Helvellyn via Grisedale Tarn from Thirlmere
On a stunning hill walk over the Helvellyn range, I discover a teddy bear with a tragic tale to tell and delve into history and folklore to encounter a lost Celtic crown, a ghost army, a reckless romantic artist eulogised for the manner of his death and a dog’s devotion that endured beyond the grave.
Nestled between the mighty flanks of Fairfield and the hefty Helvellyn massif, Grisedale Tarn has an eerie, other-worldly majesty. As the cloud hangs low over its silent waters, you can almost imagine a hand emerging from its depths and holding aloft Excalibur. But it’s another Celtic chieftain whose legend pervades here.
Dunmail was the last of the Cumbrian kings, slain in a bloody battle with massed Scottish and Saxon forces. His men were routed, mutilated and forced to build a large cairn, Dunmail Raise, on the spot where their chieftain fell. To save Dunmail’s crown from Saxon mitts, they cast it into Grisedale Tarn, where it is rumoured to remain. Legend has it that, every year, a ghostly army returns, retrieves the crown and carries it back to Dunmail Raise, convinced their king will, one day, rise again and reclaim his kingdom.
Today, the cairn sits on the central reservation of a short stretch of dual carriageway between Grasmere and Keswick, just before the A591 skirts the shore of Thirlmere. Turn away from the tarmac however, and climb the path alongside the cascading waters of Raise Beck, and the modern world quickly fades. By the time you reach the tarn, the stuff of legend is tangible.
Some fine ridge walks converge here. Walkers from Patterdale, with lofty ambitions and matching energy levels, can conquer St Sunday Crag and climb Fairfield by the rocky pinnacle of Cofa Pike. I’m heading for Helvellyn, which means the zigzag path up the southern slope of Dollywagon Pike.
As if still in mourning for Dunmail’s demise, the sky darkens and the cloud comes down. By the time I reach the top it’s enveloped in a thick mist. The way to Helvellyn is wide and easily followed, but Dollywagon’s summit requires a brief detour. I follow the sketchy path along the line of the crags. Distant silhouettes of walkers and some jubilant whoops reassure me I’m heading in the right direction. Soon, the summit cairn comes into view and the reason for their felicity is revealed. A party of charity fundraisers is preparing for a group photo, unfurling their “24 peak challenge” banner in triumph. The celebrations are cut abruptly short, when a navigationally diligent member realises this isn’t Helvellyn after all, and the banner is duly packed away.
As they dissolve into the murk in search of the right mountain, I’m left alone on a slender promontory descending all around into cloud.
Then I notice something out of place. A small teddy bear, tucked carefully behind a rock. It clearly hasn’t been dropped by accident, but what is it doing here? It has a laminated card tagged to its ear bearing the web address, https://www.facebook.com/angelbabycassie.
It’s been placed by a grieving father in memory of his stillborn daughter, Cassie Elizabeth. Nicky Bloor has set himself the challenge of climbing the 100 highest peaks in England and Wales in order to raise awareness and fund help for other parents going through this harrowing experience. On each summit, he leaves a teddy, like the one he’d bought for Cassie. The one she never got to hug.
A sudden flash of blue sky, and I get a tantalising glance of the valley below. The cloud shrouds round again, but the wind has whipped up a pace and is blowing it clear. As I pick my way back to the main path, the vista to the west opens up, revealing a panoramic parade of Lakeland peaks, the sun illuminating their slopes like a Heaton Cooper painting.
I press on for the deliciously named Nethermost Pike. By now the sky has cleared to the east, rewarding those of us who have braved the gloom with heady views over Ullswater and Striding Edge. Striding Edge is a jagged Helvellyn arête. It affords adventurers, with a head for heights, an exhilarating way to scramble to the summit. From Nethermost Pike, its intrepid walkers look like ants or stick men. We appear to have swapped Heaton Cooper for LS Lowry.
I track round the edge of the crags to get a closer look at Striding Edge, and Red Tarn beyond. As I join the route coming up from the ridge, I encounter a monument to Charles Gough. Gough was a romantic artist, who died here in 1805. He attracted little attention during his lifetime, but was later immortalised by William Wordsworth and Sir Walter Scott, who saw the free-spirited (or just plain reckless) nature of his death as the ultimate expression of the romantic ideal. A tourist in the Lake District, Gough set out to climb Helvellyn with no experience and only his faithful dog, Foxie, for company. Three months later, a shepherd found his corpse beside Red Tarn and supposed he must have fallen from Striding Edge. Foxie was still guarding his body.
This image of canine fidelity was irresistible to the Romantics, who pictured a devoted spaniel lovingly defending her master’s body from the ravens that picked at his bones. A Carlisle newspaper had a more prosaic interpretation, “The bitch had pupped in a furze near the body of her master, and, shocking to relate, had torn the cloaths from his body and eaten him to a perfect skeleton.”
With the clouds parted, the views from the top of Helvellyn are every bit as spectacular as you would expect from the third highest mountain in England. They continue to reward all the way down to Thirlmere. On the way, I pass a man who can climb no further due to his crippling fear of heights, but whose overriding ambition is to make it to the top one day. And a lovely couple, who ask me earnestly if they are nearly at the summit – a hundred yards above the car park!
All human experience is here then – the history, the comedy and the tragedy; the poetic and prosaic; the noble and foolhardy; and all somehow diminished in significance by these wild, beautiful, remote peaks with their rocky outcrops and sweeping vistas, formed from catastrophic eruptions 450 million years ago.
As the country argues angrily over Brexit – union or independence – the legend of Dunmail is a timeless reminder that it was always thus. But, these magnificent hills were here long before there were human feet to tread them and they will remain long after the last walking boot has crumbled into the dust. It’s a realisation as liberating as it is humbling. Perhaps, this is why one man is so desperate to conquer his fear while another seeks solace here from the pain of losing his child. To borrow a line from Bono, “kingdoms rise and kingdoms fall, but you go on and on”.
Click here for detailed directions at WalkLakes.co.uk