotts is a beguiling maze of tumble-down walls and rocky outcrops. Heather sprouts from the crags and bracken-clad slopes roll away to Longsleddale. All is lit with the warm ember glow of afternoon sun and a sense of deep contentment kicks in.

At Wray Crag, a steep descent down rocky steps brings me to the Sadgill to Kentmere track. I follow the track towards Kentmere, relishing the soft afternoon light. Shortly after joining the road, I climb a stile into the first of two bracken-filled enclosures. They lead gently down to a small wooden footbridge over the Kent. It’s pretty beyond compare – a leafy parade of dappled sunlight, sparkling waters and foliage in every shade of green. I’m still smiling as I walk through Kentmere churchyard and back to the car.

Some days are simply perfect. This has been one of them. A tremendous ridge walk and a late rallying of summer. With the coming autumn, the days will shorten, the green will fade, the leaves will wither, and a damp chill will invade. But today will stay with me and its memory will bring warmth.

Many of our finest poets have extolled the restorative powers of the countryside, but it’s the Foo Fighters who are playing in my head, “Times like these, you learn to live again. Times like these – time and time again”.

To find a map and directions for this route, visit WalkLakes.co.uk

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.

Fell Walk, General, History, Literature, Natural History

All That Glitters…

August 13, 2017 George Kitching 16 Comments

The Newlands Horseshoe

The wild scenery of the Newlands valley is spectacularly beautiful and surprisingly famous, prized by both Beatrix Potter and Queen Elizabeth I for very different reasons. On this inspiring high-level circuit, I learn why the Earl of Northumberland lost his head and how a hedgehog may hold the key to happiness.

The Tale of Mrs Tiggy-winkle

“Once upon a time there was a little girl called Lucie, who lived at a farm called Little-town. She was a good little girl – only she was always losing her pocket handkerchiefs.”

So begins Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Mrs Tiggy-winkle, in which a little girl goes looking for her lost pinafore and pocket handkerchiefs. As she scrambles up a hill called Cat Bells, she discovers a door in the hillside. She knocks. The door opens, and she’s invited into the tiny kitchen of Mrs Tiggy-winkle, a washer-woman who launders clothes for the local animals. Not only has Mrs Tiggy-winkle found Lucie’s lost linen, she’s washed and pressed it all for her.

Out of gratitude, Lucie helps Mrs Tiggy-winkle deliver clean clothes to the animals. Once back at the stile, she watches Mrs Tiggy-winkle scamper home and notices now her friend suddenly looks smaller and seems to have swapped her clothes for a coat of prickles. Only then, does Lucie realise that Mrs Tiggy-winkle is a hedgehog.

Some think Lucie fell asleep at the stile and dreamt the whole escapade, but they can’t explain how she returned home with her freshly laundered pinafore and missing handkerchiefs.

The tale was Potter’s sixth book and the first to use a real-life setting. Cat Bells is a well-known Lakeland landmark, familiar to those visiting Keswick as the distinctive hill rising over the far bank of Derwent Water. Its western slopes run down to the Newlands valley. At the valley’s wild heart is Littletown, a tiny hamlet comprising a farm and a few cottages.

In the summer of 1904, Potter took a holiday at Lingholm, just outside Portinscale, at the foot of the valley. She spent her time sketching Newlands, Littletown, Cat Bells and the mighty Skiddaw, whose summits dominate the skyline to the north-east. These pen and ink drawings were reproduced in the finished book, virtually unchanged. Even the door in the hillside had a basis in reality – it probably shuttered an old mine level. With its publication, one of the quietest and most secluded of Lakeland valleys became well known to millions of children around the world.

The Rising of the North

But Newlands found fame long before Potter’s time. Goldscope, on the lower slopes of Hindscarth, was the most renowned of the Cumbrian mines, yielding rich seams of copper, lead and even small quantities of gold and silver. The German engineers, who spearheaded the works, named it Gottesgab, or God’s Gift (eventually corrupted to Goldscope). Elizabeth I considered the mine so strategically important that she requisitioned it from its owner, Thomas Percy, 7th Earl of Northumberland, and refused to pay him royalties. Percy took the Queen to court, and, unsurprisingly, he lost. A catholic and supporter of Mary Queen of Scots, the earl was already ill-disposed to the protestant Elizabeth and the loss of revenue from his land proved the last straw. In 1569, he joined forces with The Earl of Westmorland and several other Catholic nobles in the Rising of the North, an armed insurrection against the Queen. The rebellion was quashed, and Elizabeth parted Percy from more than his mine. She cut off his head.

The Newlands Horseshoe

Newlands is ringed by a mighty horseshoe of fells. The eastern prong comprises Cat Bells, Maiden Moor and High Spy, while the western side splits into horseshoe of its own, with an outer wall of Robinson and High Snab Bank, and an inner curtain of Hindscarth and Scope End (Goldscope lies beneath). Dale Head stands exactly where you’d expect – a grand centrepiece.

