Death Awaits....

Eagle Crag

A National Trust Land Rover pulled up in the car park at Rosthwaite as I was getting my pack out ready for the off.  I watched the ranger as he got out. Suddenly his nose went in the air and he sniffed.  His eye balls started to bulge and roll around their sockets.  His tongue lolled out and he began to drool.  I recognised the symptoms.  I had seen them before. Cuben fibre envy!  He rapidly took in the scene in the car park, sniffed the air again, and then headed over to me.

“Nice pack.  Z Packs cuben fibre Arc Blast?  I want it.  And I want it now.”

Fearful that I was about to be mugged, I calmed him down and we got chatting. It was fellow outdoors blogger and Backpackers Club member, Trevor Morgan. After the normal gear chat we went our separate ways.  Him to work, me to continue to enjoy my retirement.  I can't recall the name of Trevor's blog.  If you know it please could you tell me?

After 42 years of walking in the Lakes I should know that on 90 per cent of occasions it will be wetter and windier than the forecast, which had been for fair weather, and so it proved to be. I pulled on my waterproofs, today wearing my Z Packs Challenger Jacket.  I have been told by people who have never worn one that it will not keep me dry and I will die in it. A black cuben fibre shroud. The Death Jacket. As the rain came down I headed up Eagle Crag, the ‘back way’ via Greenup Gill, to avoid the more exciting, but very steep direct route I would probably have taken if I was wearing my day pack.

Greenup Gill. looking back to Borrowdale

Sergeant's Crag and Langstrath from near the top of Eagle Crag

After Eagle Crag, with it superb views up Langstrath, it was on to Sergeant’s Crag.  Then back to Eagle Crag to collect my camera which had fallen off my hip belt when I took my pack off there.  Forty minutes of unnecessary effort because of carelessness.

There followed the long plod over grass to Low White Stones, then High Raise, and on to Sergeant Man.  Memories of my first visit there in 1973 in thick mist on a school Combined Cadet Force expedition.  We couldn’t find the top on that day. We had sat on some rocks taking bearings and wandering around, always ending up back in the same spot.  Eventually we headed off down into Langdale, giving Sergeant Man up as a bad job.  A couple of weeks later, back at school, we watched some training films about navigation.  By coincidence they were filmed around Sergeant Man and we discovered that the rocks we had been sitting on were its summit.

After Sergeant Man there followed a long descent to little visited Tarn Crag, collecting water on the way ready for my overnight  camp from the stream that heads down to Codale Tarn.  The forecast had said that the previous day’s near gale force winds on the tops would abate in the afternoon. They hadn’t really done so.  Not gale force, but very strong at times.  The near constant showers persisted.  I spent some time finding a spot to camp.  Reasonably dry, reasonably sheltered and reasonably flat. Result!  By now I was wishing I had brought my Scarp 1 which is a great shelter in such conditions.  Thinking the weather would be clement I had chosen to bring my very lightweight Z Packs Duplex tent, also known as Daphne, which many tell me (including some who have never used one or even seen one in real life) is a calm weather tent. The sort you die in when the going gets tough. A cuben fibre coffin for the man in the cuben fibre shroud.

Daphne Duplex near the summit of Tarn Crag

Daphne braces hereself in the wind on Tarn Crag

Soon after getting the tent up, at about 4.30pm, the rain really arrived, and I spent the next 14 hours inside, cooking, reading, sleeping and worrying about whether Daphne would survive the night.  I dozed off and woke again at about 11.30pm.  The wind had significantly strengthened, and shifted ninety degrees, so that my sheltered spot was no longer that.  Very strong gusts intensified what was already a constantly strong wind.  I was glad that I had taken the precaution of packing up everything except my sleeping bag and mat before bed.  Headtorch in hand in case I had to make a quick get away, I lay listening to the gale and watching the poles flex.  After half an hour or so I fell back to sleep.  I awoke after dawn to complete stillness.  Daphne was fine.  The pegs hadn’t shifted, the guy lines had remained taut.  A good test that has increased my confidence in her.  We had survived and the rain, too, had ceased. Death is for another day.

Brewing up on Tarn Crag, three doors closed and one open. Great flexibility for varying conditions.

