Hello!

Welcome to my website 🙂  I’ve started this blog to chronicle my somewhat erratic and mishap prone hill walking.. Not to mention the inevitable post walk drinks! Some nice views and hopefully amusing anecdotes will be thrown in for good measure..

Wainwright walks 102: Borne with the wind!

• Hills: Great Borne
• Classification: Wainwright (180)
• When: Thursday 11 April
• Who: Me, the mountaineering minion, and Tiny Paddington
• Distance: About 6 miles, though felt much longer (again).
• Weather: Windy, foggy at the top but at least dry
• Conditions underfoot: Hmmm. Muddy and boggy on the way in. Thankfully okay on the steep slog up Steel Brow.
• Post walk drink: Strands Gin, later Cabernet Sauvignon
• Post walk watering hole: The Screes Inn, Nether Wasdale
• MAMBA factor: High – saw one other group going up as I was on the way down.
• Uses of the arse crampon: Not required (slightly surprising given the steepness of the descent)
• One that got away: Starling Dodd
• Mishaps: Access issues; conditions underfoot (if that counts); general level of knackeredness

One of the consequences of doing a lot of my Lake District walking by public transport – as I have said before – is placing my fate in the hands of Avanti West Coast, who as per my previous blog seem to be increasingly incapable of running a decent train service (though this is hardly confined to them, given that my commute is reliant on Thameslink who are perfectly capable of making what should be a journey of a total of an hour and 15 minutes to the office sometimes take 2 hours or more). For once, however, Avanti did not create any issues for this trip! The usual factors of work and weather were very much in evidence though, and given where I was staying public transport was much less of a factor than usual.

The bigger consequence of using public transport a lot though is that my hill map has become massively skewed. There are not that many Wainwrights which cannot be done by public transport without a huge walk in, but there are some, and inevitably those have ended up being the ones that I still have left to do. They are massively concentrated in the far West and the South of the district and whilst I have only a few to do of the other books, having finished two of them and with only one left from one other book, I still have double figures left in both the West and the South. Plus, some of the hills in the West are either (a) big; (b) potentially tricky (looking at you, Yewbarrow) and (c) can be a pain in the backside as regards parking. I’d therefore booked a few days in Nether Wasdale with the hope of picking off a few of these before the tourist season really kicked in and therefore parking became a massive issue.

Inevitably a few things got in the way. I’m still not fully healed from my op, and not anywhere near my peak fitness, not that my peak fitness is really that fit. Work being completely mad has also left little time for exercise and the closure of a swimming pool near my office has not helped in that respect. Fortunately I knew I had a few hills in the ‘not huge’ category which might be doable and I still hoped that if I got some decent weather the likes of Red Pike in Wasdale might be worth a punt. Of course, as the forecast got worse and worse in the run up to my trip, doing anything which was either big or involved anything even remotely resembling a narrow ridge would be out as the forecast was for strong winds as well as rain on and off.

Wainwright walks 101: The early bird misses the worm

• Hills: Cold Pike
• Classification: Wainwright (179)
• When: Saturday 16 March
• Who: Me, the mountaineering minion, and Tiny Paddington
• Distance: About 6 miles, though felt much longer.
• Weather: Not as good as forecast (inevitably)
• Conditions underfoot: Good paths for the most part.
• Post walk drink: Robinsons Dizzy Blonde, later Malbec (inevitably)
• Post walk watering hole: The Golden Rule
• MAMBA factor: Pretty high, a bit of a surprise given it’s a popular route but the early start might have had something to do with it.
• Uses of the ar*e crampon: One minor one to descend a rock step.
• Mishaps: Sleep issues, transport (on the way home) weather

It is probably safe to say that the 2024 iteration of Mountains and Malbec has taken some time to get off the ground compared to other years. I did however have a good reason for this namely planned surgery on one of my legs. Having had an operation on my right leg in 2023 to close up a number of veins following several blood clots, the consultant recommended that I have the same op on the other leg as a precaution, not least because the veins in my left leg were if anything even dodgier than on the right. The operation took place in the middle of January, which made any early 2024 hill walking a non starter as any hill walking or for that matter long train or car journeys were not an option for at least six weeks.

