After a restless night's sleep on Saturday I overslept and ended up making a later than planned start, arriving at Grassmoor on the shores of Crummock Water a good 90 minutes later than planned. The original plan had been for a brisk circuit of Grasmoor, Crag Hill, Eel Crag, Hopegill Head and Whiteside before continuing my onward journey to YHA Ennerdale, where I planned to stop. My route card advised me to take the obvious clear path from the car park up Lad's Hows. Unfortunately in my haste to make up lost time I took the wrong path. The one I should have taken was about 10-15 meters to my right the other side of a dry stone wall. The path I managed to take lead me to an impenetrable wall of scree, with nothing but a dead sheep for company. While a ravine made it impossible to contour around the side of the fell to rejoin the path I should have taken. Thus I was forced to retrace my steps to the start.
A combination of tiredness and lost time had lead to some very poor and hasty decision making, not a good combination when hill/fell walking, errors that I'd most likely compound later on if I attempted to restart the route on the correct path. So I decided to call it a day, get a good night's sleep, and start afresh the next tomorrow. The fells will, after all, always be there another day or so I though.
Come Monday morning the weather had closed in with all the Fells I'd planned to bag shrouded in cloud, with significant buffeting from strong winds expected on the summits. Pillar, the birth place of British rock climbing, took on a ghostly, other worldly, appearance in the murk. Frustrated I set off down the valley toward YHA Black Sail, England's most remote and iconic youth hostel, hoping the weather would improve.
It worth pointing out here that Ennerdale, which is Norse for Juniper valley, is the UK's longest running rewilding project, begun in 2003. Most human infrastructure, apart from archaeological remains, have been gradually removed and the river Liza (Norse for shining water) left to carve its own route down the valley. Which all adds to the sense of remoteness and makes it a stunning place to visit and stay no matter what the weather. Ironically of course human's have shaped the environment for thousands of years, so nothing can ever be fully returned to its 'natural' state. It's believed for instance, that when our ancestors first settled and began farming the land around 7,500 years ago, the carbon they released into the atmosphere caused sufficient global warming to stop the world tipping into another ice-age. Plus the natural world is in a constant state of flux, although on a time scale beyond the comprehension of our all too brief life spans. The geological features, like the fells and lakes, we take for granted will one day be worn down, disappear, and replaced by something else.
However on this particular occasion, when I reached Black Sail, they had been replaced by a dense wall of low cloud and a quickening wind, so I decided to return back along the valley floor on the far banks of the Liza. Although the cloud did lift briefly below Pillar Rock to taunt me with a stunning view of this iconic crag in all its glory. On returning to the hostel I discovered that a fellow walker had been unable to locate the summit of Haycock, tomorrows objective, in the clag.
The following morning the weather had deteriorated still further, with the cloud base down to 300 meters and the threat of thunder and lightning thrown into the mix. Now, call me a coward, but navigating across pathless, boggy, open access land between a series of six-figure grid references in near zero visibility, with my walking poles doubling as lightening rods was not that appealing. So I decided on a low level walk around Ennerdale Water. Note: in the Lake District, small bodies of water are referred to as tarns, large ones as water, there is in fact only one lake in the Lake District, Bassenthwaite Lake. Ennerdale Water is currently a reservoir, although there are plans to decommission it and return it to its natural state, as has happened elsewhere when reservoir's such as Hayeswater have been retired.
Still the shore around Anglers Rock provided some mild entertainment with the odd scramble over rock and a stunning view of a Sparrowhawk hunting over Angler's Crags. Meanwhile, on the shores of a lake, their pet dog looked on in disbelief as a couple stripped down to their underwear and plunged in for a wild swim. Personally I was with the dog on this one, it was far too cold to be getting up to such things.
I was on the verge of calling for help a little further round the lake when I discovered three seemingly ownerless dogs and a pair of flip-flops abandoned on the gravelly shore of the lake. Fortunately the owner of the dogs, a local, appeared and assured me the flip-flops had been there several days and there was nothing to worry about. Or perhaps the owner hadn't been reported as missing yet? Still the picture I took of them would make a good cover for a novel, so perhaps there's a story waiting to be told?
The day ended with a short, steep, climb to Bowness Knott (333m) from which the clouds had reluctantly lifted to provide a glimpse of the views on offer on a clear day.
The drive home was a bleak, grey affair, interspersed with heavy rain. So no Wainwright's bagged, but a good 24 miles covered, useful training for the Yorkshire Three Peaks, and a picture that might inspire a story and serve as its cover.