Below Codale Tarn. I had camped just over the central skyline

Summit of Blea Rigg, looking towards Pavey Ark and Harrison Stickle

Pavey Ark: View to Stickle Tarn and Langdale

I was away by 7.30am.  Off to another little frequented hill, the lovely Blea Rigg, via Codale Tarn, then back up to Sergeant Man and on to the Langdales.  It is six years since I was last on the Pikes, and the July busy-ness of the hills in this area reminded me of why I now rarely come to what used to be one of my favourite destinations.  I popped over to Thunacar Knott, then on to Pavey Ark, Harrison Stickle and Loft Crag before skipping the final summit cone of Pike O’Stickle, to head to Martcrag Moor.  Another navigational challenge of long ago came to mind.  I had hitched up to the Lakes from home one university holidays.  I remember the feeling of satisfaction when I made my way in thick cloud from Pike O’Stickle, across the Moor to Stake Pass, probably the first time I had ever used my compass in anger whilst walking solo.  Back then, in the mid 1970s, the path was at best intermittent.  Nowadays it would be hard to lose it given the 40 more years of pounding by boots. In places it has been ‘improved’ by Fix the Fells.  I think they were worried that walkers might get their boots a bit muddy in some places.  They have even thoughtfully put a large stepping stone in a stream that is all of two feet wide so shorter walkers can avoid having to take an over large pace to get across dry shod

Loft Crag and Pike O'Stickle from Harrison Stickle

Harrison Stickle from Loft Crag

Martcrag Moor

 Towards the bottom of the Stake Pass, in mid to late afternoon, I met two blokes coming up towards me, in jeans and with map in hand.

Bloke: “Could you help us get our bearings?  Is this the path up to Scafell Pike? We’ve come from a camp site”.

Me: “Where is your camp site?”

Bloke: “Not certain.  I think it’s at a place called Stonethwaite.  The problem is that we are on the edge of a map.”

Me, unspoken: “No, the problem is you are complete dickheads.”

Me spoken: “You can’t make Scafell Pike today.  Nor would this be the best way.  Tomorrow?  Here let me show you.  It might be best if you first drove to Seathwaite and then..…”.

Heading down the Stake Pass to Langstrath

The Stake Pass path has been ponsified by Fix the Fells with sweeping, regular, unnatural curves.  Well we wouldn’t want the path to be too tricky would we?  It drops down into Langstrath.  This valley is long and beautiful and, for the Lakes, it has a wilder and more remote feel than many others.  I plodded along to Stonethwaite, the camp site remarkably empty for the school holidays and on to Rosthwaite.

Trevor Morgan wasn’t laying in wait to pinch my cuben fibre gear. I’m told by some that cuben fibre doesn’t have a long life.  I reckon mine will outlast my knees, which seem to ache badly for days after any walk such as this with long steep descents.  Those visits of discovery to the Lakes in the 1970s seem in my head to have only been yesterday.  What a shame that my creaking body tells me another story.

A Dead Sheep Never Hurt Nobody: Day 2 on the Cumbria Way




First View of Coniston Water



Many years ago I watched a drama on television about a group of teenagers on a school trip who were walking and camping in the mountains with their teacher.  One of the boys, who was a bit nerdy, was full of “interesting” facts.  At one point he spent a good few minutes explaining to the long suffering and cynical teacher that if a stream in the mountains was fast flowing the rapid oxygenation of the water would mean that it would be safe to drink just six feet downstream from a dead sheep.  The teacher looked at him witheringly for a few moments and replied “Jones, if you were at a stream, wanting a drink, and there was a stinking, festering, rotting, maggot filled dead sheep in the water, would you take a drink from six feet below it?  Or would you, instead, walk 12 feet up stream so that you were six feet above the carcase and take a drink from there?”  Good point.

In outdoor blogs when the subject of safe water comes up there is frequently advice given not to drink from a stream without checking that there aren’t dead animals in it.  I have to say that whilst dead sheep are not an uncommon sight in the hills seeing them in streams is reasonably rare and I have never really spent much time checking water sources if they are fast flowing.  I would be more concerned about the lingering effects of Chernobyl, or even Sellafield.  But my stomach did turn at least 90 degrees just after I had packed up and started Day 2 of my “Southern Half of the Cumbria Way” walk when I saw the stereotypical rotting sheep in the stream I had camped near, and taken water from, just a few yards upstream from where I had camped.  Still I live to tell the tale, so that lad in the drama was correct – either that or my Travel Tap is as effective as claimed at purifying water.

I do not use the adjective “charming” very often.  However, it seems just the right word to describe my second day on the Way.  I covered the section from Mere Beck on Torver Low Common to Baysbrown Camp Site at Chapel Stile in Great Langdale.  I took my time over the walk, about 7 hours or so, including stopping for a full English in Coniston, for an ice cream at Tarn Hows, and for tea and cake at High Park, and with innumerable stops to put on or take off waterproofs in a warm, humid day of incessant torrential showers.  Can a shower be incessant or is that an oxymoron?

