Saturday 31st March, 10am I left home to drive up to Keswick, leaving the girls in the capable hands of my long-suffering wife. The plan was to get there, check in to Denton House (the bunkhouse that I was staying in), then meet up with Pete Watson, his sister-in-law Lisa Watson, and James MacKeddie for a gentle trot around Leg 1 of the BG route.
As with all of the best laid plans, something went awry - most of the population of England it seemed had descended on Keswick, and James couldn't get parked, so it ended up just being Pete, Lisa and myself.
The weather was a bit grim, cold in the town with a chilly breeze blowing, but not too bad, cloud ceiling around 600-700m. We set off through Fitz Park, the up the path to Latrigg.
Just past the car park, the wind picked up and I had to put on my coat to keep warm We carried on up the main path, getting colder and windier, with snow starting to appear on the ground. The in the space of about 10m of climb, we went from some visibility, to none.
It was pretty cold, but not too windy and ok as long as we were moving. Just past the path junction to Little Man, there was a pretty cool ice formation on the fence.
From here to the top of Skiddaw, it feels a lot further than it looks on paper, especially into a freezing headwind with no visibility! Up near the very top, the wind properly hit, nearly blowing us sideways off the top of the mountain!
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| Trig Point! |
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| Pete reclining against the wind. |
The next bit is a bit more difficult with no visibility, finding the turn offto get down, heading in the right direction for Great Calva. After overshooting slightly, then retracing our steps, we found the stile and trotted off downhill, with the wind dying off and the temperature increasing (a little).
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| Just below the cloud ceiling. |
We managed to stick on the correct trod, and passed beside Hare Crag, instead of getting bogged in the heather like last time! Next up was the horrible boggy trudge up Great Calva. My least favourite spot in the Lake District. Surprised it hasn't slumped in on itself as it's so boggy!
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| Heading towards Great Calva |
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| Just past the worst of the bog, looking back towards Lonscale Fell |
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| Sunlight on the flank of Skiddaw |
We tagged the top, then followed the fence line down to Wiley Gill, then straight across (the bog!) to the climb up Mungrisdale Common.
When we got a bit closer to Atkinson Pike, we took an arbitrary right, skirting below Blue Screes and taking a direct line for the summit (or at least, where we figured the summit to be!). We got it pretty bang on, then headed straight over to see what Hall's Fell Ridge was like, as we'd been down Doddick Fell last time.
It was interesting.
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| Just over the top... |
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| Little bit further down. |
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| Pretty steep in places. |
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| Can see where we're heading now! |
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| Clough Head in the distance, looking imposing. |
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| Lisa "manouvering" over a tricky bit. |
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| Favourite shot of the day |
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| Looking back where we came from. |
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| Catbells, Derwentwater and Sunlight in the distance. |
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| Nearly there. |
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| And down. Top's almost clear now that we're down. |
Conclusion so far is that Doddick Fell is definitely faster if the weather's iffy!
Some splits:
Moot hall -> Skiddaw: 1:27
Skiddaw -> Great Calva: 0:50
Great Calva -> Blencathra: 1:10
Blancathra -> Threlkeld: 0:41
Total : 4:08
What I'm hoping to do on the day:
Moot hall -> Skiddaw: 1:16
Skiddaw -> Great Calva: 0:40
Great Calva -> Blencathra: 1:03
Blancathra -> Threlkeld: 0:28
Total : 3:27
Best get training some more then.
For fuel around this bit I used 500ml of MountainFuel Xtreme, and 3x peanut butter, jam and sticky rice slices that I made from the Feedzone Portables cookbook.
Strava:
Legs 4 and 5 next!
