The Saturday–A Reccy–Fiend’s Fell

It really really irritates me when peeps on the telly begin their explanations of stuff with the word “So…”
So…., I collected Li Yang from her cottage in the sky and we departed for Melmerby – a small Scarp-foot village just over the hill from Alston and the proud location of a pub, a bakery/tea-room and a Very Strong Wind. This, of course, was the second of the three walks over the last weekend. The next one will have even more mistakes because I’ll write it on Merlot Friday.

The occasion was a reconnaisance of a walk wot I’m leading for the Wednesday/Saturdays Walking Group aka the Wednesday Walkers Walking On Saturdays. Reccies have to be done to eliminate surprises and this was the second of this route – the first being completed on a very hot day on the first of July. The result of that reccy was that I altered the route a bit around the burned-out cafe at the summit of Hartside in favour of a direct approach on a waymarked but thin trod straight up to the summit, a bit short of the cafe.

A few pics from the first reccy:


I also found a way through the necklace of clitter which covers the Western side of the Pennine ridge at this point and forms a significant barrier to comfy progress.

Se, me and LTD and Li Yang set off along the lane that heads towards Gamlesby – easy  and flatish walking for a mile or so, then, turning gently up hill to join a rough byway that goes all the way up to the cafe at Hartside (but we turned off before that – see above and try to pay attention in class or you’ll get a slap on the legs)

A thin trod – look, I’ve mentioned this thin trod before. And sit up. And have your hair cut before coming into my class. You look like that Bingo Starr.

The top of Fiend’s Fell has a trig, a large cairn and a view of the Lake District. It’s not a place for sitting about when the wind is nithering, as it was when me and LTD and Li Yang were there, so we progressed along the ridge – heathery and squishy at first, but slowly forming into a fine hill-walk on short, dry turf with ever-better views of the Eden Valley and the Lakes.
We lunched at Knapside Hill, which has a large cairn and a shelter which appears to be the remains of a building with a small enclosure attached. It’s a cracking viewpoint too, though, a bit chilly on the day.
The highest point on the walk is just a bit less than half a mile away and only 20 metres higher – Melmerby Fell at 709 metres. It has a small cairn to which we added a couple of extra stones.

The descent comes after a short walk along the top of the band of stones mentioned above (clitter) and heads through a wide gap to descend to a track which leads all the way back to Melmerby with some huuuuuge views thrown in for interest.
The walk is on 15 September 2018, costs just £1 for the insurance (surpluses are donated to charity) – and begins at 10:00 am.
Those taking part should park prettily in order not to annoy anybody.
It’s a bit under 11 miles with 2000 feet of climbing, most of which starts after about a mile and continues, not too steeply, for another couple of miles. (So, it’s all in one lump, see?)

Red Dell, Wetherlam and Red Gill Head

Somehow, there was a traffic-jam of walks this past weekend. On Friday, LTD negotiated the A66 and M6 over to Kendal and, on instruction or request to have a walk which would include the Synge top called “Ladstones”, or, possibly “Top Above Ladstones”, or even, “Red Gill Head”, perhaps, the Bro and us trundled off to Coniston and climbed up past the Coppermines Valley into Red Dell.

Red Dell is probably so-called due to the colour of the rock in the spoilheaps. There’s a lot of mining low down in the valley, including a hugely deep wheelpit, which once killed it’s operator, according to the info board nearby.

We puffed and panted our way sweatily up Red Dell and on to the summit of Wetherlam on a thin path which shows just how quiet is this route. Those in a sulk, or otherwise of an unsociable bent might well enjoy climbing Wetherlam by the Red Dell route. Just sayin’.

It was quite chilly at lunch on Wetherlam and our route, rounded to the nearest ten miles, was to descend Wetherlam’s South ridge, lighting on Lad Stomes aka whatever it might be called from above, thus taking it completely by surprise. The name Ladstones appears in www.hill-bagging.co.uk and, I suppose, in Synge’s list. The name, though, seems to locate some rocks in the small but beautifully formed corry or cwm just below. Otherwise the top is unnamed. Innominate Top, at 640 metres and a bit is a small outcrop near a small tarn, but with a big view. We enjoyed it briefly.

We finished our rounded-up walk by continuing down the ridge to Coniston.

It wasn’t very far, really… but a beautiful walk with a view of Coniston Old Man, specially for Li Yang, who is hoping to climb it shortly, I’m lead to believe.

More walks on the same weekend ought to follow very shortly providing my blogging mojo stands up to the challenge.

Coniston Old Man…

Napping on the Buttermere Fell

I seem to have developed a bit of a log-jam of walks over the next few days. If you’re retired like wot I am, it would appear to most sensible peeps that this situation would be unlikely to happen. But….

