Buggers
Here's an interim word or two about buggers.
Buggers are people who do things before you are ready for them. Buggers ambush. Buggers publish things about the Howgill Fells six months before you've finished writing twelve interesting things about the Howgill Fells. And so it is with The Great Outdoors magazine.
My spouse, or loved one, or the great holder of the GBP account, got me a subscription to TGO a couple of years ago and has renewed it regularly, possibly obsessively, and certainly automatically, or at least twice anyway.
As it happens, the January 2006 TGO, (published rather strangely in December) has a full expose on the bloody Howgills. Initially mortified, I was somewhat soothed after reading it by the fact that the article wasn't very much like this series of epistles at all... So no harm done, really. The buggers.
TGO is a good magazine which I read from cover to cover, as you do, except for the bits about gear, which make my eyes glaze over to be honest. I know it's very popular and all that to bang on endlessly about stoves and socks and stuff, but I honestly just don't get it. It seems that many people, some of whom I know personally, know loads about kit and stuff, but never go walking. I'm shaking my head as I write this, which is why the spelling is a bit poor... Anyway, the talk about gear, combined with a shortage of nicotine may well have lead to the lack of success on this trip, but more of this later.
And another thing! Why, oh why, oh why (is that enough commas?) does this diary start in September and not January? Eh? Answer me that! Bizarre...
Anyway, January, eh? Depths of winter eh? Should be snow. Or at least a small patch of ice anyway. I'm really buzzing for the hill walking just now. I must have some sort of seasonal disorder. Its the extra daylight. I just wanna get going.... I just need some interesting sandwhiches. And a good route. I'm running out of routes. Now where's me TGO?
January
Tebay to Uldale Head via Blease Fell Hare Shaw Archer Hill, Archer Hill again and Rispa Pike.
10 Miles (but ought to be quite a bit shorter, really) 1700 feet of ascent (which was also too much for this walk)
So, this was the second walk of this series on which me and the pooch had company. This time, I was accompanied by, shall we, just say, a colleague, since to name names might well lead to protestations that it was all my fault really, possibly litigation or at least a bit of sulking. So this chap, shall we call him Kevin, came along for company He'd promised to sit at the back and shut up, but couldn't resist offering to improve the route as it developed so as to bag a few tops he specially wanted to bag for some reason only best understood by those who like to bag things. (This often includes me, by the way). I considered this offer carefully whilst sitting in something wet on the summit of Blease fell. I consulted the dog using telepathic techniques mainly involving the waving of a slab of gala pie in front of his nose so as to retain his attention. He wasn't all that bothered and, since the puir wee laddie (shall we call him Dave... or no, it was Kevin, wasn't it?) had been on the receiving end of a few recent rejections of offers of walking company on my part, I thought it best to let him have his ticks so as not to upset him any more. I could also do a bit of navigation, it being very misty an' all, and already, I'd picked out a sheepfold, a cairn and a stream junction or two which would do nicely as targets. This decision was partly responsible for the unusual route that developed, and could have resulted in us getting hopelessly lost and having to get a taxi back to Tebay from Sedbergh, had it not been for my alertness, or possibly the fact that Mike, er, Kevin had his GPS switched on.( You may have noticed that the map of this route looks like its been attacked by a three year old child with a box of crayons. Well spotted.)
But let's start at the start, and continue to the finish at the other end of the starting time/day/thing. I have to say, though, that for the purposes of this particular project, this is the last time that any such diversions will be considered. Probably, anyway.
We began our wanderings at what is marked on my map as Tebay YHA, which it clearly isn't any more. It still does B&B for "couples", families, happy coincidental meetings between complete strangers on misty railway stations, and various other combinations of conjoining two or more people in the same place at the same time, for either B&B or "S/C", which I suspect is likely to be self-catering rather than anything else, such as Swaledale Cheese or perhaps Slaves in Chains, although the latter might make them more money - but, like my route, I'm aimlessly wandering.
Various roads and paths head South from the not the YHA place, and somewhere around Roger Howe, we struck off in a yet more southerly direction than before over Powson Knott and lots of blank, foggy grass to a small cairn possibly overlooking the M6, but probably not too far from the summit of Blease fell. Look, I'm sorry to be a bit vague here, but it was very very foggy. No chance of winter conditions here. The airstream was straight from the Azores, and, after passing over two thousand miles of Atlantic Ocean, it was wet, in the dampest, wateriest sort of way possible. Visibility was, in the words of the met office man, poor. You could hear the M6 right enough, but it wasn't visible. After a short scoff, we went off to search for the summit of Blease Fell. It's quite possible that we found it. Then we returned to the cairn which may well provided a fine view of the fast lane of the M6, as mentioned before a couple of minutes ago... Loop number one had been completed.
