Stone Arthur and Fairfield

Monday 2nd September 2013

For the fourth time this year I was back in the Lake District and this time I had left my tent at home (and my back was very appreciative of that!) as I went back to using the small rucksack that I’d last used at Easter with a week when I would walk from hostel to hostel, and it felt wonderful to have such a light rucksack on my back again. Due to commitments at home I was unable to start this holiday until after the weekend so I had the unusual experience (for me) of catching a train during the crazy Monday morning rush hour and eventually reached Windermere an hour late (thanks to the infamous punctuality of Virgin Trains). I now had a decision to make: considering the poor, drizzly weather that was in the Lake District when I got there, do I stick with my original plan of climbing Helvellyn or do I catch an earlier bus only as far as Grasmere and do a different walk? Since the title of this post is not Helvellyn it’s obvious that I caught the Grasmere bus, getting off opposite the Swan Hotel just outside the village, to do a more interesting walk than I would have got by going up Helvellyn.

Behind the Swan Hotel, I climbed a delightful lane that has a lovely stream running beside it under a tree-covering. I last came up this way Easter last year, also in poor weather, on my way to Alcock Tarn, but on this occasion at the top of the lane, instead of turning right over a small bridge, I turned left and followed a wall steeply up the fellside with dense bracken on one side and a coniferous wood on the other side of the wall. Before moving away from the cover of the trees I had some lunch and then continued along the path that weaves a course across the fellside gradually climbing towards the prominent tor of rock that is known as Stone Arthur. My only previous visit to Stone Arthur had been in descent in dwindling light at the end of an ambitiously long walk all the way from Windermere Station, so this was now my first ascent of Stone Arthur. I remember last time I was unsure which of the crags on the ridge was the actual Wainwright summit, but from my perspective now in coming up the fell it was obvious as Stone Arthur is very prominent in the views.

This is really just a descending ridge coming down from Great Rigg, so after passing Stone Arthur I wrapped myself more tightly in waterproofs against the harshening weather and proceeded to walk up the gradually ascending ridge that is dotted with rocky outcrops. This was an enjoyable climb, despite the weather, and it wasn’t long before I plunged into the clouds as I reflected that it must have been a while since I last did a walk in low clouds; I’d almost missed it. Eventually the ridge steepened and led me up to the summit of Great Rigg, which I don’t think I’ve visited since that time in 2006 when I descended the ridge that I’d now just climbed; the eastern arm of the Fairfield Horseshoe seems to have held more appeal to me than this side. I contemplated correcting my neglect of this arm of the horseshoe by turning south and descending over Heron Pike, but eventually Fairfield itself won as I continued along the ridge north up to the broad summit. Navigation is difficult on Fairfield in poor weather and even though I located the summit without any difficulty finding the correct way off was tricky.

It was very windy, cold and wet on the summit of Fairfield and this was hampering my efforts to find the route I wanted towards Cofa Pike off the summit, but eventually after a lot of unnecessary wandering around the plateau I managed to find the right direction. The ridge over Cofa Pike is a fabulous scramble that I had particularly wanted to do even though it was not actually in the direction that I ultimately wanted to go. The wet and windy conditions just made the narrow, rocky ridge even more exciting until eventually it led me down to Deepdale Hause. There is a path between Deepdale Hause and Grisedale Tarn after Wainwright suggested that ‘some public-spirited hiker with nothing better to do would serve his fellows well by stamping out a track and cairning it.’ This has been done but the path is rather faint until a cairned junction is reached. I was intrigued by this excellent, clearer path so I turned right along it and it seems to head across the fellside towards St Sunday Crag, but I couldn’t see where it went in the poor weather, though I would love to find out where this well-made path goes.

Eventually I returned back along this good path to the junction and confidently followed it down to Grisedale Tarn where I was able to join the popular path that climbs out of Grisedale on its way to Grasmere over Grisedale Hause. It had stopped raining as I left Fairfield, but the ground was still very wet and I found the pitched stones of the path coming down from Grisedale Hause very slippery. I don’t know if my old boots were not as grippy as they could have been, but I was having a really difficult time on this heavily manufactured path and I wished I’d had my walking poles with me. In fact, I didn’t slip over until I was off the pitched stone path; maybe I was thinking that I didn’t need to be so careful at that point. The stone pitching soon ended and left me with a delightful walk down into Grasmere. This was a fabulous walk, even though it was short and most of the time it was raining, windy and cloudy. It just shows why I could keep coming back to the Lake District: in any weather it is a fantastic place to walk. The path beside Tongue Gill as I came off the fells reminded of the beautiful little places that are so abundant in the Lake District. Thanks to the weather and a missed train connection I did a walk that was probably a lot better than the one I’d originally planned.