Another factor was a simple one of recovery. For whatever reason, I didn’t bounce back as quickly as last time. The leg has taken longer to fully heal, and as at the time of writing, still isn’t entirely back to normal. I’ve also been more tired this time around, and any hopes of gently easing myself back into work after a week off to recuperate were quickly dismissed as I went straight into a manic period of work – which has not really improved any since then. I worked from home a fair bit afterwards as the idea of facing a packed train and risking someone bashing my leg or not being able to get a seat really did not appeal.

Inevitably, these issues meant that my confidence was somewhat affected and it was fair to say that by the time my first planned trip of the year in the middle of March rolled around I was feeling somewhat nervous. I knew I wasn’t fully hill fit, or anywhere near it, and I’m starting to run out of hills where a relatively small amount of ascent is involved. Another thing that didn’t help was the weather! The weather had been truly grim in advance of my trip which discounted two of the ‘not much ascent’ possibilities I’d had in mind – Grey Crag and Tarn Crag from Shap was discounted because it is a boggy mess at the best of times and if tried after heavy rain was likely to require a snorkel, a James Bond style mini-sub or possibly a boat. The other option, Mellbreak, was a fair way away from my base in Ambleside and would involve an ascent on steep grass – fine in the dry but not nice in the wet. So ‘pick a hill with not much ascent’ got binned in favour of ‘find something with a half way decent path and not much in the way of stream crossings’.

2023: a year in review

• Total hills climbed: 17
• Wainwrights: 14 new, three repeats
• Wainwrights done by end of year: 178
• Wainwrights left to do: 36
• Number of ascents of Orrest Head: None – unsure why!
• Beer festivals attended in the Lake District: One
• Beer festivals attended elsewhere: Two
• New swimming spots: Loads!

It’s been two years since I have done one of these stats posts – unless you count my previous post about wild swimming, which was not really a stats post as I haven’t actually got a log of what I have swum in. I suspect a tick list for wild swimming spots probably exists, but at the moment there is nothing I’m actually trying to achieve from a swimming point of view, other than enjoying myself. That said, it is nice to tick off a new lake, not that I am ticking lakes (I think…)

I didn’t bother to do a stats post for 2022, for the simple reason that it was the worst year ever in terms of stats. There were reasons for this; I wasn’t always lucky with the weather, I had some health issues, and there were various other things which went wrong as well. I also wasn’t necessarily in the right headspace for hill walking by the end of the year, and was seriously considering whether I should pack it in; it had become a source of stress for me which given it is supposed to help with stress was less than ideal. Doing a stats post would simply have made me feel even more rubbish about it than I already did and therefore have been counter productive. Fortunately, things did pick up somewhat in 2023.

It still wasn’t a great year in terms of numbers; there are various factors driving this. I’ve done most of the big rounds already and as a consequence of this, of never having started out with the intention of doing all the Wainwrights, and of some ongoing issues with health and fitness, I’m often having to pick hills off as singles or pairs. I’ve also got to the point I’m having to think about hiring cars again as well as having done a lot of my hills by public transport, my hill map is massively skewed to the South and West which are not doable by public transport without a heck of a lot of effort and/ or cost (e.g. taxis). That said, I did do some really good walks in 2023, and I managed to finish another section off as well as get very close to finishing two others. I’ve finished the year with 36 left to do which doesn’t sound like a lot, but I’m not setting myself any sort of target for it – the last thing I need is more self imposed pressure!

