Skiddaw and Cockup with an A-Z atlas and a Brown Dog

Yesterday (Sunday) was the day for killing several birds with one stone, the bird, figuratively speaking, being a bit of a walk.
Stone #1 was the field testing of the A-Z adventure atlas of the Northern Fells so I can write about it.
Stone #2 Was the bagging of the fabulously craggy and awesomely remote Birkett called “Cockup” which rises magnificently in a series of sweeping, rocky terraces from the Northern flanks of Skiddaw, dangerously defended by Cumbria’s only glacier “T’ Mere de Herdwick” and which has resisted the Knipe ticking pencil for over forty years. Actually, very little of the above is true, but otherwise, why call it “cockup”. In practise it’s a grassy and slightly sloppy abscess-shaped heave on a grassy fellside. It does have a grid reference for it’s summit, which is one reason why it was quite good for testing the atlas. And it’s a bit obscure, whihc is another reason.
Stone #3 Was my desperate need to control my burgeoning wobbly  winter belly with some exercise. There’s obviously some kind of technical problem with the scales, but just in case, a few calories expended up Skiddaw would be just the thing.

Stone #4 was the attack of cabin fever demonstrated by Bruno’s obsession with chewing my leg and growling whilst pointing to a map of Skiddaw. Something Had To Be Done.. so
About ten o’clock on Sunday morning I parked the knipemobile in a pull-off on the minor road to Orvillethwaite (or somewhere….)
I folded the atlas so that it showed Skiddaw AND Cockup and typed in the co-ordinates of Cockup into my GPS from the index in the atlas with all the grid references. This was to see how accurate the grid references were.

And we set off up the bridleway which marks one of the starts to the Ullock Pike/Carlside route up Skiddaw. We didn’t go that way, though, but crossed the little beck by the rather nice camping spot in the old sheepfolds (note for later…) and headed for a string of Knotts – Little, Great and Buzzard and, eventually to the flat top of Randel Crag where we crossed into the hillfog zone. Here, it started raining.

We lurched ever upwards, hitting some very slippery scree and soft snow which, as we got higher, became hard, icy snow. As it was much easier to kick up the snow rather than slither about on the scree, I put me new Khatoola spikey things on and kicked off up the steep snow, arriving on the foggy and sleety top of Skiddaw absolutely hours and hours later.
The top of Skiddaw was not place to be sitting around so I consulted the map, tore a hole in the relevant page (put it in a map case next time!) and determined that the crucial attack point for Cockup and the use of the GPS would be a significant turn in a fence on the path down to Bakestall. As it was snowy and a bit icy, I wore the spikes again for this bit.

At the fence corner, I switched on the GPS, selected “Cockup” from the list of waypoints (doesn’t seem like a good idea at first glance, does it?) and headed off downhill, emerging from the fog a few minutes later to see the festering lump of squishy grass below me. The GPS grid reference was as accurate as you could wish for and was very close to the little cairn that marks the summit.

I got the impression that Bruno, who had been enjoying eating snow and running about daft up Skiddaw was less than impressed by Cockup.
We left and followed a path along the intake wall back to the sheepfold with the lovely camping spot. We were back at the car by half two.
verdict on the A-Z adventure atlas – it was easy enough to use, much lighter than the OS maps and it fits into the front pocket of a buffalo jacket . The grid reference taken from the index, of a pretty obscure sort of place, was accurate and my view is that this index is one of the real strengths of these maps. I was a bit miffed to have torn the page. Nevertheless, I’ll be buying some more of these atlases.
They’re still on offer for £5.45 – a 31% discount on the normal price by inputting the discount code TRMK250 into the A-Z cart. The offer ends on 31 December 2012. There’s a direct link to AZ’s website here:AZ Mapping Co

We did six miles and 2800 heaving feet of slippery upness.. Cockup was my 490th Birkett.

Shudder Been Up There

This is a shot of a snow-covered Cross Fell and the Dun Fells, bathed in perishingly cold sunshine. (It was minus four on the tops and a bit colder just after the sun set.)

Dammit.

Instead, today I battled the frozen bogs of Pike Rigg with Brian. We didn’t go there on a whim and I would say that if anybody is considering a visit to this particular forsaken spot then the very best time to go is when it’s frozen hard, just like it was today. Otherwise, you’re going to get wet. Very wet.

Possibly more about Pike Rigg at a later date.

There’s been a bit of a hiatus in outdoor activity for a week or so, partly due to some Christmas stuff (trees, Robin Hood meets Babes in the Wood panto, lights, prezzies, drinking practise…) and partly due to an attack of lassitude of a specially sleepy nature which involved  using a warm dog as a hot water bottle.

But I’m back now. 

Here’s a pic of Brian heading back over the (usually) quaking morass…

 

TGO Challenge It’s All In The Mind

It may be possible, of course, that many blog readers who aren’t already booked onto the 2013 TGO challenge will, by now, be heartily sick of blog posters who have places or who are high up on the standby list. What with all their gear talk and everything, I can see that this could well be the cause of many an eye to glaze over a bit.
But it’s not about gear and how light you can get your toothbrush or your tent pegs, or stakes or whatever you want to call them– it is, in fact, all in the mind. If it isn’t within your constitution to ignore the snow and the wind and the rain and the heat and the regular alcohol overdoses, then no matter what state your feet are in, you won’t make it to the other side.

