Dodd

Tuesday 22nd July 2003

After the hot weather that I had enjoyed at the beginning of this holiday it was now beginning to look like the weather would continue to get worse with my worst weather yet on this walk. On this day I had planned to walk up Skiddaw, the sprawling Munro sized mountain that towers over the town of Keswick, but I never got there. I started by walking beside the River Derwent following the rarely walked, though clearly marked on OS Maps, Allerdale Ramble across the fields between Derwent Water and Bassenthwaite Lake. The terrain is flat farmland without any redeeming features, but it wasn’t too long before I reached the edge of Dodd Wood where the terrain changed completely. Near Dancing Gate I entered the wood and climbed steeply up the hillside until I got to a forest road. With the tiring climb over I now had a relaxing walk along the broad track, past flowering foxgloves, following the contours around the hillside into the deeply carved valley of Skill Beck.

Easy-graded forest tracks brought me all the way through the wood till I came out of the trees near the Ravenstone Hotel at the foot of “The Edge”. At this point it was raining, it was windy and the cloud level was about a thousand feet, not far above where I now stood beside the fell wall. I had planned on walking up the Edge towards Skiddaw, but the prospect of this didn’t strike me as being fun in the poor weather conditions. If I had someone with me who was willing to go up I would probably have done it, but in the end I returned to the wood. This was still very early in my hill-walking career and at the time I had little experience of being at the top of a mountain in poor weather. I wasn’t confident in my ability to navigate in bad weather (I didn’t have any GPS devices on me), and I wasn’t sure my waterproofs would keep me dry. Since this occasion I have been up to the top of Skiddaw when it’s been blowing a gale and when it’s been snowing heavily. In fact I can remember going up three times and on all but the first time the weather was really poor with snow being a common feature of both subsequent occasions.

Even now I think I would be reluctant to go up to the top of Skiddaw in the conditions that I had in 2003 and could easily have taken the same decision again, not despite the ten years’ experience I have gained since that walk but because of it. Last year I abandoned a walk up Ben Venue in Scotland because of weather conditions similar to those encountered on this walk and my thinking was the same: it wouldn’t have been fun. There are many good places to go for a walk in the Lake District that don’t involve standing at the top of a Munro sized mountain in bad weather (although, been there, done that!). Quite rightly I turned around and headed back into the wood descending to the main car park for Dodd Wood, near Mirehouse.  There I consulted the map beside the car park for any way-marked walks in the wood that I could do and two things struck me as worth looking at: an osprey watch and Dodd summit.

The viewing platform for the Osprey Watch is not far from the car park, and the website for Dodd Wood suggests that “all visitors should make their way there first,” so that was where I went to have a look through telescopes at the ospreys that had first bred in the Lake District just two years previously. From the Osprey Watch I dropped back down to Skill Beck and followed the stream up to the top of the valley past what Wainwright describes as ‘unexpected cliffs’ (called Long Doors) where a right turn took me onto a recently constructed path that took me to the summit of Dodd. A standing stone at the top declares that this is ‘Dodd Summit 1612 feet,’ which isn’t very high, but I was fortunate that just the year before all the trees had been cleared from the summit which afforded me with some good views thanks to the rising cloud level so I was able to see along the length of Bassenthwaite and past Keswick to Derwent Water.

With the weather improving slightly I considered having another attempt of going up Skiddaw, taking a clear path from the Long Doors col up to Carl Side. In the end I decided against it and descended the wood alongside Scalebeck Gill coming out near Millbeck where it was now a simple matter to follow road and path along the route of the Allerdale Ramble back to Keswick. In the event the day had provided me with an enjoyable walk despite the weather. I would eventually gain that experience I needed of being at the top of a mountain in poor weather, but until then this walk showed me that I didn’t need good weather in order to have a good walk.