On a beautiful June morning, I park up in Littletown and take the track opposite the farm, signposted Hause Gate and Cat Bells. Scope End rises invitingly across the valley. Wainwright says we should “make a special note of the Scope End ridge: this route on an enchanting track along the heathery crest, is really splendid… In descent, the route earns full marks because of the lovely views of Newlands directly ahead.”

I’m here to tackle the horseshoe, but heeding Wainwright’s advice, I leave Scope End for last and follow the track eastwards up the fellside, bearing right on to a grassy bridleway. The path crosses a stream then zigzags up to the col of Hause Gate between Cat Bells and Maiden Moor. The sudden eye-watering aspect over Derwent Water and Bassenthwaite to Skiddaw is enough to quicken the pulse if it wasn’t already racing from the ascent. It’s only 9 o’clock, and even at this hour, there’s strength in the sun. The Newlands slopes are shades of green so vivid they assault the senses, but a summer haze paints the distant shores in watercolour.

I forego Cat Bells (it’s in the opposite direction to the rest of the horseshoe) and turn right for Maiden Moor. Maiden Moor’s summit is a featureless plateau, but from here on, the horseshoe is an airy, high level circuit that is never short of spectacular. The drama increases as soon as the crags of High Spy North Top appear. Its rocky outcrops afford the last sparkling mirage of Derwentwater.

The true summit lies a little further onward. At its western edge, the precipitous cliffs of Eel Crag plunge to Newlands’ floor. Across the valley, the rocky face of Hindscarth rises in counterpoint like a dark grooved pyramid on an upward sweep of green, the spires of Coledale beyond. Borrowdale unfolds viridian below, and further round, a tsunami of white cloud breaks over Great Gable, engulfing the summit in a surging wash of foam, the surf plunging below the skyline.

It’s Olympian. I seem to have reached the top of the world. Such a scene would have undoubtedly inspired the Great Masters to paint lavish depictions of God

As I stare in wonder, I notice a solitary figure sitting on the horizon, legs outstretched, gazing down on creation. Could this be the Almighty on a tea break, taking five to review his work?

I draw nearer. Now, I see that the Great Masters got it all wrong. There’s no long white beard or flowing robes. No muscle-bound Adonis hurling thunderbolts. No Bacchanalian feast. Just an old chap in a plaid shirt and a battered fishing cap eating corned-beef sandwiches from a Tupperware tucker box. As a vision of The Almighty, it’s perfect.

I notice how the summit cairn is a work of art – a perfect cone, worthy of Andy Goldsworthy. Perhaps, it was a divine commission. As I pass, I shout a greeting to God. He responds with a brief salute and returns to his sandwiches.

Top of the World - High Spy — Top of the World – High Spy

The seasoned mountaineer, Bill Birkett, describes the pull up Dale Head as “strenuous”, so I’m ready for a stiff climb, but I have to say, it doesn’t look all that much higher. Only once I’m over the crest do I realise quite how far the path drops to Dale Head Tarn first. On the way down, the cloud inversion is ever more beguiling. It makes the loss of altitude worthwhile. I indulge my eyes in the certain knowledge my quads will pick up the tab shortly.

A large stone shelter sits above the tarn. I rest a few minutes, staring straight down the valley to Skiddaw, then wander down to the waterline. The surface is an oasis of cool blue glittering among the reed beds. It’s a lovely spot to while away a sunny day. But I must put these thoughts from my mind, I have another mountain to climb.

The ascent is steep but mercifully short, and the effort is gratuitously rewarded. Dale Head’s sculptural cairn makes High Spy’s look like a preliminary sketch. The real show-stopper, though, is the magnificent view down the entire length of the Newlands valley – a perfect, glacial, U-shaped example. In geological terms, Dale Head is the junction between two major Lakeland rock formations: sedimentary Skiddaw Slate to the north and Borrowdale Volcanic to the south; systems of stone separated by fifty million years of planetary evolution.

The view south over the dark mossy crags of Fleetwith Pike to the distant brooding leviathans of Great Gable, Kirk Fell and Pillar is every bit as arresting. I walk west along the long flat top, pausing frequently to savour it all. As the path drops to the depression before Hindscarth, a magnificent prospect gapes open over Buttermere to High Stile and her henchmen, High Crag and Red Pike. A photographer mounts a massive lens on a tripod. I take a photograph, surreptitiously, and try not to feel inadequate about my little point-and-shoot.

It’s the perfect spot to pause and eat some lunch.

