Hiking in The Lake District
After some years separated by University, Covid and general adult life, the boys and I finally found the time to relive our glory days in the Lake District, which we first visited for our Duke of Edinburgh expeditions. Here’s how it went.
Day 1
The 250-mile journey from Huntingdon to Grasmere made us keen to stretch our legs and start summiting some peaks. Silver How, being the closest, seemed like a good place to start. 5 minutes around the corner from our Airbnb we were off the beaten track and Zac surprised us with a pack of Coronas (the beer, not the virus)! However, counting was never Zac’s forte, and he was one short, so naturally, the Fielding brothers offered to share.
The climb was steep and the August sun was hot. I must admit, I was starting to get concerned about how I would fare against some of the longer and steeper routes Jack had planned for us. However, upon reaching the top, the blissful expanse only got me fired up to climb higher in the days to come.
After a trundle down the southwestern slope of Silver How, we made our way into Grasmere in the search of a hearty meal. Much to our disappointment, we were turned away by every single restaurant in the town due to them all being full. We wandered around helplessly for a good half-hour and eventually came across The Swan on the outskirts, where, after some bartering, we were offered a table. 4 pints, pies and sticky toffee puddings later, we were ready to hit the hay.
Day 2
As in our days of D of E, Jack was route-master. I don’t trust that boy to do much, but I would never question his ability to get us from A to B with some mountains in between. Zac, Rob and I were going in blind most days, we’d put all our faith in Jack to lead us on the most scenic and enjoyable routes with a bit of a challenge in there too. Jack did not disappoint with Day 2’s route.
We started the day early and set off into the morning-dewy fields and up the Tongue Gill valley to Grisedale Tarn. Now, I know I just said that I would never question Jack’s route, but what came next did call for some explicit language. The southern slope of Dollywaggon Pike may as well have been a ladder, as we had to climb up it on all fours, and as such referred to it as “The Ladder” for the rest of the trip. From the top, we were greeted with our first view of the day’s highest peak, Helvellyn, and the technically gruelling descent that would follow, Striding Edge.
The summit of Helvellyn was bustling with other walkers, even some dogs and a cyclist. Hungry for lunch, we kept moving, traversing the steep-sided ridge and made our way down to the quaint lakeside town of Glenridding, where we paused for a much-needed ice cream and swim in Ullswater lake.
Having already summited and celebrated the highest peak of the day, the prospect of climbing back up another almost-as-high-peak wasn’t all that appealing I will admit, but after a few rounds of word association games we’d conquered it and it was all downhill from then on. On our descent, we were given our first reminder why holidaying in the UK is usually avoided. The heavens opened and followed us almost all the way home. No rain was going to dampen our spirits though, we’d smashed the day’s hike and remembered we had a whole banana bread loaf in the bag.
We learnt our lesson from the previous day and pre-booked ourselves in for a table at Tweedies that evening which was just what we needed after 55,000 steps.
Day 3
We had planned to hedge our bets and not go all out every day, so Day 3’s hike was a simple up and down of Skiddaw, with the intention to return to Keswick for a round of pitch-and-putt in the early afternoon and enjoy some bevvies on the shore of Derwent Water.
There’s very little to say about the climb up Skiddaw. We followed the well-trodden path from Keswick with little room for error and no particularly challenging sections. We kept up a faster-than-usual pace with the intention of staying out of earshot of the family who were hot on our tail. Their son was reciting his timetables in his outdoor voice and it slowly began to drive us mad. “CHEESEBURGER!” (I don’t even want to explain).
The summit of Skiddaw was deep in cloud so visibility was poor and the wind was howling so we didn’t stay long. The descent was about twice as steep as the ascent and mostly loose slate which we found a bit sketchy; except for Zac who stuck his hands in his jacket pocket and just walked down it like it was a set of stairs?! With Keswick in sight and rain clouds on the horizon, we covered ground as quickly as we could, but couldn’t outrun the rain and took yet another drenching.
Keswick was crowded with other tourists, few who looked like they’d done any actual hiking since arriving in The Lakes, more ‘spectators’ than ‘participants’, shall we say. There were undeniably more people in the queue for mini-golf than there had been summiting Skiddaw that day, which made us feel very smug. We watched the sunset over Derwent Water and then stuffed ourselves with the best burgers in town from The Round, which is well-deserving of its #1 rank of all restaurants in Keswick.
Day 4
Day 4… where do I begin….?
