Tag: fells
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Scandale Pass
In the Lakes. A one-way trip from Hartsop to Rydal. One-way trips are always more interesting. I haven’t used the High Pike ridge of Dove Crag much. A couple of times descending in the Fairfield Horseshoe. This view is from High Pike summit looking towards Scandale Pass, the col between Red Screes and Dove Crag.…
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Coledale Hause
A grand morning with the tops free of cloud so the high fells beckoned. From Lanthwaite near Crummock Water, straight onto the south-west ridge of Whiteside, then a ridge run to Hopegill Head and back via Coledale Hause and Gasgale Gill. Back in time for breakfast. The culmination of a good few days in the…
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Loweswater
An opportunity to explore the Fellbarrow range of hills west of Lorton Vale. Neat and rolling fells with steep craggy eastern and southern sides. And another two Wainwrights bagged, Fellbarrow itself (416m high) and Low Fell (423m), although I must admit I ran over Low Fell not realising it was the high point. I really…
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Shoulthwaite Gill
Thinking about somewhere to aim for, it suddenly occurred to me that I have never been up Raven Crag overlooking Thirlmere. It’s not a particularly prominent fell, its 461m summit is almost covered by aged coniferous trees planted by Manchester Corporation when they built the Thirlmere reservoir. More interesting was the little subsidiary summit of…
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Bowscale Tarn
With a 240m climb from the hamlet of the same name, Bowscale Tarn was on the itinerary of most Victorian tourists. Ponies would have carried the visitors up to experience its wild and moody atmosphere. The travel books of Harriet Martineu, Rosa Raine, John Pagen White, Eliza Lynn Linton, and Adam and Charles Black all…
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Red Tarn
It’s good to be back in the Lakes even if only for a day trip. I could have packed my tent, camped high and not really increased the risk of spreading Covid-19. But the rule is no overnight stays and rules are rules. Filling the cirque below Helvellyn, Red Tarn is perhaps one of the…
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Borrowdale
January 2011 and a smidgeon of snow persists in the gullies of the Central Fells. I’m at about the 670m contour on the north-east slope of Ullscarfe. Just below a knoll that’s named High Saddle. Below is Borrowdale, and the settlement of Stonethwaite which was, in the 13th-century, a medieval vaccary for Fountains Abbey, over…
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Pike o’ Blisco
O the month of May, the merry month of May, So frolic, so gay, and so green, so green, so green! O, and then did I unto my true love say: “Sweet Peg, thou shalt be my summer’s queen! A poem by Thomas Dekker (c. 1572–1632) Descending out of the mist and heading for Pike…
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The Battle of Rannerdale
Nicholas Size, in his 1930’s novel ‘The Secret Valley’, tells the story of Norman attempts to quell the armed resistance of the Norse settlers of Lakeland. In the 1070’s Boethar the Younger chose Buttermere valley as his base to defend Lakeland and to carry out guerrilla attacks against the Normans. Before the modern road around…
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Loft Crag from Pike o’ Stickle
The Langdale Pikes is perhaps the best-known skyline in the Lake District. From Great Langdale, the towering pikes of Harrison Stickle, Loft Crag and Pike o’ Stickle are dramatic and majestic and were an early attraction for the first tourists. One such tourist was Joseph Budworth, a soldier and writer who travelled to the Lake…