Head for the Hills
Surely one’s enjoyment of walking the Lake District’s mountains should not come down to a dash to complete them?
Nick, my fell walking buddy, would often take two weeks off work to tick off as many of the Wainwright’s as possible.
Unfortunately for him the weather was often poor. Thus he would toil up featureless slopes to pea-soup summits, link another couple of peaks in and trudge straight back down again.
Julian, another fell walking pal, would sometimes go with him, at other times with me, as we ticked our way through the seven pictorial guides.
The final top for Nick was Lingmell on a day I shall never forget. The weather was atrocious – actually, atrocious may be understating the conditions we had to endure.
“Soaked to the skin, lost in the mist, every track a stream, every watercourse a raging torrent”, records my journal.
“My waterproof cagoule- wasn’t, my fast drying techno – trousers, didn’t. My feet were sloshing in my boots…” I’m sure you get the picture.
As 2014 came along Julian was just ahead of me in the race for peaks, when all of a sudden something got a hold of me. Was it a burning desire to beat him? This wasn’t exactly fair, he had been helping me with some of my final tally- but I suddenly realised I had only about 20 more to do.
It was a great summer too, plenty of fine clear weather. The earliest start was when I set off at half three in the morning to climb two fells above Crummock water.
I had been lying in bed, looking out of the window at the clear night sky, drumming my fingers on the mattress, when I thought ‘what the heck, I’m going!’… I was back at home by 8am. The family were still asleep!
Occasionally though a fell would be rather boring, Ullscarf springs to mind. I climbed that one with my brother, who struggled with the distance, and after admitted that his rucksack felt like it was full of stones had said that by the end of the walk he could hardly put one foot in front of the other. My wife gave me a telling off when I got home, saying that I could have killed him with over – exertion!
All the housekeeping money was going on petrol to and from the Lake District. With every fell felled I’d text Julian with a name and altitude as I conquered more and more of the summits. His responses were often rather rude.
The great day came for me on August 24 2014 when I stood on top of Haycock high above the Ennerdale valley and drank a pint of beer. I couldn’t help but mention that it was my final one to some other walkers. Julian rolled his eyes. He completed his Wainwright fells the following spring. No hard feelings.
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