Not fully recovered from the previous two days of walking, Zac and I were keen to shorten Jack’s planned 20-miler from Grasmere to the highest peak in England, Scafell Pike, and back again. The rain was evidently going to fall all day, and the temperatures up high were actually really quite cold; I’m talking single-digit cold. Jack and Rob however, being the cyborgs that they are, were not phased by the prospect of exhaustion, injury, or possible death. They relished the opportunity and were fully committed to Plan A.
Zac and I formed Plan B, a much less demanding route, but equally rewarding in summiting the 978m peak. We would drive to a starting location in Seathwaite, grab a coffee, sit in the car for a bit, and then begin the ascent from the North, whilst Jack and Rob would be approaching from the East, with the hope that if we had timed it correctly, we would be able to cross paths and summit the mountain together.
Spoiler alert: Plan B required astronomically accurate timing, which Zac and I completely misjudged and disaster ensued.
Caffeine fueled optimism (or maybe naivety) lead Zac and me to start the ascent about 2 hours early than we should have. We had a lovely hike up the river-carved valley; we both agreed it had been our favourite bit of walking of the whole trip despite the constant downpour of rain, which at least made up for the lack of nattering Fieldings with us. As we climbed higher and higher, the visibility got worse and worse, and the footpaths became less and less defined, making it nearly impossible to navigate. Thankfully Zac’s trusty GPS lead us to the meeting point, however, when we got there, the Fielding’s were nowhere to be seen. They could have been 25 minutes away and we still wouldn’t have seen them, but after some rough calculations, we’d worked out that they were likely about 1 and a half hours behind us still, and the cold was starting to get to us…
We made the difficult but sensible decision to press on and summit the peak without them. We thought that if we walked slowly and steadily enough, on our descent we might bump into the brothers (if we could even see them), and meet them back at the car. With every layer of clothing on, hoods done up to our noses and hands deep in our pockets, we trudged along the barren, undulating ridge. The visibility worsened, we measured it to be less than 20 metres. Temperatures were dropping and wind speeds were increasing. Walking slowly felt like a bad idea, and splitting up felt like an even worse idea now.
Upon reaching the Broad Crag Peak we faced a real dilemma. Zac’s GPS was becoming unreliable and it was pointing us downhill down what looked like a sheer drop. Neither of us wanted to commit to that direction so we paused and contemplated our options. Then a miracle happened - a spritely Italian man appeared out of the cloud and informed us we were indeed heading in the right direction, “only 10 minutes to the top, boys” he said. We were ecstatic, to say the least.
After carefully clambering down to Broad Crag Col, we were faced with the treacherous, final 100-meter climb up to Scafell Pike’s summit. It was covered in loose slate chippings and there was absolutely no discernable path; but we agreed that as long as we were going up, eventually, we’d made it to the top. And reach the top we did! The feeling of being the highest people in England was tainted by the fact that we could hardly see our hands in front of our faces. The view should have been spectacular, but it was non-existent; we could have been at sea level on a misty morning for all we knew if it wasn’t for the burning calf muscles.
After a celebratory Corona and a couple of pointless selfies, we began our descent, hoping that before long we would bump into Jack and Rob. Now, this is where the day almost went really really badly. As you can see from our GPS tracking, we had walked off the mountain in completely the wrong direction, thanks to the absolute 0 visibility and no discernable footpaths. After some disagreements over which way was which, and some Bear Grylls style orienteering, we managed to find our way back to “the path” and we were making our way back down. It was at this point that I make the statement “I reckon we’ll bump into Jack and Rob in about 45-60 minutes”, and lowe and behold, emerging from the mist, were the Fielding brothers.
Soaked through, bodies aching but striding on, there they were. The Fieldings had absolutely smashed their hike, making up almost 2 hours of time by not breaking or faffing around getting lost (like Zac and I had done). I was so glad to see them, and couldn’t have been more proud of them both. They summited the peak and swiftly caught back up to us.
The return journey was full of stories and laughter, and we were enjoying ourselves so much by this point that we decided to extend the hike and take the scenic route past Sprinkling Tarns, which included a very sketchy descent next to a waterfall section of Styhead Gill. We returned safely to the car and Thorney How B&B, satisfied with what we had accomplished in our visit to The Lakes.
With the ‘3 Peaks of the Lakes’ now conquered, we’ve set our sights on Snowdonia for 2022, and Ben Nevis for 2023, maybe even the National 3 Peaks challenge after that. Thanks again to Zac, Jack and Rob for an awesome adventure, I can’t wait for the next.
