Great Dodd and Sheffield Pike

Thursday 24th July 2003

After several days of poor weather I finally had a break on this walk and enjoyed better conditions, so despite a little rain in the morning and strong winds with low cloud, I thought it had been a good day. I was staying at the Helvellyn Youth Hostel in Glenridding and walked up the valley from the hostel taking the old pony-track that zigzags up the southern slopes of Raise. This soon took me into the clouds and eventually brought me onto the ridge that comes down from Helvellyn, near White Side, which is little more than a grassy mound. Since it was not far away I nipped up to the summit of White Side before turning around and headed north along the top of the ridge.

Despite the low cloud and occasional rain this was an easy walk with little gradient except for the descent and climb out of Sticks Pass that I had crossed the day before. Before reaching the Sticks Pass I visited the top of Raise, and beyond the pass more fells would come and go: Stybarrow Dodd, Watson’s Dodd and Great Dodd. These are the peaks that I’d planned on walking over the day before when bad weather had forced me to take a low level route. Great Dodd is the highest point on the range north of the Sticks Pass and I stopped there for lunch and pondered where to go next. I had run out of high fells, and with a gradually descending slope north of me I had no choice but to retrace my steps.

I remember the wind being very strong at the top of Great Dodd and it pulled at my map case, which was really annoying me. I pulled the case off and threw it upon the ground. The case must have been constructed from such a hard plastic that in the cold temperatures the case was brittle enough to shatter on the corner that took the shock of the fall. This taught me the fragility of map cases and how useless they are in strong winds. More recently I have used cases that, although they may be less waterproof, are smaller and made from a softer plastic. Once I had returned to Stybarrow Dodd I headed east over a ridge that I thought of at the time as White Stones (since that is how it appears on the map), but which Wainwright says is Green Side, and lends its name to the nearby disused lead mines.

Whatever it’s called, I continued east until I reached the top of  Glencoyne Head where I turned right descending steeply past open, disused quarries down the slope to Nick Head. From there I ascended the much smaller fell of Sheffield Pike, which being a smaller fell was below the cloud level and gave me tremendous views across Ullswater and to all the higher fells all around me. After the high grassy fells of the Dodds, Sheffield Pike was a delight with heather and crags littering the top of an enthralling fell and was a highlight of the walk.  I had enormous fun descending over Heron Pike and along the narrow south-east ridge before dropping steeply down the hillside into Glenridding. I reached the village just in time to see two coach-loads of old women swarm around the souvenir shops, so I quickly turned around and headed back up the valley to the hostel. Despite the weather, I enjoyed this walk, though mainly at the top of Sheffield Pike once I’d descended out of the clouds.

Given how much I enjoyed Sheffield Pike on this walk it is astonishing that I have returned there only once, just after the New Year in 2009. On that occasion I corrected an oversight on this walk in missing out Glenridding Dodd, which is a small top at the eastern end of Sheffield Pike’s south-eastern ridge. When I did this walk I still hadn’t read any of the Wainwrights, so I didn’t know that Glenridding Dodd had been given its own chapter in the Pictorial Guides. I corrected that in 2009, but in failing light, and I have never climbed Glenridding Dodd or Sheffield Pike from Glencoyne, an ascent that Wainwright describes as being one of the pleasantest short climbs in Lakeland. One of the attractions of the Lake District is that even if you have been there many times there are still many attractive and interesting places left to visit. I must go back.