Tuesday 11 August.
A warm and foggy morning with no visibility at all saw me, or, rather, assumed I was somewhere climbing up to the summit shelter on Black Combe.
As I came down the other side, the mist started to lift a bit and it all became a bit more green and cheerful.
And so I pressed on over Wainwright Outlier country, and a right boggy do it was, in places. In turn, I passed over Whitecombe Moss ( a boggy lump), a swampy pass at Charity Chair ( a very boggy, unstable, wobbly and damp place) then some rocky Tors at Stoneside Hill, Great paddy Crag and Kinmount Buckbarrow, where the drizzle started again and the mist blanked out any view.
Then on to Whit Fell, just under the cloud base. More bogs to Stainton Pike preceded a soggy boggy semi-descending traverse to the road at Brown Rigg, at which point it really started chucking it down.
I traversed the depressing wet grey slopes of Great Worm Crag till I found a flat spot near a gushing stream of what appeared to be cold tea, put up the akto and retreated inside for a bit of a shiver and to get everything on the inside of the tent as wet as it was on the outside.
But despite the weather, this part of the route is just smashing. I saw no other walkers at all. In fact, apart from a couple of cars on the roads, I saw nobody else all day and, it being very late summer, there was no bird song either. So it was a silent walk. Apart from my renditions of a KT Tunstall album that I couldn’t get out of my head.
There were elements of wildness. It wouldn’t have seemed so wild and empty on a sunny day with skylarks and plover. The weather was, perhaps, just right for this kind of thing.
12 Miles and 2700 feet of climbing. Happiness and some episodes of pleasure.
Big black horse…. And a cherry tree…. Dum de dum…
A warm and foggy morning with no visibility at all saw me, or, rather, assumed I was somewhere climbing up to the summit shelter on Black Combe.
As I came down the other side, the mist started to lift a bit and it all became a bit more green and cheerful.
And so I pressed on over Wainwright Outlier country, and a right boggy do it was, in places. In turn, I passed over Whitecombe Moss ( a boggy lump), a swampy pass at Charity Chair ( a very boggy, unstable, wobbly and damp place) then some rocky Tors at Stoneside Hill, Great paddy Crag and Kinmount Buckbarrow, where the drizzle started again and the mist blanked out any view.
Then on to Whit Fell, just under the cloud base. More bogs to Stainton Pike preceded a soggy boggy semi-descending traverse to the road at Brown Rigg, at which point it really started chucking it down.
I traversed the depressing wet grey slopes of Great Worm Crag till I found a flat spot near a gushing stream of what appeared to be cold tea, put up the akto and retreated inside for a bit of a shiver and to get everything on the inside of the tent as wet as it was on the outside.
But despite the weather, this part of the route is just smashing. I saw no other walkers at all. In fact, apart from a couple of cars on the roads, I saw nobody else all day and, it being very late summer, there was no bird song either. So it was a silent walk. Apart from my renditions of a KT Tunstall album that I couldn’t get out of my head.
There were elements of wildness. It wouldn’t have seemed so wild and empty on a sunny day with skylarks and plover. The weather was, perhaps, just right for this kind of thing.
12 Miles and 2700 feet of climbing. Happiness and some episodes of pleasure.
Big black horse…. And a cherry tree…. Dum de dum…
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2 comments:
You are a flighty one Mike. You abandoned Kylie for KTT then?
Well, Alan, what can I say, I'd go with KT, but I'd be thinking about Kylie
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