St Sunday Crag and Fairfield

Friday 25th July 2003

For the final walk of my holiday I headed back down Glenridding before climbing out of the valley to Lanty’s Tarn, a small natural lake that was extended in the nineteenth century with the construction of a small dam. In practice, and particularly when I was walking, in July, the water now doesn’t even reach the dam so I would imagine Lanty’s Tarn is now not much bigger than it was before the dam was constructed. Leaving these thoughts behind I descended into Grisedale where I realised that the weather seemed to be improving so I decided to walk up the fell opposite and onto the ridge between Birks and St Sunday Crag. That path out of Glenridding is a steep climb and I remember not climbing all the way to the top of Birks, but instead after passing Thornhow End I stayed on the clear path that crosses the northern slopes of the fell.

The clouds were still quite low on this walk and I plunged into mist again long before I reached the top of St Sunday Crag. Before this holiday I had little experience of walking in poor weather or even just in thick cloud, but I was beginning to gain some of that much needed experience on this holiday, and that would continue the following Easter in the Lake District when I would experience much more and finally gain the confidence to walk in bad weather. The broad ridge of St Sunday Crag brought me down to Deepdale Hause before climbing along the gloriously narrow ridge of Cofa Pike and up to the top of Fairfield. This is a confusing place in mist as I embarrassingly found just last September when I spent ages walking around the flat top trying to find my way off the fell. In 2003 I was already becoming practiced at using a compass and was soon able to find the summit where I had my lunch in the clouds before safely finding the right direction off the fell.

When I was at the top of Fairfield at sunset on Good Friday in 2006 I remember thinking then that that was the first time I’d been at the summit with a view since on all my previous occasions, including this one being described and my first visit the year before, had been when low cloud obstructed my view. The previous time I’d been at the top of Fairfield I had descended along the western arm of the Fairfield Horseshoe, over Great Rigg and Heron Pike. I have still never done the Fairfield Horseshoe as a single walk, but by my second visit to the Lake District I had covered all sections of the walk by descending from Fairfields over Hart Crag, Dove Crag and High Pike. The tops of Hart Crag and Dove Crag required a bit of guesswork to find as the mist obscured the summit features, but soon after leaving the top of Dove Crag I left the clouds behind and beheld glorious views down the length of the ridge towards Windermere.

I now had a thoroughly enjoyable walk while slowly descending the long ridge over High Pike and Low Pike all the way down into Ambleside and left me thinking that this had been a good walk and the first one where I had stayed dry all week. I was able to catch a bus in Ambleside to the railway station and thence a train home while thinking that this was a satisfying end to a good holiday. I had used my experiences in the Lake District the year before to improve my equipment, but I still lacked experience of the hills in bad weather. My bad weather education would continue later in the year when I climbed Snowdon for the first time, but this holiday was not just about bad weather. In the first week of the holiday I had some really hot weather that was a completely different challenge, but also an opportunity to learn.