Anyway, on to the highs, lows and mishaps…

2023: a year in outdoor swimming

• New lakes swum in: Rydal Water, Ullswater, Buttermere, Crummock Water, Bassenthwaite Lake
• Repeats: Derwent Water (always a winner)
• New river/ waterfall swim spots: Buckstones Jum; Galleny Force (and a lovely little gorge just up from it); Janet’s Foss
• Sea swimming: St Margaret’s Bay, Devon; Brighton beach
• Other outdoor swimming: Beckenham Place Park Lake (a lot); Shoalstone Sea Pool, Devon; Clifton Lido, Bristol; Shap Open Air Pool; Matlock Bath geothermal pool; Love Open Water Canary Wharf
• Ones that got away:  Hardraw Force, Red Tarn, Sprinkling Tarn (twice)

For once, this is a post which will not start with much of a rant. Yes I know. Well for starters this post is sort of a year in review post and therefore a whole year is (at least in theory) a bit much to rant about, and for second this post is about outdoor swimming – which tends, on the whole, to involve a lot fewer mishaps than my hill walking does. It also, generally, involves less in the way of physical effort, and sometimes less in the way of kit, as carrying a swimming costume, a towel and some water shoes isn’t that much of a burden – though in winter lugging around various quantities of neoprene definitely is. It is also a very inclusive sport – cold water swimmers come in all shapes and sizes and degrees of tolerance to cold water. Some (like me) resort to neoprene when the water drops below a certain temperature, some don’t, but the amount of judgy behaviour in open water swimming – whilst it undoubtedly exists – seems to be to be much less pervasive than the sort of ‘hillier than thou’ behaviour you can get in hill walking (‘I am better than you because I go out in all weathers / climb every Wainwright or Munro separately / start the walk from sea level etc). 

Also, at least for me, outdoor swimming doesn’t involve the stress that can sometimes affect my hill walking, and it has become for me a brilliant way of de-stressing. In a year where my job has been more pressurised than I can ever remember, with every single supposed holiday having been interrupted to at least some degree, I have needed this particular stress reliever. As a mini-rant, I am sure I have said before that Covid has not helped in terms of work encroaching on time which is supposedly outside of it; once it becomes evident that with the right IT kit, in my case a laptop, you can work from pretty much anywhere the expectation becomes that you will. I’m not sure what the solution is, or even if there is one, and I know from friends in my, and other, professions that I am far from being alone. 

On a lighter note, apparently cold water swimmers are the new vegans, because they always tell you about it… I can’t deny this one, as I do have a tendency to bang on about it! 

Wainwright walks 100: Sunshine in Borrowdale

• Hills: Seathwaite Fell
• Classification: Wainwright (178)
• When: Friday 17 November
• Who: Me, the mountaineering minion, and Tiny Paddington
• Distance: About 6 miles, though felt longer
• Weather: A cracking late autumn day.
• Conditions underfoot: Good paths for the most part. Inevitably the odd bit of bog.
• Post walk drink: Keswick Brewery Thirst Quencher, later Malbec (again)
• Post walk watering hole: The Fox Tap, Keswick Brewery
• MAMBA factor: Medium – a few people about but not many.
• Uses of the arse crampon: MIA.
• Mishaps: I’m not sure there actually were any unless a not brilliant nights sleep counts. Had to happen at some point.

It wasn’t until I wrote up the blog for my previous walk on Hen Comb that I realised the next blog, i.e. this one, would be of my 100^th Wainwright walk. I certainly didn’t clock it when I was actually on the hill. People may be wondering why I didn’t choose something more impressive for a milestone number of walks but not actually realising that it was one is one good reason! Another – had I remembered – is the time of year which rules out an epic. But as it stands Seathwaite Fell is a hill I’d got high on my wish list for various reasons, and I got an absolute cracker of a day for it, so to my mind it worked as a milestone walk rather well.