A crunch of scree below. Two fell-runners are jogging up the stiff gradient. When they reach me, they pause for breath and we chat. They’re attempting a section of the Bob Graham Round, a leisurely little leg-stretcher, in which contestants conquer 44 peaks in under 24 hours. They’ve run over Robinson and they’re heading for Great Gable. After the briefest of respites, they resume, and I watch in bewilderment. Apparently by pushing your body to that kind of physical extreme, you experience an endorphin-induced euphoria. I’m perched on a rock, eating a pie – it’s euphoria enough for me!

Redemption

After lunch, I stroll down to the depression and follow the path right, to the summit of Hindscarth. Across Little Dale, Robinson is a mirror image, dropping abruptly to High Snab Bank, as I drop down to Scope End.

Wainwright was right about Scope End. The ridge is utterly enchanting. As I walk amongst the Bilberry and Bell Heather, I realise I’m smiling. This is hardly remarkable: I’m a glass-half-full kind of guy, it’s a beautiful day and I’m walking the fells. But I’ve been out of sorts all week. Sometimes, it seems as if the current is against you and you expend all your energy just treading water. On top of that, a friend is seriously ill in hospital and the prognosis is not good. If the worst happens, people I care a great deal about face a very painful time ahead.

Being out here doesn’t change that, but somehow it makes it easier to accept. We spend much of our lives so divorced from the natural order of things that we are easily shocked and outraged, even terrified by its realities. Immersing ourselves in the natural world for a short while, helps put things in context. Out here it’s easy to see how precarious our lives are. This landscape is hundreds of millions of years old, the whole of human existence, but a few thousand. Our tiny sparks of life are the briefest of candles, but to have been lit at all we’ve beaten overwhelming odds. Our time is short, but the fact we are here is astonishing. The only possible response is to seize life firmly with both hands and wring out every last drop of value. What that actually means is different for each of us, but what it definitely doesn’t mean is dwelling too long on the past or fretting so much about the future that we fail to embrace the present. My friend has never been guilty of that. Neither will I be.

As for all that other stuff – well it seems to have shrunk drastically in significance. Spend too long staring at your shoes and the obstacles in front can seem like mountains. Climb a real mountain and you see them for what they are – trifling impediments, easily overcome with the smallest of steps.

Beatrix Potter understood. Some literary critics, like Ruth MacDonald, felt the plot of Mrs Tiggy-winkle was “thin”, perhaps dated because of its apparent concern with the domestic chores traditionally associated with girls; perhaps also, because Lucie appears to learn nothing of herself as a consequence of the story. Others, like Humphrey Carpenter, think the book explores the theme of nature-as-redemption. In this respect, the linen is allegorical. Something is missing from Lucie’s life; her world is disordered. In Mrs Tiggy-winkle’s kitchen, Lucie immerses herself in an older, slower, natural Arcadia where she finds a temporary refuge. When she returns home, what was missing has been restored.

Potter was not just an author but a hill farmer; a firm believer in conserving the landscape and its traditional ways of life. The existence of the Lake District National Park owes much to her bequest, and she would undoubtedly be delighted to learn her legacy has achieved UNESCO world heritage site status. Given Potter’s beliefs, I feel Carpenter’s interpretation must be right. It’s surely no coincidence that Mrs Tiggy-winkle is the first of Potter’s books to be set in a real-life location, she cared so much about.

I reach the valley floor and look back at its sweeping green majesty. To my left, the beck glitters like a bed of jewels. Scope End’s eastern flank bears a small scar, however. Two spoil heaps mark the entrance to Goldscope mine. It looks far too tiny to have such a turbulent and far-reaching history; feuds fought, and lives lost over the small seams of metal encased in its rocks.

The quantities of gold and silver extracted here were negligible, but Elizabeth I used its copper to debase the national currency – swapping silver coinage for copper and keeping the silver for herself. How much of human history has centred on the ruthless pursuit of metal we deem “precious” by dint of its being glittery and rare? Homo Sapiens: “wise man”. On the vast timeline of evolution, we’ve only been around for about five minutes; perhaps we’re not quite as evolved as we think we are.

As I walk down toward the footbridge, I pass a wooden bench. It bears a commemorative plaque:

“Brian Gudgeon Machin

1924-2000

He drew strength from the fells”

You and me both Brian – and a little girl called Lucie who was always losing her pocket handkerchiefs.

Art, Fell Walk, General, Ghost Story, History, Natural History

Ghosts of Canadian Airmen

July 16, 2017 George Kitching 21 Comments

Wetherlam, Swirl How & Great Carrs via Steel Edge

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

Sheep Folds

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

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

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

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

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

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

Andy Goldsworthy Touchstone Fold, Tilberthwaite

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

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

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

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

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

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

Andy Goldsworthy Sheepfold, Tilberthwaite

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

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

Steel Edge

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LL505 S for Sugar

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

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

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

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

Memorial to the Crew, Great Carrs — Memorial to the Crew

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

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

Mountain Top Memorial, Great Carrs — Mountain Top Memorial

Haunted

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

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

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

Monuments

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

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

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

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

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