Glenridding Dodd

Saturday 26th March 2016

It took me a long time to decide where I was going to be walking at Easter with lots of different options being considered. I was looking at walking along the South Downs Way, or the South West Coast Path, and I had also considered going back to the Yorkshire Dales, but since I could not put together a coherent plan for any of these I eventually decided to go to a place that I often default to as it requires relatively little planning, and that is the Lake District. When I was in the Lake District at Easter last year the weather was sensational with no rain all week, which is virtually unheard of in the Lake District, but this year was slightly different, and seemed to be making up for the loss of rain the year before. Over the winter the Lake District (and the surrounding area) suffered from record breaking amounts of rainfall with extensive flooding as a result. Months later the Lake District was still trying to clear up from the devastation. When I got off the train in Penrith at the start of my holiday it was already raining and it didn’t stop all day.

I was spending the Easter weekend in Patterdale where I remember previously spending an enjoyable spring bank holiday weekend in 2006, but I didn’t feel as if I had spent much time in the area since that year. In my short planning time for this holiday I very quickly settled on coming back to this lovely part of the Lake District to walk some of the many paths in the area that I had never been on before, but the weather seemed like it was going to force a change to my plans. When I got off the bus in Glenridding, a village that featured heavily in the news over Christmas due to the flooding, the rain was falling so heavily that I didn’t want to do any walk. After eating my lunch I came to my senses and started the walk that I had planned by heading north out of Glenridding onto a path that runs between the road and Ullswater. This is a delightful little path that I had never been on before and must be great when the sun is shining, unlike on this walk.

This lakeside path is woefully short and soon brought me back onto the road just before Stybarrow Crag. On the other side of the crag is a layby where a faint path climbs through woodland with many deceptive side paths heading left towards the top of Stybarrow Crag. Initially I was confused by these paths as even though Glenridding Dodd is small I knew I couldn’t be near the summit already since I’d only just started. Keeping a fence to my right brought me out of the wood and up to what Clive Hutchby in the latest edition of the Wainwright describes as a rickety stile. The previous edition of the Wainwright, edited by Chris Jesty, says there is no continuous path and that is what I found beyond the stile, however Clive Hutchby says there is a clear path beside a stream, Mossdale Beck.

I could find no path in the murky conditions so I tried to follow anything that seemed to be heading in the right direction. I didn’t stay beside the stream, where it was probably boggier, and moved onto higher ground south of the stream with the crags below Heron Pike in my view as I climbed up the grassy slopes. The rain continued to fall and the winds picked up as I climbed until by the time I finally reached the top of the ridge I was hit by tremendously strong winds with needle points of rain stabbing into my face. Even with my head to the ground it was difficult to make my way along the short path along the ridge to the summit cairn of Glenridding Dodd and at the cairn I could not stand. I had to crawl up and stretch my hand out to tap the top of the cairn before hastily turning around and quickly making my way back down to the depression between Glenridding Dodd and Sheffield Pike.

It had originally been my plan to continue over Sheffield Pike, but in these winds that was never going to be possible, so instead I descended by the usual route to Glenridding via Blaes Crag. I was once again savagely attacked by the painful raindrops blown into my face by the wind until finally I dropped low enough for the wind to die down that enabled me to descend the slopes in relative comfort all the way down into Glenridding. On my previous visit to the summit of Glenridding Dodd I had come from Sheffield Pike along the narrow south-east ridge before dropping down on this same path that I used now. Consequently on this walk I had ascended Glenridding Dodd for the first time, so at least I had accomplished something. The wind had blown away any thought of doing any more walking this day so after wandering around Glenridding looking at the new defences that have built beside the beck since Christmas, I heading off along the road towards Patterdale.

I had considered climbing Arnison Crag, which is easily climbed from Patterdale, just as Glenridding Dodd is for Glenridding, but the prospect of strong winds at the summit prompted me to simply head straight to the youth hostel. With rain forecast for the coming week I could have been despondent at this point in my holiday, but instead I knew that despite the weather it is still possible to have a great walk in the Lake District so long as I took a bit of time to plan a route that took account of the weather. Often these sorts of conditions take me to places that I would ordinarily never go to, so I was looking forward to what the week, and the weather, was going to throw at me.