So, just to start things off, and at a whim, me and LTD went off to Buttermere, having identified an unbagged lump labelled Gale Fell East Top, at 499 of the Queen’s metres and just below Starling Dodd.

Firstly, we climbed Red Pike via the lovely Dodd, a pimple/Nuttall stuck on the side. This has superb views over Crummack Water and Buttermere and is an ideal spot to sit and scoff salted cashew nuts whilst sipping Colombian filter coffee from a really really old thermos. It was here that LTD enjoyed his first nap.

We watched a chap and his son heaving mountain bikes up the steep path to Red Pike, and, indeed, overtook them about ten minutes later. Since I was last up there, Red Pike seems to have developed a deep and loose gully near the top, which those pushing bicycles must have found challenging….

 

We crossed the moor to Starling Dodd, which we had to ourselves and thence over a sloppy bit to our target Gale Fell East Top. Here, lunchtime was declared and we found a little suntrap out of the cold wind blowing off the Isle of Man and settled down into the heather. Here LTD had his second nap. And I had my first. I woke up an hour later. The sun had gone in and it was quite cold.

I decided that I still had plenty of time, though, despite the snoozathon, and we followed the fence up to Great Borne, which was also uninhabited, and then down the steep grass to join the bridleway back to Buttermere, bagging Floutern Cop, a small Tump, on the way.

It’s very “autumn” at the moment; what my Dad would have called “back-endish”. The wind is cold, the bracken is on the turn and the hedgerows are full of blackberries, crab apples and sloes. I’ve already had one blackberry and apple crumble, having collected half a kilo of brambles on a dog walk at Crook. I’ll leave the crab apples to those who know what to do with crab apples, but I’ll be having some sloes in a few weeks – I think they might be better after a frost, and, if we get a clear night or two in September, a frost seems likely. In the meantime, I’m packing a few extra warm things..

We did 11 miles and 3600 feet of ascent. We have another walk in the Lake District tommorow, then a reccy for a guided walk, then  Ramblers walk in the Dales. It might rain on the Ramblers, apparently.

Some more pics: (click to make them biggerer)

Back to Langholm–Tansy, Naze, Mid Hill and Whita

Li Yang decided she wanted to come with me to Langholm, so orf we jolly well went in the knipemobile (showing my age , here…) . The journey had significantly fewer roadworks than my last trip to Langholm and we arrived in just a bit under two hours…. and the day was turning sunny and warm…
We wandered through the park (very lovely) and joined Gaskell’s Walk, a Buccleuch Estate footpath which heads up by Wauchope Water through woodland with blackberries (nom….) and thence by Becks Farm along squishy paths to the Glencorf Burn – a bracken-fest with barbed wire to be crossed and, ultimately to the summit of Tansy Hill 328m


Tansy Hill has only juncus for shelter against the breeze drifting off the Solway Firth, but has cracking views over said Firth to the Lake District Hills, blue in the distance. Here, we lunched.
A contouring route took us around to Naze Hill 331m – a very similar lump to Tansy, in fact. Anybody intending to walk these lovely hills should note that a) they’re very very quiet and those out for a session of  thinking-time, of peace and quiet and some of that “me” time stuff, will find the ideal spot; and b) there are few tracks or paths and the going is quite rough in places.

Some fence-handrailing brought us to Mid Hill 327m which has a trig at 326m, but the summit is on the SW side of the fence. Here, we met a walker (!) – a “senior” lady with a lurcher dog, out for a sort of reccy. We had a long chat. Her dog leapt back and forth over the fence and made friends with LTD. There was much tail-wagging and sniffing of the naughty parts (I’m referring to the dogs here obviously).
There’s an unmapped local path on the trig-point side of the fence; one of those paths that are a complete mystery to walkers who don’t know where they are in the first place and it can be rejoined from the “wrong” side of the fence by following the fence downhill to a gate. From here’ it’s easy to follow back to the fleshpots of Langholm.

As a sweet course, we bagged Whita Hill 355m  on the way home (through Newcastleton to Kielder: a shorter route home which takes a bit longer than driving on the A69/A7)
I’d been up Whita Hill before, though, so only LTD got the tick. Li Yang doesn’t really bother about ticking hills – she’s more interested in the mileage – which, in this case, was eleven miles.
Whita Hill has a memorial to poet Hugh MacDairmid and a huuuuge memorial to Major Sir John Malcolm – a pillar of the British Empire and all-round good egg, according to the inscription on the side of the obelisk.
The hills immediately North of Langholm are very attractive, specially when sunlit and seem from the Mid Hill area – and it seems likely that there will more visits to Langholm for trundles in this area, although how I can fit this in this year is a puzzle at the moment – my diary is full and it’s a bit far for short winter days. Next spring, though, when the larks and pipets are noisy in the sky…….

