High Street Damply

Plan A was to take two of the grandsprogs up Helvellyn, but we did this last Wednesday. Plan B was Fleetwith Pike, the West-facing ridge of which they would have enjoyed – and it could have been followed by various scrambles up the rocky tors between Fleetwith and Haystacks. In view of the sudden hospitalisation of one of the sprogs, (he’s much better now) I decided to put Plan B on the back-burner for future use and, instead, took the tallest sprogling up High Street via the Long Stile ridge – marginally scrambly and with impressive views and so on…..   So we set off, trusting the BBC weather forecast which had a warm 22C for NW England and some cloud, but nothing much to bother the tyro rambler.
 
When we arrived, though, the hill-fog was at low levels, the becks were in spate and it was drizzling. And it drizzled all day and we saw nothing much at all, apart from a blank wall of cloud and water specs on the..er…specs….
The plan was to climb High Street via the Long Stile ridge, and, when the clouds broke and the sun came out, wander over to Thornthwaite Beacon and return to the start via Nan Bield and Harter Fell – a fairly routine but rather lovely little fellwalk.

We did have a break in the orange greenhouse/aka group shelter half way up Long Stile, in order to allow the weather to clear. But it didn’t. On the upside, due to a rather encouraging HbH1C result a few days earlier. I enjoyed my first Whispa bar for twelve months. I’m hoping to have another in August 2019.

We bashed on up the hill, passing some wet chaps ruining the path to make it awkward and slippery and eventually located the summit trig, where we retired once more into the group shelter for lunch. We spent some time in there as the drizzle sizzled on the cover.
Ultimately, we had to leave and we abandoned our walk by descending Nan Bield Pass back to the car. We’d done six miles. Damply. My advice is not to rely on the Beeb weather forecasts for weather forecasts, but, rather, to consult proper mountain forecasts, which can be a bit over-cautious, but, had I got a forecast containing drizzle and hillfog, I wouldn’t have driven 60 miles to get wet. My mistake. At least the drizzle was warm.