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Blue Shoes on Blencathra

Blencathra is one of the two most northerly mountains of any significant size in the English Lake District. It lies to the east and marginally south of Skiddaw, the third highest mountain in England and it's probably the hill I've pee'd on more than any other in the British Isles.

I should take a moment to explain a habit of mine - that of referring to mountains as hills and just occasionally, vice versa. The Shorter Oxford dictionary sheds just a little light on this distinction. Apparently a hill is a small mountain and perhaps not surprisingly therefore, a mountain is a large hill. Well that helped, didn't it?

Wikipedia starts off well:

"The distinction between a hill and a mountain is unclear and largely subjective, but a hill is generally somewhat lower and less steep than a mountain."

but then adds much confusion:

"In the United Kingdom it is popularly believed that the Ordnance Survey defines a 'mountain' as a peak greater than 1000 feet (305 meters) above sea level, a belief which forms the basis of the film The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain"

I wonder if there's a polite phrase for "what a load of nonsense", perhaps one that I could easily retract should anyone wish to defend this 'belief' with a pitch fork?

Wikipedia also says:

"The Oxford English Dictionary, by contrast, suggests a limit of 2000 ft (610 m)."

Eh, okay, look, that's not in my 2 volume Shorter Oxford Dictionary. Maybe it's in the full 20 volume set but I can't afford that and it's really quite a heavy thing to lug around, so unless you happen to have it handy to disprove me, I'm going to state that any such definition is plainly pants!

Wikipedia does tell us:

"Mountains in Scotland are frequently referred to as "hills" no matter what their height, as reflected in names such as the Cuillin Hills and the Torridon Hills"

Now this is absolutely true and at the risk of making you dizzy by circling back to the Shorter Oxford definition, it's because mountains are big and hills are small. So Everest is a mountain and Ben Nevis, the highest piece of rock in the British Isles is nothing more than a wee hill. Simple, isn't it?

I'm sure you'll be relieved to have that ambiguity cleared up! Now, where was I ... oh, yes, pee'ing on Blencathra. Well it's just that I've been up there so often, you see. On busy climbing club meets it would be the last hill visited at the end of a weekend in the Lakes, a quick up and down on the way back to the motorway and the long minibus drive back to London. Several times recently, it has provided a quick piece of exercise while travelling up and down the country's M6 backbone, being as it is only 40 minutes legal drive along the A66.

photo by Andrew Pescod

Once I even climbed it in a pair of blue, soft leather casual shoes (not suede no, and I can't sing like Elvis either). Now before being sued, I must state that you should never do this yourself, quite irresponsible. When on British mountains, always wear the proper equipment: sturdy boots, waterproofs and of course a large, noisy cowbell around your neck.

It was during a drive from deepest, darkest North Wales, to Scotland and I really needed some exercise. My accelerator pedal foot had cramp and I needed a pee badly. Of course, Blencathra was the obvious solution to both problems. Having made the 40 minute drive, parked the car, sorted out my rucksack, I realised I'd forgotten my scrambling boots. Darn it! After a few minutes deliberation - I was here now, weather was excellent, how could I not go up my favourite hill? I mean, there he was, waiting for me like an old friend. "Acht, I'll just have tae see how far I can get in these", I thought.

There were a couple of muddy sections on the lower hill-foot path. These I avoided by several spectacular, goat like leaps, and a very conveniently placed fence. The initial steep grass of the ascent itself, in this case, Halls Fell Ridge, was pretty straightforward as it was dry, but the upper rocky and spiky sections were a bit more painful, seeing as my soles were thin and quite soft. At the top, I sat for a few minutes with a bite to eat while nursing bruised feet, then headed off down Scales Fell. Unfortunately the grass on the way down, was quite damp and I found that soft, flat soles had a tendency to act like a skateboard on this surface. The descent therefore involved a very muddy and wet bum, quite a lot of, "whey-eeeey-thud" noises and the odd "splosh". The aim however was achieved. I no longer had cramp in my right foot, and I'd relieved myself twice, adding therefore to my cumulative score and ensuring no lack of flow for the local bottled spring water.

