June
This little bit is just to look back and consider things for a moment - and, at the same time, look forward to things that might happen in the future with this project.
The June walk description was written in October 2006, following some serious problems. There was a strong chance, between the May/June walks and October that this diary might have to end a few months short of the year, for reasons which will eventually become clear. (For those who have almost lost the plot, the year ends, rather unusually, at the end of August).
Since I'm writing this part out of order (as it were) and this is the only part that I've written with the benefit of being able to view the future - I find that reading the previous months of diary drivel, there are elements of prophecy in some of the rantings - mainly the ones involving, shall we say, post-life arrangements. I think, though, that it will probably be all right in the end, and if it is, I will be quite thankful that whatever is about to happen has, in fact, happened. There's no merit in being pessimistic about stuff. Life is a bit of a gamble from the very moment of conception.
When something is, apparently, snatched away - in this case my ability and opportunities to wander about in the hills all day long - but then is graciously handed back, the result is an amazing and wonderful level of happiness, especially when I'm out in the hills - and this is a real blessing. I owe somebody for this, surely... It's fantastic. I am so, so lucky to be able to do this, I even enjoy it when it's chucking it down. I am so happy that others may believe me to be deluded. But let's not count our chickens - we're, that is, I'm not there yet, and fate may yet be cruel in the end. In the meantime, as it should be obvious by now - I'm very chuffed about it all.
June
Cautley - Ben End - Yarlside - Kensgriff (no E) - Randygill Top - Bowderdale - Bush Howe - Fell Head - Bush Howe - The Calf - Bram Rigg Top - Calders - Great Dummacks - Cautley Crag - Cautley.
12 Miles 4100 feet of ascent.
I met Mike the Go4awalk editor at Cautley for this walk, the point of which was, as you may expect from its title, to visit all of the 2000 foot summits in the Howgill Fells in one walk. There is, perhaps, another version of this walk which might be more satisfying - that is, to visit all of the 600 metre summits in the Howgills. This adds just two additional hills - Green Bell in the North and Arant Haw in the South. The key to success in either of these projects is good route design and, this time, I think we got it right for the shorter, 2000 foot version. The idea was to get all of the hard climbing over and done with early in the day by going at it in an anti-clockwise manner. Doing it clockwise would have resulted in two big slogs at the end - the first up Randygill Top, and the second up the end-of-the-world slope of Yarlside. This is not what you want, so we went the other way round.
As we set off from Cautley, it seemed as if the summer had finally arrived. After crossing the bridge we headed off towards Narthwaite and at a point roughly opposite the last intake wall on the other (east) side of the river (hello? are you still with me?), we headed off up the steep hill of Ben End, pausing only to have a heart attack about half way up. (More of which later...) The idea of this is to try to follow the National park boundary - not sure why, except that it's very obvious on the map and not obvious at all on the ground. And thus, eventually, we puffed and sweated our way to the top of Yarlside. This was no place for a rest, however, and with much hard work still to do, we plunged over the steep wall down to the Kensgriff(e) col, and on over that and, still motoring, up the long slog to the top of Randygill..er..Top. Here, we judged that we'd done enough to deserve just the briefest of rests. Thus we had completed two of the target 2000-ers.
The SW ridge of Randygill Top is a fine way to get down this particular hill. It's a nasty, horrible slog if you want to climb up it, though. It just goes on and on and on. This descent, as opposed to an ascent, justifies doing this walk this way round. Look, I don't want to bang on about this, so if you don't believe me, try it. Gwan - just stop looking at me in that "oh yeah, whatever..." sort of way. And stop chewing when I'm talking to you. Unless you've brought enough for the whole class that is. I could have been a teacher y'know. I would have looked good with elbow patches. I would have liked to sit in the staff room and drink tea and smoke confiscated fags and moan on about the current secretary for education and how it was about time we had another holiday. I could have shouted at people not to run and make disparaging comments about their hair or their little brother. Anyway, it's a fine way down the hill - not too steep, so that you can relax and enjoy the views. I liked it anyway.
And anyway, it was getting quite hot now and we did have the second biggish climb of the day to do - all of about 250 metres on to summit dome of The Calf. This was, it has to be conceded, very much the very essence of slog. We missed out visiting The Calf for now and took a nice track around the back and across the plateau to Bush Howe and on up to Fell Head. There, we found that somebody had been messing with the summit cairn. It seemed that somebody had dismantled it and was busy putting it back together again in some sort of big, stony jigsaw puzzle. And there, on one of the stones was a set of keys - probably the very set lost by the Cumbrian couple back in November. I felt a little twinge of guilt at seeing these now slightly rusty specimens of the locksmith's art, that I hadn't got the couple's address. I could have posted the things on.
Still, if they'd got any sense, they'd have had the locks changed by now. I expect they got in all right. They won't still be waiting there, outside in the garden for the mother-in-law to arrive with that "I told you not to marry him" sort of expression. "I could see that he'd come to no good from that first meeting back in 1973". We had lunch by the dismantled cairn and decided, after some slight debate, that the nobbly end of the hill marked "Fell Head" on the map was not sufficiently worthy for us to visit on this trip.
We returned to Bush Howe, and back across the moors to The Calf, where I let Bruno have a bit of a plodge in the tarn, it being a very hot day and he'd forgotten to bring any water for himself and everything like that there. It hadn't gone unnoticed that not for the first time had he failed to turn up with his lunch either. He's just so irresponsible.
