One of my favourite races during my dalliance with fellrunning was the Lake District Mountain Trial, an event of some tradition that is held annually on the second Sunday in September each year. My engagement has dwindled over time to the modest role of manning a checkpoint, a role that usually entails little more than lying in a tent for approximately five hours, dutifully noting the competitors’ numbers and times as they pass.
This year, fortune favoured me with a particularly choice assignment: a checkpoint at Lingy Hut in the Caldbeck Fells, maintained by the Mountain Bothies Association. This charming hut, which has seen more lives than a cat, began its existence as a refuge for miners toiling away in the Carrock Mine below, where they unearthed lead, arsenic, and tungsten. With the demise of the mine, the hut was dismantled and relocated—not as easy task—first as a shelter for grouse shooters and later repurposed in the 1960s by “The Friends” Quaker school in Wigton as an outdoor education base. After the school closed, it served local shepherds and walkers, but fell into disrepair until the Lake District National Park intervened. In 2017, the Mountain Bothies Association were asked to take over.
The MBA has since transformed the hut with the thoroughness of a domestic makeover show. They re-roofed it, re-clad both the external and internal walls, replaced the door and window, installed new bench seating and a cooking shelf, and repainted the interior to erase the graffiti that, as I recall, once adorned its surfaces like an ill-conceived art gallery. Arkwright’s broom springs to mind.
Yet, the idyllic fantasy of manning a checkpoint in a refurbished bothy is not without its downsides. A particularly boisterous party of soaking-wet walkers decided to stop by for a respite while ascending Knott and again when descending. Their visit, marked by the liberal scattering of treats to quell a pair of dogs having a barny, resembled a scene from a particularly chaotic carnival. And then, after partaking of their sandwiches, tranquillity once again descended.
Leave a Reply