The Lakes, day 5 – Borrowdale

Friday 19th July 2002

After this walk I didn’t consider that it had been a good day, but that was only because it had rained all day and my planned walk up Great Gable was rejected due to the weather. With the hindsight of ten years I can see that the weather doesn’t necessarily have to ruin a day in the Lake District. In fact that evening one of the guys in the youth hostel said that the conditions at the top of Great Gable hadn’t been that bad and I should have gone up. These days I would have done but at the time I’d never experienced bad weather like that at the top of a mountain and didn’t know what to expect. Quite rightly I erred on the side of caution and decided to stay on lower slopes doing a walk that I had already planned to do as a wet weather alternative. I walked around one of the greatest valleys in the Lake District, Borrowdale, and I found that my cagoule was not as waterproof as I’d thought. I got soaked.

Setting off from the youth hostel I walked beside the River Derwent towards the Jaws of Borrowdale, a square mile that Wainwright declared to be the loveliest in Lakeland. I have since passed through this area a number of times on the road on the other side of the river, but this is actually the only time I have ever walked through the Jaws of Borrowdale, which is a great tragedy. The river passes through a narrow gap between the rocky buttresses of Castle Crag and Grange Fell where even the road has to twist and turn sharply many times to get through. It is a glorious symphony of rock and tree with the river in the middle holding the whole thing together, but I have little memory of my journey on the path the other side of the river from the road. Since it was raining maybe that dampened my enthusiasm, but I don’t remember being that impressed with my walk through the Jaws; the road surely can’t be better than the path.

Eventually I reached the tiny village of Grange where I turned left along the road past the Borrowdale Gates Hotel before making my way onto a path that crosses the southern extremity of Derwent Water. The marsh lands did leave an impression on me as I walked along raised boards across the wet ground. This is also a path that I haven’t revisited in ten years, but now I wish I could. I may have been disappointed with this walk ten years ago but now I am desperate to do the walk again and explore areas of the Lake District that I am unfamiliar with. Just because I was doing a walk that didn’t climb particularly high didn’t mean it wasn’t a good one, unfortunately I didn’t realise that at the time. Eventually I crossed the fields that flood at other times of the year and reached the Lodore Falls Hotel.

Behind the hotel are a set of cascades and falls that must have been quite a sight thanks to all the rain, but I think the path beside them was quite muddy so I climbed quickly up to the Watendlath Valley. This is a valley that I have walked through several times since, most of them in wintry conditions, and even once in the dark. Most recently I walked through the valley on my way back to Keswick, but on this occasion I was walking to the popular hamlet of Watendlath. When I got there for the first time I found a deserted collection of farm houses with no sign of the tourists that usually congregate around Watendlath, the rain was successfully keeping people away. From there I took a bridlepath back over the low hill to the hostel in Borrowdale. Half-way across I saw a path that was signposted towards Dock Tarn and I considered walking off towards the fell, but I really couldn't be bothered in the rain.

The problem was my discomfort from being wet and hot inside a cagoule that was almost useless in these conditions. My t-shirt was probably soaked from my own sweat as the cagoule I was wearing was not a special breathable one but a cheap anorak from a department store. At this time I still hadn’t got the right clothing to cope with poor weather on the hills so I probably made the right decision to spend the rest of the afternoon back in the youth hostel reading a book. Although this short walk seemed like a disappointment at the time it was a further step in my learning to cope with bad weather while out walking. I got a new, better, waterproof cagoule after learning from my experiences on this walk and subsequent experiences of walking in bad weather built upon what I had learnt. Ignoring the weather, I shouldn’t have been disappointed with the walk as it seems to me now that it was a great little walk that I would be delighted to do now.