Highlands Campings - Tasting Autumn

It chucked it down for the 270 mile road trip to the little car park at the end of the track to Callater.

Then it chucked it down some more as we (me, Dawn and LTD) walked up the track past the Lodge and Bothy and pitched at a bonny spot at the head of the loch – about a mile or so from the lodge.

It drizzled on and off all night and partially into the next day when the hills became alive with the sound of a grouse shoot up on the hill. Vehicles could be seen high up the track leading to Carn an Tuirc. I was seized by an irresistable desire to stay in bed and read my improving book (The Seal Woman’s Gift by Sally Magnusson – a cracking read by the way and much in contrast to the dire drabness of BBC Radio 4’s output for the day.) Radio 4 used to be quite interesting. Not sure what happened, but whatever it is, or was, was seems to have become an irritatingly dull background drone which I had to switch off in favour of the sound of the sporadic gunfire coming from the knobs of the hill. Yes folks, I was , in fact, suffering from Bell’s Lassitude. This is marginally more expensive than Whyte and Mackay’s Lassitude or, indeed, Famous Grouse Lassitude. I hate taking proper malt whisky to the hills in case I spill it, and I find that single malts evapourate at a higher rate than yer blended stuff, so the Bell#s lasts longer. And I quite like Bell’s.

Couldn’t get Radio 2 on my liddle radio-set. This is just as well since they’ve started playing music with squeaky noises in and I feel I’m probably drifting out of their age-related target audience.

Day 3 and the shooting had stopped. The rain had stopped too, but there was a cold wind gusting from either the West or the East, depending on which way the glen diverted the prevailing South-Westerly. So, I roused LTD from his Winalot Lassitude and we went off and bagged Carn Dubh – an 800-metre flat-topped grouse moor hidden from Callater but in full view of the Glenshee Ski paraphanalia a jaunt of some 7 miles or so, there and back.

On Day 4, we abandoned Callater, as per The Plan and went to Braemar for Fish and Chips and some light shopping, followed by a short drive to Glen Shee and a showery walk up Glen Taitneach (The Glen of the Many Very Small Potatoes). The showers were heavy and we abandoned the walk up the glen after about three or four miles and set up camp quite near some noisy waterfalls. These were almost noisy enough to drown out the whingeing middle-class Londoners droning on about something or other Quite Important on Radio 4, but not, it seems the lively bollix and adverts with people doing a verbal version of small print concerning the application of Terms and Conditions and Only Available to Over 18’s and Not Available in the Channel Islands or feckin Milngavie in between tracks by Abba or the Beautiful South. much more entertaining, in fact. Kingdom FM (Kingdom of Fife, I suspect, not the Jehovah’s Witnesses)

It rained and blew on and off on Day 5. I received an unexpected bout of Porcine Rissotto Lassitude and fought a sudden addiction to honey-roasted peanuts in between putting the tent pegs back in and chasing ants around Page 183 of Sally Magnusson’s novel with an index finger just for fun. I dreamed of sunny days wandering through the sun-kissed fields and pastures of the Kingdom of Fife whilst seeking out the place where All My Gardening Needs could be met and I could have a cuppa and a fruit scone whilst the weans played on the adventure playground. The waterfall hissed away in the background and deer barked somewhere. LTD snored and farted doggy farts in his lovely sleeping bag…. He acheived his all-time record of 17 hours in bed and was keen to set off on Day 6. Well done, Lucky, there should be some kind of award ceremony or something.

On Day 6 Dawn accompanied me part way up the Glen (actually, it translates roughly as “The pleasant glen” – and very nice it is too.) Me and LTD wandered up to Loch nan Eun and bagged some more 800 metre tops Glas Tulaichean North Top, Carn a Charsaich, Creag Easgaidh and it’s East top – and all very nice, but in a strong and nithering wind emerging from Somewhere Very Cold and causing me not to stop for lunch till I found a really nice comfy spot hidden from the autumn-like gale and furnished with some very comfy bilberry plants. We returned to camp after about three or four hours. The hills, it seems are well populated by some pretty beefy mountain hares and grouse of both the black and red kinds.

I finished the book to a background of car dealership adverts, some kind of phone-in competition, more Abba, Beatles and even Herman’s Hermits. This is the stuff (to quote Lenny Henry)

It really chucked it down from the early hours of Day 7 till the time we took up the wet tents and left for home. I liked the hot weather. I’m missing it already. It seems that the summer has gone and has left without leaving a note as to whether or not it’s just gone shopping or has gone to New Zealand till next June. I’m already planning to rewrite the Gospel According to St Luke in the form of a Lancashire Monologue for a Christmas “do” (The bit about the shepherds)