The Lakes, day 11 – High Raise

Thursday 25th July 2002

For the last walk of my first ever visit to the Lake District I went up into the fells that overlook Grasmere, circling around Easedale. Just like the whole of this second week, the weather was bad again with low cloud all day, but that didn’t stop me venturing up into the clouds and gaining in my confidence of walking in this sort of weather. I started the walk by climbing up to the top of Helm Crag, the small fell that dominates views of Grasmere, and walked along the ridge over Gibson Knott to Calf Crag under ever increasing rain. I went straight over the pass at the top of Far Easedale heading straight up the fellside towards High Raise climbing up Deep Slack to Codale Head following a line of old boundary posts while the rain became heavier and the fog thicker. I had experienced some pretty bad conditions during this second week, but this was becoming the worst yet, leaving me with no sense of where I was and with no path to follow except for a broken line of fence posts. I eventually decided I was fed up with it all when I put my foot onto what I thought was a stone only to find myself knee deep in mud. It doesn’t matter how waterproof your boots are, if you step into a puddle deeper than the top of your boots you will, like me, have a wet foot in that boot for the rest of the day.

When I eventually reached the top and found the main footpath across the summit plateau, instead of heading north to the summit of High Raise, I turned south. I was so fed up with the conditions that I couldn’t be bothered to try and find the summit cairn and trig point. During this holiday I found that it is not fun to walk around the fells when it's raining and you can't see more than a dozen metres ahead of you. I can now appreciate the challenge inherent in walking in these sorts of conditions, but I wouldn’t say that such a day is as fun as one with good weather. You should always make the most of whatever weather you’ve got, but you still need to adapt your plans to the changing weather conditions. Walking around aimlessly in thick hill fog is never fun; the goal is always to get below the clouds. I came down from the top of High Raise by the quickest route I could find, beside the Bright Beck stream to Stickle Tarn near the Langdale Pikes.

This was my first visit to the area of the Langdale Pikes and I remember being impressed by the enormous cliff of Pavey Ark that overlooks Stickle Tarn with the top of the crag disappearing into the clouds, which potentially makes the cliff-face look even bigger than it actually is. From Stickle Tarn I proceeded across the undulating hills of Blea Rigg, Castle How, Swinescar Pike, Lang How, Silver How & Dow Bank. This is a fabulous walk that I have done many times since and found that it is always best done in this direction with the gradient gradually falling as you come off the fells rather than having an annoyingly long climb to get up onto the higher fells. I commented at the time that this is “quite a way when you walk it,” but every step is a joy. Eventually I reached the road at Red Bank and the foot of Loughrigg. Ever since losing my glasses on Loughrigg on the first day of my holiday I had wanted to return to the fell to look for them, so when I eventually located the spot where I thought I'd lost my glasses I tried to find them, but to no avail. I had to accept that they were lost.

The following day was technically the last day of my holiday but I was so tired in both spirit and in leg that I decided to go straight home (the knowledge that I would have to be at work on the Saturday morning was another motivator), but part of me wishes I hadn't. I had a plastic bag full of presents that I’d just bought in Grasmere so walking would have been impractical, but the weather was glorious for the first time all week, which seems to be just my luck. It has been interesting going through my experiences of my first trip to the Lake District and reading what I wrote back then. My inexperience of hill-walking shows through in many places with a intense distaste for walking in the rain, though that would seem to be in part due to the inadequacies of my clothing. The reports from this holiday have reminded me of how much I have developed as a walker. I am no longer afraid of bad weather as I have now walked in weather that is considerably worse than that I found on Robinson, Hindscarth and High Raise during this holiday.