Bowscale Fell and Blencathra

The Lakes 2003, part 8
Monday 21st July 2003

This was rather a disastrous day in one respect: I lost my wallet, including my YHA card, debit card and £30. I have no idea where it was. I looked all around and asked at the hostel and the bank, but there was no sign of it. I don’t even know where I lost it; all I know is that I had it at the start of the day and I didn’t have it when I got back to the hostel. The walk started from Mungrisdale on the eastern edge of the Northern Fells so I caught a bus from Keswick that took me to that small idyllic village. Out of the four routes of ascent to Bowscale Fell that Wainwright listed I took ‘Route 4’, which Wainwright described as being the best of all. I can’t have known this at the time so why did I take this route? In later years I always based my routes on what I’d found in the Wainwrights, but this can’t have been the case on my earliest walks in the Lakes, so what was driving my decisions? I can’t remember, aside from a desire to climb the highest fells.

However I came up with the route, I climbed up onto the east ridge through gorse and bracken from the northern tip of the village of Mungrisdale to the top of the ridge where I had a pleasant walk across the heather moor to the top of Bowscale Fell. I remember stopping for a while crouched down behind the stone shelter at the summit, sheltering from the strong wind and I have always wondered whether that was the place where I’d lost my wallet, but, wherever it was, I proceeded from there south-south-west towards Blencathra. I wouldn’t have visited Bannerdale Crags on the way since I wasn’t aiming at visiting all the Wainwrights at that time and wouldn’t have considered it worth visiting as it does not have a noticeable rise. The notes I made at the time make no mention of it, but I would have thought I’d have at least walked over to the edge of the crags to have a look down into Bannerdale, but I can’t remember. I also have no idea whether I walked up to the edge of Tarn Crags overlooking Bowscale Tarn. I have never gotten a closer look at the tarn than from the top of these crags, but I doubt I even got that close on this occasion.

My next target was Blencathra for which I was heading straight towards, avoiding the perilous Sharp Edge while making excuses to myself that it was damp and very windy, but ultimately it was because I was a coward. When I eventually did climb Sharp Edge it was just before Christmas 2006 when the weather was no better, if not worse. Instead I climbed the northern slopes of the fell over Blue Screes to the top of Atkinson Pike. This took me above the cloud line and so with no views I walked past the white crosses that lie on the ground between Atkinson Pike and Blencathra before climbing up the fellside to Hallsfell Top and the summit of Blencathra. Unfortunately there was no view to see but I was sure that it would have been spectacular, as subsequent visits to the top of Blencathra have shown; the view down St John’s in the Vale is superb.

From the top of Blencathra I passed along the top of the ridge to the western end and steeply descended the long grassy slopes of Blease Fell to the Blencathra Centre. I then took a clever little route through fields following footpath signs past Derwentfolds and Brundholme down to the Keswick Railway Footpath, but I have no idea how I knew about this route, though it may have been something I had read on the internet. The Keswick Railway Footpath is an excellent way to get back to Keswick through lovely woodland at the bottom of the Greta Valley along a magnificent old railway bed. I got back to the hostel at 2.15, which was very early, but as it turned out I needed the time. It was while I was on the walk that I discovered I didn’t have my wallet, so when I got back into the hostel I had a good look around for it, but I couldn’t find it, so I had to go to the bank and report my card lost and ironically get some money from the same branch that I had gotten money without any identification from the year before.

This was all really rather annoying, and I was beginning to think I was jinxed in the Lake District. The year before, the first time I had been to the Lake District, I left my wallet at home so I had to survive without it all fortnight. Now on my second visit I lost my wallet and would once again have to manage without. Thankfully I haven’t lost my wallet again since this occasion. Unfortunately this incident detracted from what should have been a great walk over one of the best fells in the Lake District. Blencathra is a stunning mountain that attracts the eye whenever you see it, and is the first fell seen when entering the Lake District from Penrith. I have climbed Blencathra many times since, often when the summit is covered in snow (as it was last Easter on my most recent visit), and each time it has been a delight and a joy.