So, having packed up in light drizzle, I found it was just 15 minutes down to the main road and five more to Coniston Water, with stunning views whenever the clag lifted.  The walk now follows the lake shore, or just above it, and is absolutely fabulous.  I had reckoned that from camping spot to Coniston was 3.5 miles.  In reality the distance and time felt longer but was none the worse for that.   I was at the camp site at Coniston Old Hall just as most of the bedraggled campers there were having breakfast, filled my water bottle from one of the camp site taps, conveniently located next to the public path  (is that stealing?) and wondered at and about the rather bleak looking Hall itself.  I also tried to work out the actual building that was used as the climbing hut set up in the 1920s by the late and very great AH Griffin, my favourite of all the army of Lakeland writers, which had been home to the “Coniston Tigers”** as they explored the gullies and buttresses of Dow Crag in the golden years of Lakeland climbing.




A Proud Mum



I have always loved the village of Coniston.  As you enter the village you pass the wonderfully located John Ruskin Secondary School, a place I frequently used to visit for work purposes.  Can pupils anywhere in England have better views from their school playing field?  Coniston feels like a real place, yes full of tourists, but not self-consciously touristy like certain other Lakeland villages.  And you can get a mean, if pricey, all day breakfast in the Green Housekeeper.  As I did.  Alas, it was far too early for the Black Bull.  A cracking pub the Black Bull, with its own brewery attached.

Then it was off on the long, slow climb through the fields and woods to Tarn Hows.  Did it rain?  Yes it did.  Torrentially. Did it dry up?  Yes it did. Occasionally.  Then it rained again. Then it dried up again and that was the pattern for the rest of the morning.  Paramo is superb clothing in these conditions.  You can wear it all the time without condensation building up, and the dry spells mean that it never wets out.  Unfortunately, I had left mine at home and was wearing Gore Tex so I had to stop time and time again to remove and replace it.  I once found myself racing to get my sack off, and waterproofs out, in the most sudden and torrential of downpours, which had stopped before I had even got my jacket on.




Tarn Hows

 

Tarn Hows is too Edwardian twee for me but it often boasts an ice cream van.  The stretch of the Way from here to Elterwater is sublime. There is no single highlight in terms of landscape.  It is just perfection throughout.  Also, this stretch of the walk at High Park can boast one of the best non-alcoholic refreshments stops ever known to tea shop man.  Here the cottage serves superb refreshments.  I paid £1.00 for a pot of tea and just £1.00 more for a massive slice of superbly baked chocolate cake.

 “Tremendous value and lovely cake” I said to the lady of the house. “Other places would charge far more”.

“Well I don’t want holiday makers to go home feeling they have been ripped off” she replied.

From someone in a location where few customers will be regulars, or able to repeat visit, this was such a superb attitude compared to what the multi-nationals and chains call “the customer experience” as they serve you mass produced, cellophane wrapped muffins with a bland cup of froth and no change from a fiver.  On the subject of fivers, Stuart Maconie tells the tale in one of his books*** that a bloke in Bolton was once bragging to his mate from Wigan that in Bolton on an evening you can get a pint, a pie and a woman for a fiver.  “Aye, but what make is the pie” retorted the guy from Wigan.




Towards Langdale on the Way to High Park

 



The Brathay nr Skelwith Bridge

 

The walk along the Brathay is picture postcard perfect. The sun was out by now and the combination brought out the crowds, but all was well with my world and I condescended to tolerate them, despite my now tiring legs as I headed to Baysbrown camp site at Chapel Stile.  Passing Langdale CE Primary School took me back a good few years.  As with the schools at Coniston, I frequently used to have to visit Langdale Primary in the early 1990s for work purposes.  It took the Headteacher of the time, Nigel, a good few visits before he cottoned on that I always came on a Friday morning.  I never used to tell him when I left at lunchtime that there wasn’t time to get back to the office in Carlisle, so giving me the perfect excuse to start the weekend early with a walk up onto the Langdale Pikes before heading home for tea.




Baysbrown and the Langdales

 

I highly recommend the camp site at Baysbrown.  Flat, and it all feels less chavvy than the NT site at the ODG higher up the valley.  And it’s only a fiver for one person on foot.  But watch out for the lack of taps and the very long trek for water and amenities if you do not camp up by the farmhouse.  Or, of course, camp well away from the site amenities but at the end of the site nearer the pub, if you are of that mind.




If you want water or the toilet block you have to walk to that farm - a full day's hike!

  This had been a wonderful day’s walk.  There had been little in the way of excitement, but everything in the way of contentment.

** If you haven’t read AH Griffin’s stuff you really must!   My favourites are his Lakeland Mountain Diaries.  But the Coniston Tigers is also a lovely read of youthful adventures in another age.

***Pies and Prejudice by Stuart Maconie.  Another great read from another lover of Lakeland