Trail Dec 20 mini-mag

Looking across to Lonscale
Crags from the lower
flanks of Blease Fell.
LAKE DISTRICT
“THE SUN BEAMS
ACROSS TOPS I’VE NEVER
SEEN OR BOTHERED TO
IMAGINE BEFORE”
Lonscale Fell’s nose
is as well defined as
any model profile.
TOM BAILEY
Our route starts at the car park
between Latrigg (another short jaunt
with brilliant views and gentle grassy
slopes) and Lonscale Fell. To gain
the best views of the crags which give
Lonscale its distinctive, dramatic edge,
we crossed to the Blencathra side of
Glenderaterra Beck. This is the valley
which carves Skiddaw away from
Blencathra. A long deep cleft separating
the two massifs. Glenderaterra splashes
away downhill, its clear, cold waters
daily making that cleft a little deeper.
Ever-changing landscape
We take the higher path that cuts
along the western slopes of Blencathra,
above the burn. The crags shoot up
almost immediately to our left. They
are dark, steep and crumbling. The true
summit of Lonscale Fell stands back
from the edge and out of view.
But the second summit and highest
of the crags, at 703m just 12m below
the summit proper, is perpetually in
view. The crags concertina in folds
of constantly eroding rock. Near the
bottom of the valley, where the burn
has worn away parts of the lower walls,
they fall away in immense landslides,
leaving swathes of open earth.
As time passes, mosses lace the crumbs
together and some of these giant bites are
now covered with a fuzz of pale green.
The story of this valley can be read in
records which are still being written –
those of falling rocks and rain.
You can clamber up these crags,
which stick out like bony ribs. The
east ridge, which skirts the scree slopes
just below the second summit, offers a
relentlessly steep scrabble through loose
rock and heather directly to the top.
If you gobble up painful challenges
like other people consume jelly babies,
then this one is for you.
Burnt Horse ridge
But not for us this time. We want the
sweet remoteness of the far northern
fells, which are all too often ignored. The
Blencathra track crosses the burn near the
head of the valley and joins the Cumbria
Way at a boulder carved with ‘Keswick’
in all caps. Follow it south and, after
the promised town, it will lead you on
a 112km (70 miles) walk through the
entire Lake District, to Ulverston.
It’s a very nice path, made for people
just like us and we abandon it almost
immediately, taking to the tail end of
Burnt Horse ridge. The slope up the
ridge is grassy, insistent and never quite
steep. A cool haze of rain drifts over my
face and bare hands and – tzeep-tzeeptzeep!
– a meadow pipit darts past with
a lazer-sharp call. The ridge begins at
around 400m and, on these easy slopes,
you gain height fast. And when we stop to
look behind we’re greeted with a totally
surprise view – a massif of remote, green
hillside which fills the vision. The sun
beams across tops I have never seen or
bothered to imagine before. There is not
a road or hamlet anywhere between them.
Kilometres of grass, bracken and heather
are broken only by narrow streams and
barely-there paths. The Cumbria Way
slips between the contours and past
Skiddaw House hostel. At 470m, it’s
the highest hostel in Britain but we’re
quite a way above it already. The clouds
part and a burst of sunlight hits the fells.
Trio of massifs
We are looking into the centre of the
Northern Fells. From here, three valleys
shoot out, separating the three big
massifs: Skiddaw, Blencathra to the
right, and the Caldbeck and Uldale fells
ahead. A giant pie in three big, tasty
chunks. And in front of us is a slice
I’ve never even considered before.
Like on Skiddaw, there are few
compelling edges here, no terrifying
spikes. Wainwright basically describes
them as a gigantic sheep pasture. And
yet, standing in the mizzle and looking
out at these wide hills, as a faint rainbow
appears in the haze, I feel a twitch in my
feet. This is big, unfrequented country.
Wainwright, it seems, felt something
similar, and after his pretty damning
initial assessment acknowledges that:
“Although relatively unexciting in scenic
quality... these hills afford excellent
tramping and an exhilarating freedom to
wander at will”. This is a place to escape.
The quiet side
There is no escaping the climb, however,
and we turn back to the hill we are
already on. I remember that this is part
of Skiddaw, an outlying fell of one of the
most popular hills in the Lake District
and we haven’t seen anyone up here at
all. I can imagine, as I traipse upwards,
that few people ever visit this side of
the hill. And just as I think it, we find
something else worth visiting.
At the edge of my boots are a few
fronds of heather and below them a long,
rocky drop to a deep bowl. A nameless
stream chucks itself down the slopes,
filling the bowl with marshy green. At
the edge of a shallow corrie, we have
reached the first of the crags that we’ll
follow almost all the way to the top.
Misty mountains
Silver lichen sprawls amid the heather
and luminous moss. It’s damp and cool
and the air is clean. Good for plants and
good for humans. A line of trampled
grass cuts narrowly between the fence
and we follow that fence uphill. It’s the
last pull, and the steepest, taking us
almost directly to the summit. From
there, we should be able to look over to
Skiddaw on one side, Blencathra on the
other, to the unfrequented north and
south to the busy Lakeland heights.
Ah ‘should’, that word which, in the
hills, always comes with a silent ‘if you’re
lucky’. We turn in every direction and
look into the same shifting grey cloud.
Our summit is swathed in mist. It’s a
bare pate of a top and only half the
reason we’re here anyway so we abandon
it, at the top of the crags. Here, the cloud
whips up from the valley below, the
stream a thin streak. Blencathra emerges
for a minute, so big we can only see a
small portion of it, and we turn south to
follow these crags as far as they’ll go.
The gradient is the kind that allows
your feet to fall you home, adding just
enough gravity to help, rarely enough to
tumble. So we chat and trot down until,
after we have given up all hope, there,
emerging quite quickly, is that Lakeland
view. There it finally is.
Classic Lakeland vistas
We can see Helvellyn and the Dodds;
Low, High and Castle Riggs; Derwent
Water gleaming and the jostle of northwestern
hills. The Lake District is laid
out before us and we look out with the
knowledge that some of the highest,
most exciting peaks in the country are
secreted not far away at all. The fading
sunlight casts a warm glow across the
hills and the lakes shine like magnesium.
For a short jaunt, this little fell gives a
lot. And, if the urge takes, you can gobble
the distance from its top to Skiddaw in
an almost straight line north-west. For
us though, it is time to head home.
As we descend the larch turns lemon
yellow, birch trees flicker with golden
leaves, oak trees fade to red. Between
them twists the white line of the River
Greta, flowing into the silver pool of
Derwent Water. We make the car door
almost without breaking stride. T
The green
undulations of
Burnt Horse ridge.
11.5km DISTANCE
832m ASCENT
4hrs ON THE HILL
38 TRAIL DECEMBER 2020 DECEMBER 2020 TRAIL 39