Allen Crags

Saturday 7th September 2013

After suffering with torrential rain on the day before, I had hoped for something better on this walk, but it wasn’t to be. It was raining when I left Borrowdale Youth Hostel, which is really depressing as you know you have a pathetic day coming up, and it continued to rain all day. It is better if you can start the day well, then you have hope it’ll continue like that, but when it starts bad you think it will never end, which makes it hard to start. I started the walk by returning along the now familiar path to Seathwaite along the same route that I’d taken just two days previously. It had not occurred to me until this point that the way I’d planned this holiday was to go from Langdale to Borrowdale on Wednesday and to Wasdale on Thursday, and then return to Borrowdale on Friday and back to Langdale on Saturday. On the last day of my holiday I was returning to where I'd started and unfortunately I didn’t have good weather for it. When I got to Stockley Bridge I finally parted company with Thursday’s route as rather than heading towards Sty Head and Wasdale I continued beside Grains Gill.

This hugely popular path is heavily manufactured as it is often used as a route up to Scafell Pike and the occasions when I have used it in the past has been while ascending or descending that great crowd-pulling mountain. Despite this it’s not a bad route with a few interesting easy scrambles and I quite enjoyed the climb up the valley towards the grey murk lurking around the imposing face of Great End. At the top of the path I crossed Ruddy Gill and joined the highway-like path between Langdale and Sty Head heading up to the col just below Esk Hause that is often confused with that pass. This slightly lower pass is the highest point on the path and is not far from the top of Allen Crags. My plan for this day had been to climb Thornythwaite Fell on my way up to Glaramara before walking along the ridge to Allen Crags and from there along the highway to Langdale. I had decided against this plan in view of the weather, but since I was now so close to the summit of Allen Crags I decided to nip up to the wind-swept top, which elicited a questioning response from a passing walker who had seen me go up and immediately come back down to the pass.

The weather was even worse at the summit of Allen Crags, so having slapped my hands onto the summit cairn I turned around and came back down again. From this point the rain started to ease slightly and briefly stopped before starting once again with renewed vigour, which obliterated any thought I had that the weather would get better, so I disconsolately continued along the highway and  dropped down to Angle Tarn and then up to Rossett Pass. On this last climb of my holiday I became rather sad at the thought of leaving the Lake District and that Allen Crags might have been my last mountain of the year. I remember standing at the top of Stob Ghabhar a couple of years ago at the end of my holiday in Scotland thinking that I wouldn’t see the view from the top of a mountain again till the following year. Although I have since cautiously ventured into the world of winter walking I still prefer to do all my walking in the spring and summer so I still have that moment when my six month exile is about to begin. You can’t beat a good summer’s walk over great mountains and I am going to miss it.

Beyond the top of Rossett Pass I started to descend the excellent path that leads into Mickledon and Langdale and I reflected that I hadn’t properly been on this path before. I had climbed out of Mickledon to Rossett Pass in 2003, but I took a wrong turning, missed the start of the zigzags and climbed straight up beside Rossett Gill. Wainwright described Rossett Gill as the best-known of the Lakeland foot-passes due to its stoniness which had been getting worse year after year. Improvements to the path have now made the route very much easier and is actually a pleasure with the direct route no longer apparent and the zigzags were a delightful descent along a wonderfully engineered path, especially at a point where the path drops through a short stony gully. This may be a lovely route, but the rain was showing no signs of easing as I slowly made my way down to the bottom of the valley and along Mickledon to Langdale.

By the time I reached the hiker's bar at the old Dungeon Ghyll Hotel I had wet feet and was soaked, so I refused to leave the bar until the rain had stopped. My holiday may have ended with two very wet days, but I had enjoyed some fabulous weather earlier in the week. I had walked along some very popular paths that have been heavily engineered to cope with thousands of pairs of feet every year, but they pass through some truly stunning mountain scenery. Rossett Gill may be a very popular path (and even on this walk in torrential rain there were dozens of walkers on the path), but it passes through some of the best rock scenery in the country. For most of this holiday I had concentrated on the area of the Lake District around Scafell Pike where the indisputably best scenery anywhere in the Lake District is located. After a couple of drinks in the hiker's bar the sun finally came out but by that time the bus had arrived to start my journey home and it wouldn’t be long before the rain was back, and so would I.