Blencathra shares an almost 10 square mile hinterland with Skiddaw and also has several other delights which I haven't touched on here. One of these is Sharp Edge, an entertaining but straightforward little rocky scramble above a beautiful pool of water called Scales Tarn. I hope to provide a small and hopefully photographic description of that little gem at some future point. However I hope this little taster has tempted you to explore what really is one of the finest and most conveniently situated hills in the Northern Lakes.

Listening to: Led Zeppelin, "Misty Mountain Hop"
Feeling: relieved

Note: hillwalking, climbing and mountaineering are activities with a danger of personal injury or death. Participants in these activities should be aware of and accept these risks and be responsible for their own actions and involvement.

Wellingtons and Waterproofs

A day in the Lakes

The road sign said "1,295 deaths in the last five years" (or thereabouts). Perhaps this might explain why I saw 4 police cars pulled up sneakily in hidden driveways, within a 5 mile stretch of the A595 between Thursby and Carlisle. I'd popped up towards Carlisle to visit a cemetery. Thankfully I didn't see any accidents along the way.

The Lake District is a very beautiful place, but it's not at it's best in inclement weather. Fortunately I know the place quite well. On an evening when it's wet, muddy and steeped in dense cloud it's like an old friend, I feel quite at home here.

Damp weather does make tent erection a little harder though, especially in the dark. I've hardly been out this Summer and it took five minutes longer than normal to pitch, poles in the wrong holes and feet tangled in the guys, Mr Magoo in charge of a tent. One advantage of night-time pitching is that your camping neighbours can only hear you grumbling and grunting. In the morning they'd have to puzzle out which of the new arrivals had been the incompetent oaf who tripped over their guy rope. Eventually, I threw in my camp gear, dried off and I was in a cozy, warm and dry heaven.

I just love camping out.

Asleep by 10 p.m. - this is a puzzle. I wasn't very tired after the drive and it really only took 15 minutes of struggling to get the tent up. When I'm playing the role of the little worker stuck in a concrete ghetto of little workers, I suffer from insomnia, sometimes getting less than two hours sleep in a night. In bed by 10? It would be less of a challenge to be strapped down and to have my little hairs slowly pulled out. So why am I out like a light at 10?

And what a great night's sleep! 9 hours uninterrupted snoozing until the pitter patter of rain on the outer tent shell woke me. Like an orchestra warming up, the gradual awareness of a cacophony of little sounds. The wind in the trees, birds singing, a sheep nibbling, the tom-tom-splat rattling of larger drops of water falling on the tent. I undid some zips - five in all, camping always seems to involve lots of zipping and unzipping - poked my head out and noticed that I hadn't quite cleared the farthest branches of a nearby tree when I pitched last night. The tree that was now dripping heavily into my eye. I was about to go back inside my tortoise shell pit when someone, fully kitted in waterproofs suddenly appeared, "Tent fees please". Almost forgot that I have to pay for all this freedom.

Got up and dressed, wellingtons and waterproofs, then did a tent check. I was far enough away from the tree to avoid any electric shock treatment in the event of a thunderstorm, but close enough to suffer a mild crushing effect if it decided to topple. I examined the tree. It was very old and resisted my attempts to push it over. I thought I probably had time for a pee, a wash, breakfast and a whole day's getting wet before there was any significant danger. More problematic were my training shoes, I'd forgotten to put them inside the tent outer last night. They were like sunken boats in the mud. I lifted one up and slowly poured the water out. I looked up, no sign of any good drying weather on the horizon ... no sign of the horizon.

Rainy camping breakfasts aren't really things you want to savour. I actually like soggy muesli, dried fruit and bran flakes for breakfast, but there's a definite time lag between the pouring on of the milk and the development of just the right degree of sogginess to make a really good soggy muesli breakfast. I was therefore quite a proud little squirrel because I'd remembered to do pre soak my nuts and seeds last night.

(By the way, you're not allowed to have naughty thoughts about this particular mushroom!!)

Visits to the hills often involve scrabbling around on steep rock, looking for for elusive footholds. It was clear that today, the rock would be wet and slippery so I decided to leave my scrambling boots behind and spend the day in wellies. This was a good decision because once I started out, it decided to rain properly!! I bravely looked up into the clouds covering Grassmoor's summit then wimpishly turned tail and headed down to the shelter of Crummock Water's wooded shores.