After The Calf we bagged Bram Rigg Top and had a late snack on Calders. A few minutes walk added the final top of Great Dummacks, although, to be honest, its not much of a top really. I'm never all that sure exactly where the top is on this one.
Our descent was magical. We walked to the edge of Cautley Crag and, at its extreme Southern end we discovered a slight ridge right on the edge of the big corrie. The ridge is mainly grassy, but with the odd bouldery steepening. All difficulties we found were easily by-passed. The views are unusual and interesting, and rather beautiful, and, just a bit Scottish. See the photo below. You'd be forgiven for guessing that these hills weren't the Howgills at all, but something, maybe just West of Glenshee. Its just the scale here that's a third smaller. And there's no bagpipes anywhere. Or Italian tourists ripping out the heather. Or Jimmy Shand.
Lower down we had to contour East to avoid walls and a possibly problematic beck crossing. This brought us out immediately above Cautley Thwaite barn from where bridlepaths and a footbridge took us back to the cars at the Cross Keys. Just be careful about contouring dear readers. If you do too much of it in any one direction, you end up with one leg shorter than the other. This is fine till you try to contour the other way when you will have extreme difficulty keeping your balance. This is why walking poles were invented. I know a lot about stuff like this, me.
But here's some proper advice about this descent. You see you have to be sure that you've got the correct ridge. If you're too far West, it will be far too steep for comfort. The further East you go, the easier the descent becomes. But do try the ridge - if it gets too much just contour to the East till things get better. The descent and the contouring do need a bit of hillwalking skill. If you cant find the start, or if you're a bit nervous about it, go East, young man. I suppose I could do a route that goes up the ridge to give people an introduction.
This walk was all very straightforward and, apparently without any significant incident. It had been the start of the summer - just starting to get fairly hot. In fact, the weather had been almost perfect for hillwalking and little complications, like having to navigate, were all very easy. I was looking forward to a nice little backpacking walk of, maybe, two days in July. In just a couple of weeks time.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------It's odd, don't you think, how the catering industry just can't do English. They seem to have a big problem with apostrophes. They want to put an apostrophe before any "S" which appears at the end of a word. Thus "Peas" can become "pea's", cabbages are "cabbage's" and "celebration nites" becomes "celebration nite's". And that's another thing - a catering night is a "nite". And at Christmas, they serve up some "fayre". Is that a word, "fayre"?. And, obviously, more than one fayre must be "fayre's" - as in bu's fayre's. In the Howgill's, we have hill's s'uch a's "Calder's", "Grayte Dummack's" and "S'icker's F'ell". I wouldn't want to spend a nite out on S'icker's F'ell innit?. Don't know why I mentioned it, really. No reason at all, really. It just occurred to me.
There is a very large gap appearing just here. The diary may be ending at this point as I seem to be having a bit of a problem.
Can I just take you back to the June walk. Somewhere in the description there's a sort of off-handed reference to having a heart attack halfway up Yarlside. It was just a twinge, really, almost like a burning sensation seated around my breastbone. It went away after a very short time and I thought nothing much more about it. It just about registered - just enough for me to make a fairly weak joke about it.
A week or so later, I was in Derbyshire having a bit of baggery on the local Marilyns. I collected three altogether - Shining Tor, The Cloud and Gun. (I thought nowt of Gun by the way, but the others were very nice) Then, as a sweet course, I thought I'd go and have a look at The Roaches. It's an interesting, craggy place, quite famous in rock-climbing circles - so I thought I'd have a look. About half way up The Roaches, just as a young lad was telling me, in a very thick Brummie accent, what a nice dog I'd got, an invisible hand got hold of my sternum and twisted it and tried to pull it out of my chest. I had to sit down. I thought, no, I was pretty sure, that I was, in fact, having a heart attack. I worried about what I was going to do with my dog, and I checked my phone for a signal. I sat and waited to see what would happen. Then suddenly, I felt fine. It was as if nothing had happened. Whatever it was had completely gone. I was as fit as a butcher's fiddle. So I set off up the hill again. After a few strides, I got the pain again. If I was going to die, I decided, then I might as well die making a determined effort to get to the top. I took photos as the pain went away. Each time I set off uphill, it came back. Ages passed. This was the most drawn-out ascent of a hill I'd ever made. Daft, really. I should have gone down and gone to a casualty department. When I got on the flat, on the ridge at the top, I had no pain at all. I marched along and got to the trig point. Then I marched along some more and back down the road to my car. I was OK. Just one of those things. No problem.
A couple of days later I had to lead a group of about thirty "punters" on a Durham County Council walk. As soon as I started climbing the first hill, I got a pain again. I slowed the pace and we looked at the view. Then we had to wait for people to catch up. I decided that I didn't have a pain and walked through it. Nobody noticed. One or two said that they enjoyed the pace.
Then it was Red Screes. I knew something was up and I warned my companions that I might be a bit slow and that I thought I might have some kind of chest infection. Luckily, my companions weren't very fit at the time, so I coped well. I thought that whatever it was I'd had was now going away.
But it didn't.
Not very much later, through various tests, I discovered that I'd got some very dodgy cardiac arteries and that I'd have to have an angioplasty. This really buggerred up this diary. So there's a gap. I'm not entirely sure what will happen. Hopefully, it is just a gap...
Oh, and yes, I did do the Pennine Way. Its was one of the most enjoyable walks I've done so far. I'm quite pleased that I did it before I fell over. I'd been hankering after doing it for years and years and years.
The moral of the story is - If you want to do something, you'd better get on and do it, for tomorrow you might not be able to... as it were.