You have to relax. You have to leave your watch at home. You have to forget the pounding forwards damply day after day and learn to sit and have a brew and watch the world go by. Only by this mental model will you arrive in a happy state at the other side. Forget the route. Forget the hill ticks and the miles to be covered each day. This is the way to failure. Ignore the driving snow and the contour count and have a lie-in if the drizzle is sizzling on your flysheet. Whatever it is you wanted to do can be done later, or changed, or cancelled or, in other words, managed.
The wildness doesn’t rush. The wildness has a slow and relaxed rhythm. You will get there. don’t worry about it. Don’t worry about being behind the herd. They’re going too fast. They will hurt and some will fail. Get some scoff inside you and melt into the way of the hills. It won’t necessarily be easy, but you can battle on and soak up the hardnesses and the pains in the toes.

Me and Dawn are going to have another crack at the TGO next May. We have a route up for vetting. We even have beds booked in some places. We have a plan. I expect that the plan wont stand up to reality in the end, but trying to bend reality to a plan made six months in advance is the road to oblivion. That’s what happens.
Actually, out of eleven previous TGO Challenges, this will be the first one I haven’t done solo or with one of my easily-controlled children.
So, we may, or may not arrive at the other side. If we worry about it too much, we’ll likely fail. Actually, Dawn has much more experience of backpacking in Scotland than me and our early morning body clocks are more-or-less in tune, which is a major consideration, so I’m optimistic, nay, expectant.
But I bet you forty pence, a bag of crisps (salt and vinegar) and a night out with either Kylie Minogue or Clint Eastwood (as was) that we’ll be in Montrose without too  much damage at the end.
Or possibly not.

Advent Adventure – Jaunting Around Crook

Advent Adventure is the fairly naff name I gave to a Durham County Council guided walk which circumnavigates Crook. The idea is to start off Christmas with a nice walk and end the jaunt with hot coffee and festive pies in St Catherine’s Community Centre, thereby contributing to the Centre’s funds ( a bit) and, generally, having a bit of a jolly, or, more appropriately, perhaps, a Merry for ‘tis the season, innit?  We did it last year, so we did it again this year.

I did the reccy last week in sunshine but with horrendously sloppy conditions underfoot. Bruno the superdawg came with me and, as there’s very little in the way of stock on this route – apart from one field of sheep in the early throws of pregnancy (morning sickness – baaa  .. blech…) he was off the lead and bouncing around just like a twelve year old dog doesn’t.

The reccy was incident-free, apart from the mud.

On the day, eleven people turned up, including a local and his wee doggy, and, including me and the two stewardsEric and David ( a completely different Dave to all the previous Daves mentioned recently). The conditions were sub-zero in a very arctic kind of way and the paths and so on were frozen hard and very slippery. We slithered around the course without any accidents or much in the way of excitements.

We lunched on Billy Row green where there are seats to sit on and, often, a sunny, sheltered spot from any searching North-easterly breeze.

It was here that our local described how he used to play footie on the green (it’s a bit tilted) and used the war memorial to bounce the ball off.  He also had personal family knowledge of the local pits and now defunct and disappeared industry, so he was useful too.

We heaved ourselves up Dowfold Hill, through the newly waymarked golf course (we’re very proud!) and over the frozen newly cropped fields to Helmington Row and on through the land mentioned fairly recently in a blog post as being barricaded off by the landowner – now with new stiles and then….  a chap was seen to be performing some kind of pirhouette on a wooden bridge and, arms waving and uttering a cry of disbelief, he disappeared into the five foot deep ditch (luckily frozen and not filled with wet water), legs and feet waving uselessly in the air.

 

Various people extracted him from his hole and he was noted to have a small hole in the skin next to his ear and a grazed wrist , but otherwise cheerful and ambulant and happy to go on. So we went on. There’s an accident report……..  

We finished, in a snow shower,  as planned in St Cath’s with various pies and toasties and hot drinks.

It was just short of eight miles.

We might put a handrail and some wire netting on the bridge.

 

Newton Fell to Cartmel Fell Damply - Wainwright Outlier Bagging

 

At some point in the year, I realised that I only had about eighteen fells in Alf (come sit on me knee, pet) Wainwright’s guide to the Outlying Fells of Lakeland and I decided to do something very passive about it – this being the handing over of walk design and leadership to the bro…

And so, me and  the dawg the bro and his walking pal Ria  parked on a very old and unused bit of the old main road between Kendal and Barrow and lurched off in a heavy rainshower up the brackeny slopes of Newton fell (North) aka Saskells. 

The forecast was for occasional  rain showers and, luckily, we only had two during the whole day. The first one lasted three hours and the second for an hour and a half. During the dry half an hour, nothing dried out.

Anyway, the first top, Newton Fell (North) which probably has a really nice view and certainly has some kind of electronic thingy on the top fell fairly easily and we retraced over a subsidiary top and then into the woods for Staveley Fell. his, we made more difficult by using a vague track through forestry from the forestry road. The summit is rough and heathery and has a grand view of the Southern end of Windermere.

More damp wanderings followed and, eventually, we arrived on Cartmel Fell which also probably has a nice view and certainly has a big, square cairn or “monument” on the top from which vantage the Very Fine View can probably be inspected whilst lolling in the sunshine scoffing a cheese and tomato butty. Today’s conditions were unsuitable for such luxury, however , as the bread would have got all soggy and the loller would have lolled himself into hypothermia. So we left.

Our return journey was through more nice woodland and through new nature reserves on Simpson Ground Allotment and, ultimately, back to the start.

The return journey over the A66 in a blizzard was interesting.

We did nine and a bit miles and 1700 feet of up.  Here’s a map for the interested.