Lonscale Fell

We couldn't delay it any longer and we started climbing the steep Skiddaw 'Tourist' path. It was a matter of knuckling down and bucking our ideas up. That's what I told Mo and Calse, although I didn't really believe it would help much myself. 'At least the rain has stopped', I told them. 'Be thankful for that!'. At that point the wind, that had been getting stronger as we got higher, nearly blew us off our feet. 

Lonscale Fell is a Wainwright off to the right of the Skiddaw 'Tourist' path. There is a sketchy path that follows Whit Beck to its source. I missed this and so had to cut across at a later point when the terrain was flatter. A wire fence guided us to an accumulation of stones that served as Lonscale's summit cairn. Little Man and Skiddaw looked serene in the background.

A 5 minute walk eastwards took us to Lonscale Crags. The fell drops dramatically into a valley, with Blencathra on the other side. Glenderaterra Beck ran down the valley. If we survived the day, we'd be walking down this valley later in the day. We headed back to the top of Lonscale Fell and followed the wire fence towards Little Man.

Little And Lesser Man

We returned to the Skiddaw 'Tourist' path. There seemed to be a distinct lack of tourists today.  The 'Tourist' path contours around Little Man; I presume most tourists are interested in the main event, Skiddaw. We headed up a near vertical path to Skiddaw Lesser Man, a younger brother to Little Man. The wind was so strong now and we were crouched so low,  that we nearly were knuckling down. We reached the untidy cairn on Lesser Man and tried to take stock of our situation. The wind didn't come in gusts it was just one continuous blast. A woman with two dogs had followed us up. The dogs were on leads and these had got tangled up with the woman, the cairn and everybody else. It was chaos. I looked over to Calse and half expected her to be picked up by the wind at any moment, and deposited on Blencathra. Somehow the woman managed to untangle herself and stumbled onwards to Little Man. We stumbled  after her.

A quick summit photo on Little Man and then we descended down the other side to meet up again with the Skiddaw 'Tourist' path. Still no tourists. Wimps.

Skiddaw

Calse had started to look like a broken soul as we continued up the 'Tourist' path to Skiddaw. I was thankful that the the first stone shelter we arrived at was unoccupied. We collapsed into it and enjoyed a few moments out of the wind. Some flapjacks and hot coffees later, life was shining again in Calse and Mo's eyes. 

The top of Skiddaw is relatively flat and we started making our way across to the clearly visible trig point. Amazingly, a fell runner was struggling towards us, against the wind. His jacket was flapping so much that the edge of him looked a blur, like some quantum fuzz. Even his jowls shook violently. The summit of  Skiddaw has a Toposcope on it, but seemed a little sparse compared to what Wainwright could see from the summit in his 'Toposcope'  drawing.

My summit photo of Skiddaw has Calse stumbling towards the camera due to the wind. We'd paid our homage to mighty Skiddaw and so we quickly departed down its northern side towards Bakestall.

Bakestall

A gradual path dropped us down Skiddaw's northern flank and out of the wind. What a relief. We followed a path downwards alongside a wire fence and this led us to Bakestall's Summit. Looking back, Skiddaw and Little Man looked impressively pointy from this angle. Over to the east it looked like somebody had wafted a blanket to create the contours of the northern fells.

We followed an elderly couple down along Birkett Edge. Dead Crags was over to our left but looked rather flat. They look much more spectacular from across the valley. We met a man pushing his mountain bike up the path. He said he was cycling across Skiddaw and then across Ullock Pike. I couldn't see him doing much cycling from here to the top of Skiddaw. There is then an almost vertical drop down to Carl Side before reaching Ullock Pike. There are even difficult bits along Ullock Pike too. I wondered why he hadn't chosen an easier path, but I wished him luck.

As we caught up with the elderly couple, the woman broke out into what sounded a mixture of crying and laughter. 'I think I've wet myself', she shouted. I wasn't sure what etiquette demanded in this situation and so said nothing. We walked quickly by them and on to the track near the Whitewater Dash Waterfall.

Cumbria Way

Today's walk was really one of two halves. This morning was all about climbing and braving the mountains. This afternoon was a flattish walk along the Cumbria Way back to the car park. Even though the track is good and obvious there is a sense of wilderness in this area at the back of Skiddaw. It reminds me a little of Scotland. A couple of mountain bikers and runners did pass us along the track, but we were left alone for most of the afternoon. 

Halfway along the track we came to Skiddaw House that serves as a hostel. It must be difficult getting provisions to a place like this...and forget about getting an electrician or plumber out. Progressing beyond Skiddaw House, the flank of Blencathra's southern side loomed large. On our right, the hill got steeper until we were beneath Lonscale Crags. This morning we'd looked down on to this path from those crags. It seemed a long time ago and a lot had happened in between. 

The path contoured around Lonscale Fell back towards the car park. Latrigg now looked resplendent. illuminated in the afternoon soon. It looks like we should have ticked off Latrigg at the end of the main walk, rather than at the beginning.

It had been a good walk under challenging conditions.