Patterdale to Honister

Tuesday 29th March 2016

During my holiday in the Lake District last year I walked from Patterdale all the way across the National Park to Borrowdale, while climbing up Nethermost Pike and High Raise on the way, just to make it a little more challenging. I actually found this mammoth task surprisingly easy for me to do, so when I was planning a similar traverse in this holiday I decided to alter the route and make it even more of a challenge. Instead of going over two mountain passes I was now going to keep going to the top of a third pass: Honister Hause. However, what I hadn’t planned on was the weather. I had planned to start my traverse by climbing to the top of Birks and continuing along the ridge over St. Sunday Crag. As I left the hostel I considered going up Arnison Crag, which is a much smaller fell, but the weather wasn’t too bad at the start of the walk and I’d already changed my plans so many times on this holiday I liked the idea of sticking to my plan for once. An option for Coast to Coast walkers skirts the side of Birks, missing the top, on a direct ascent towards St. Sunday Crag, but I wanted to make a direct ascent of Birks itself.

A very steep path took me up the side of the fell with great views behind me of Ullswater until eventually the gradient eased where the views revealed beyond Birks towards the snow-covered slopes of St. Sunday Crag were worrying me. Puddles of ice beside my path were even more of a concern so by the time I reached the summit of Birks I was thinking that continuing over St. Sunday Crag was a bad idea. Therefore on the ridge between Birks and St. Sunday Crag I dropped down the snow-covered northern slopes to the wide, bypassing path that took me hastily back down to the bottom of the valley. With the prospect of hard snow and ice at the top of St. Sunday Crag I decided it was better to be late than dead, and so an hour and a half after I had started the climb, I was back down at the bottom of Grisedale. I had just as far to walk as when I’d started, but with less time to do it, so I briskly made my way along the bridlepath on the southern side of the valley.

I passed many instances of the effect of the record-breaking amounts of rain that had fallen over the winter leaving a considerable amount of damage in their wake, though fortunately none of the footbridges that I needed had been washed away and I was able to walk all the way up the valley to Grisedale Tarn. As I neared the head of the valley it started raining, which soon turned to snow while I walked up the great, craggy path that climbs out of the valley. By the time I reached Grisedale Tarn the ground was covered in snow leaving conditions that felt very wintry and required a lot of care. Following the northern edge of the tarn I made my way to the far end of the lake where I found the start of Raise Beck and the path that follows the stream all the way down. I have never been more thankful to start descending as I made my way down this path and away from the snow that lay around Grisedale Tarn. The Raise Beck path is very rough, descending steeply to Dunmail Raise, but was a joy compared with the challenges of making my way around Grisedale Tarn in that weather. On last year’s traverse I had joined this path half way down, but what I now found at the bottom of the path was very different.

Last December part of the road over Dunmail Raise was washed away by the torrential rains and the repairs had still not been completed, so that although it may have stopped raining by the time I reached the top of the pass, there were no cars on the road. Last year I climbed the steep slopes on the other side of the pass up Steel Fell, but now I turned right and followed a bridlepath that has been considerably improved to cycle track standards with stunning views of Thirlmere Reservoir ahead of me and glimpses of the extensive repairs being carried out on the road nearby. At West Head, previously known as, and still marked on maps as, Steel End, I turned left onto a path that soon became a nightmare. I was entering the Wythburn valley, which has a notorious reputation for being boggy, so I was walking into the wettest valley in the Lake District immediately after one of the wettest winters on record. Actually aside from the bogs, there is some tremendous scenery that made for an interesting and varied approach that will abide with me long after I’ve forgotten about the bogs.

In the best section of the valley the stream passes through a delightfully wooded ravine with spectacular crags looming ominously above me. Above the waterfalls the valley levels and broadens into the extensive swamp known as The Bog. My attempts to negotiate this boggy terrain were enlivened by a surprising improvement in the weather and eventually I had to admit that the sun had come out. This was astonishing compared with the weather that I had endured at Grisedale Tarn, and it continued to improve for the rest of the afternoon. After rounding Middle How I crossed Wythburn Beck and made my way up the agonizingly steep, grassy slopes out of the valley while amazing views slowly revealed themselves over the head of Wythburn and far into the distance. By the time I was out of the valley the weather was fabulous and on the far side of the deceptively named plateau of Greenup Edge, at the top of Lining Crag, I was confronted by the awesome sight of Stonethwaite valley shining brightly in the sunshine extending all the way into Borrowdale. After the wintry weather at Grisedale Tarn I now felt like it could be summer.

The astonishingly good weather gave me awesome views down the valley prompting me to make rapid progress as I joyfully made my way down into the valley and all the way into Borrowdale. Last year, on a similar traverse, I had come down from the top of High Raise to Greenup Edge and down this same path., so although I had tried to take a different route this year, now they coincided until eventually I arrived in Borrowdale where I had ended my walk last year. This time I walked straight past the Borrowdale Youth Hostel and continued past Seatoller and along the old toll road up to the top of Honister Pass. This was an amazing day that at one point I thought was going to be a disaster that would never end, but the weather turned around spectacularly to bring about a sensational end to the day. I had planned for this walk to be challenging, but I had never anticipated just how challenging it would be. In Grisedale it was still winter, but by the time I reached Borrowdale it felt like a warm spring day. The weather in the Lake District had given me an almighty test and rewarded me handsomely.