Some navigation took us Northishly to Hare Shaw where another small cairn indicated that we were almost at the summit, which we carelessly ignored and determined to find a small sheepfold, sort of slightly south of Eastish over on Archer Hill. Keith used his sense of direction, and a GPS, and I used map and compass and, whilst our routes diverged at first, we soon found ourselves in the same bog and heading roughly in the same direction for the sheepfold. Underwhelmed by the loveliness of the fold, we continued uphill to yet another small cairn overlooking a small pond (or, nice lake, as Jim called it) a little bit further east. The plan from here was to get to the top of Rispa Pike which had, according to my map a small shelter in which lunch could be taken. From there, suitably refreshed, we could assault the northern slopes of Uldale Head and, thus complete another section of this fine walk.
You will remember me writing about buggeration factors in the pre January-walk-introductory scribblings, in as much as something had appeared in TGO about the Howgill Fells. My idea, I decided, was still original, apart from the Howgills part, but it seems, however, according to Tarquin (the one with the GPS and the flattened hair) that some prune has written a book about the Peak District. This book has twelve walks in it, over a twelve month period. It is a zany exposion about some bloke and his mates exploring the Peak District ... I bet its got a banana-fed daffodil garden in it. If it hasn't, I'm expecting the compost-in-the-rucksack-safety-netting-and-by-the-way-the-bleedin-pack-has-wing-mirrors-innit-feckin-zany-eh joke to appear somewhere at any moment. It's a bugger innit? How does that happen? I'm not giving up, though. I'm soldiering on.
Confidently, and with aplomb, we set off in the absolutely correct direction (according to my map and compass) of the col just South of Rispa Head. I navigated for a bit, then went on to explain to Norm, my recently acquired distaste for all things involving gear reviews, gear in general, and the people who make their living out of writing about coats, utensils, and socks. He defended the need for businesses to review such things, since, after all, they pay some of the bills. I was less than convinced, and, during another bout of defensive posturing, I sort of became aware that the hillside we were on was a bit too steep to be the hillside we should have been on, and by pointing my compass at it, seemed to be falling away into the fog in the exact opposite direction to that which it should have been. With half an ear on the gesticulating pal, (no idea what he was on about by this time) I checked again, and found that the world had now spun around due to some sort of time/space wormhole, or possibly, the magnetic rock, I'd previously been stood on had suddenly switched itself off, and all appeared to be well. So we continued upwards to a small cairn, with descending ground all around, and proudly declared ourselves to be on the top of Rispa Pike. A GPS reading confirmed absolutely, and with no doubt at all, that we were, in fact, on the top of Uldale Head, a couple of kilometres of damp sphagnum to the left, or possibly right, depending on which side of it you're standing.. An explanation was called for. John's GPS track showed a distinct kink in our route. A kink which was not perceived at all at the time and a kink which had sneaked up on us. Such a kink would be unlikely to be missed by even the least alert and most snoozy hillwalker.
It was all a bit ironic, really, since not too long before this, we'd been talking about the possibility of providing navigation training to punters who could benefit from our expert navigation skills. We determined to return to the cairn above the lake and get it right this time.
So, Bill got out his little GPS and selected the cairn next to the pretty lake, which he'd waypointed (if that's the correct jargon); and I took out me map and compass, and then followed him back to it. Lunch in the fog followed. I mention this merely to remind you that all this took place in extremely limited visibility, and in some significant emotional distress, mainly about the buggers from the Peak District and the other buggers who are obsessed by overtrousers and the wicking properties of a thermal I-pod.
I planned a plan of attack on the Rispa Pike shelter using a handy stream about 300 metres away, from where I could dog-leg a bit to achieve a broad ridge, some more metres away from that, and along which, almost probably, the now legendary Rispa shelter would be easily located.
The second attempt was better. We found the shelter on Rispa Pike exactly where it had been left by the Rispa Pike shelter builders. Time to finish with this walk and get home to a beef stir-fry laid on by Mrs K by way of trying to cheer me up from the nicotine pangs.
More navigational carelessness followed, however - firstly, by walking too far towards Gaisgill, and having to backtrack along the intake walls, and secondly by walking too far towards Gaisgill again and having to follow a footpath to Redgill, returning to Tebay along the road. I pretended that this was the plan all along. You're forgiven if you're confused at this point by the way.
My only plan now, is to do this walk again, only properly next time, and not get distracted by outlying tops, buggeration factors or waterproof grundies which point North.
The question is - when will we be getting some winter?
The other question is - what of these Northern Howgills? What are they like and why would you want to go there. The answers are simply this:
- I've no idea what they're like cos it was very foggy all the time. I think they're probably like most of the rest of the Howgills - steep sides, grassy, fairly easy to walk on.
- You'd definitely want to visit - either for the navigating if its foggy - it's a very good place to hone up the skills (ahem) - or in spring or early summer, I suspect strongly that this would be a fabby-wiz-type area for wandering about fairly aimlessly whilst listening to larks and meadow pipits and stuff like that there, or for watching the fast lane of the M6.
I also have to report that most of the daffs are now several inches high. I really wish I'd planted some snowdrops.