You'll be wondering by now, why all the pictures of mushrooms. Well it really wasn't a good day for mountain panoramas. While I was being dripped on by what may have been an oak, I noticed an umbrella mushroom growing out amid the moss on a tree trunk. There wasn't much light so a tripod was needed to keep the camera still during slow shutter speeds. If you've ever wondered what kind of very odd person stands around in the pouring rain for two hours trying to get the right light for a photograph of mushrooms ...

Further along the shore were some rocks in the lake, sheltered under a large roof of long tree branches. It seemed more like a dark cavern than a lake shore. Again low light here and again I needed a tripod. This time I only spent an hour and a half, but myself and my three-legged camera support were standing in just over a foot of water throughout that time. I was trying slow shutter speeds, experimenting with the moving waves over rocks and pebbles. Two lots of people stopped and puzzled silently over what I might be doing. I smiled and tried to look like a complete fruitcake.

The good news is that I got six shots. The bad news is that when I got back, I found they'd all turned out fuzzy.

After a few more strange looks here I thought it best to become a land dweller again. I headed round the lake and got a couple of shots of the water. The cloud had lifted a little but it wasn't possible to stand straight in the face of the wind. Every now and again, it would whistle down from the hills and whisk up a series of water spouts across the Lake. Quite hard to photograph without camera shake.

I decided to give the camera a break then. There's a place at the north-western end of Crummock water where you can sit on the lake shore (it's safer than standing), face the full brunt of the gale and gaze all the way past Red Pike and High Stile to Haystacks and beyond. A while back, I posted about one of my places. Well in quite a different way, this is another. A majestic but also strangely peaceful place, somewhere to expire and have my remains seep into the soil. If I had to become a tree, this is where I'd choose.

I spent quite a while here, conversing with the wind, waiting for my legs to turn into roots and for leaves to sprout from my fingertips. It was most annoying when this didn't happen. Clearly it wasn't my day to become a tree after all. Instead, I pulled myself up, headed out into the wind and slogged up gravelly paths into the cloud to get my late afternoon's worth of exercise.

It pretty much rained for the rest of the day and it was almost dark when I got back to the campsite. After a bite to eat, I put my head down and was dead to the world in an instant. Dreaming of mushrooms.

Note: the images here link to larger versions at Odd Photo, my new photoblog and from there you can get to even bigger ones at Flickr.

Spirits on the Quiraing

The Quiraing is a mountain on the end of the Trotternish peninsula of Skye, N.W. Scotland. From its summit you can see the 130 mile long outer Hebridean island chain and the entire North West coast of Scotland in a 270 degree panoramic vista.

Coaches and tourists claim it during the high season and it's popular with walkers most other weekends, so those who feel at home with mountains and solitude would do better to choose early morning or late evening, on a weekday in Winter or Spring for a visit. An easy stroll out from the car park or a longer walk up from Staffin village brings you under its steep and overhanging cliffs and that in itself is worth doing. For those with just a little more stamina, a great route to the top, continues round under its eastern promontory, then onto the northern saddle and easy slopes to the summit, "Meall na Suiramach", usually returning the same way.

But it does have another curious corner. A flat and grassy Table, not half the size of a football pitch, hangs tantalisingly just beyond reach below its Northernmost crags. From the south-east, a tricky and particularly steep grass and loose scree slope climbs directly up, through the middle of its dizzy imposing cliffs. It's only a short jaunt but it feels like you're climbing up and under the portcullis of Valhalla. Even the experienced tread this with care and it isn't for the meek when snow or wet grass are underfoot. A lesser known, still steep but more stable walk that climbs directly up through a gully to the north-east, is safer, but harder to find for the uninitiated. Both walks comes with a slight risk of weather-loosened boulders falling from the heights above.

This is one of my places. You can listen to the wind here, and you can hear the world grinding around on its axis. On a wild and stormy day, it's one of the corners of our planet that defines the word, 'magnificent'.

A few years ago, someone, I've no idea who, trudged, struggled and sweated up through these steep cliffs and crags and loose pebbles, carrying the massive weight of an inscribed gravestone, a tribute to someone who passed away but who loved this particular place.

It lies resting, simply propped against the cliff at the rear of the Table and surrounded by a few small stones.

Spirits live here now.