So it’s been a long while since my last update but once again that has been because I have been so busy lately. I am rocketing to the end of my second term of university and as I do my workload has increased by about 4 times! On Thursday and Friday we went out to the site of the new campus to do some fieldwalking. For the uninitiated this involves sectioning off a field into 10 by 10 meter grids and then methodically walking it and picking up the different things you see. This may sound a little boring and it can be but it also all becomes worth it when you fin a bit of Neolithic flint or a piece of Roman Samian ware pottery. The weather for both days was amazing so it was two days in the sun and was really worth doing. By the second day I really had my eye in and I was finding a lot more things, even if a fair amount of it was brick and ceramic derbies.
Tired from all of this hard work, and it’s more taxing on the body than you might think, it was time for the last Ben Lairig trip of the term, back to the Lakes again for what promised to be a hard but amazing trip. It was a small weekend trip, only 5 people going on it including me. We are all pretty fit and the weather forecast was very good so we knew we had to get something decent done. We settled on the Kentmere Horseshoe for the first day, a 12 mile stretch of 8 peaks dotted around a lake. The weather when we arrived on the Friday night was abysmal, wind and rain that made putting up the tents unpleasant and during the night kept us awake with the noise and the fear that the tents might actually fail. They did not and we awoke to a drizzly morning at 7.30 to get the most out of the day. After a quick breakfast of couscous we set off and by the time we had peaks our first mountain the rain had stopped. We knocked off another 4 before we stopped for a well earned lunch break after about 4 hours on the hill and then polished off the remaining 3 and dropped back to Bance’s car. The hills climbed that day were:
Shipman Knotts
Kentmere Pike
Harter fell (Eskdale)
Mardale Ill Bell
Thornthwaite Crag
Froswick
Ill Bell
Yoke
(12.2 miles, 1127m climb)
The whole thing only took us 7 hours so we returned back to the campsite in windy conditions and watched a few of the tents around us blow away! After a quick meal of pasta and some beer we ran to the pub that owns the campsite and settled in for the night.
While we were there we saw the weather forecast for the next ay and the view outside the pub windows cleared considerably. It was decided, in a slightly drunken haze, that we would get up at a similar time and then do the Fairfield Horseshoe the next day, same number of peaks but knocking in at about 10 miles, also if climbed from Rydal then all the major ascent is in the first part of the day. As we left the pub the night was warm and totally clear, so much so that Bance decided to bivvy, leaving me with a lot of room in the tent!
The weather the next ay was absolutely amazing, warm and clear so we set off. As we left the car park and started our ascent of Nab Scar we lost the path an soon found ourselves hacking our way up a 45 degree slope to get to the top, I won’t lie here it was a brutal climb that left us all beat and hurting but the plus side of it was that by not following the path we had peaked our first mountain in 30 minutes, leaving us a lot of time in the day. We made our way round the horseshoe in glorious weather; I was in a T shirt for 2 thirds of the day except when we peaked Fairfield itself and Carrig stayed in shorts the whole day. A great day was had by all and we decided at the end of the horseshoe that as we hadn’t come up on the path there was no need to go down on it and as we could actually see the car we would just aim straight for it. So we ran down a slope into the valley of the horseshoe and then hopped over a waterfall and down a path back to the car. Mountains climbed on day 2;
Nab Scar
Heron Pike
Great Rigg
Fairfield
Hart Crag
Dove Crag
High Pike (Scandale)
Many power ballads and ELO songs followed on a quick and uneventfull trip back to York and after the customary pint and Ultimate burger in the pub I slept for about 11 hours.
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