Any really hardcore Wainwright baggers reading this are probably wondering how on earth I have managed to take 100 walks to get to this point. After all, there is a guide book written by Stuart Marshall which sets out 36 walks in which to do the lot. I have got this guide book and some of the proposed routes make me knackered just by reading them. As someone with a dodgy back who has to listen to what their body is telling them, and who is also not as fit as they should be, doing an epic every time I do a walk is just not an option. I’ve also seen the opinion expressed on a Wainwright bagging site that the ‘correct’ way to do them is to do them all individually given there is a chapter on each which strikes me not only as another form of ‘hillier than thou’ behaviour (i.e. ‘I am a superior hill walker to you because I do x’) but to be missing the point, given that Wainwright himself never had any intention of creating a tick list. I’ve ended up at this point – which strikes me as a perfectly reasonable middle ground between 36 walks and 214 – as a result of a whole bunch of factors, including physical issues (see dodgy back), confidence issues, having never started out with any intention of doing the lot leaving me with lots of outliers I’m having to pick off separately, running out of time and/ or energy to add on another hill, having a short day due to being up late, transport issues and so on. It’s – certainly in my view – not a race and the main thing is to enjoy it. (Does that count as a rant?)

Wainwright walks 99: Cometh the hour, combeth the Hen

• Hills: Hen Comb
• Classification: Wainwright (177)
• When: Thursday 16 November
• Who: Me, the mountaineering minion, and Tiny Paddington
• Distance: Allegedly 6 miles but definitely felt longer.
• Weather: Better than I had expected. Dry with cloud moving in and out and the odd patches of sunshine.
• Conditions underfoot: Paths were a stream in parts and the top of Floutern Pass was seriously boggy. The push to the summit of Hen Comb itself was surprisingly dry.
• Post walk drink: Keswick Brewery Thirst Quencher, later Malbec
• Post walk watering hole: The Fox Tap, Keswick Brewery
• MAMBA factor: Saw 2 other people (coming down Hen Comb as I was on the final bit of ascent). Otherwise had it to myself.
• Uses of the arse crampon: No need for it this time.
• Mishaps: Does weather over the previous few days count? Otherwise, failing to find the start point in the first instance, and climbing a random bump on Floutern Pass which I didn’t need to.

Firstly, and before getting into the detail of the walk, sincere apologies for the (even by my standards) daft blog post title which may well be the worst ever. I read, after doing the walk, that the hill is actually pronounced ‘Hencum’ and presumably refers to looking like the comb on top of a cockerel’s head, which it doesn’t, at least not when climbed from the back near Ennerdale. It may do from the usual start point near Loweswater, but for reasons that will become (becomb?) obvious, that start point, which is probably how I would have preferred to do the walk, was not an option. (If anyone is wondering what my best post title was, it is probably ‘The Devil made me do it’ when Stuart and I along with a friend climbed the Devil’s Point and 2 other Munros back in 2014 when we were still bagging them). Not that Hen Comb is a particularly daft name for a hill in and of itself, there are plenty of worse ones, Barf in the North-Western Fells and Lord Hereford’s Knob in Wales being obvious candidates. 

Anyway – enough of such nomenclature musings and on with the walk. I think it was fair to say there was some doubt as to whether this walk would actually happen for a few reasons. Firstly, my visit came at the tail end of a lot of heavy rain and flooding in the Lake District with roads being closed, rivers in spate and everywhere being awash. I did seriously wonder a couple of days out as to whether to cancel my trip but would have had to pay for my accommodation anyway, so thought I may as well go and try and make the best of it. This time I had a hire car booked so at least I would be able to chase the weather a bit – which turned out to be a fortuitous move. Another fortuitous move was that someone at work was off sick which meant a meeting on the afternoon I was travelling got cancelled, enabling me to get an earlier train to Penrith (where I was staying for the first night) than my booked one, have a couple of glasses of wine, some pub grub and a reasonably early night. Another plus was that the weather forecast was saying to go as far West as possible to avoid the worst of the weather, which made Hen Comb, one of the furthest Western hills and also the lowest Wainwright I hadn’t yet climbed, an obvious target. The plan was that rather than starting from Loweswater, where the crossing of Mosedale Beck was likely to be dodgy at best after all the rain, to head for Whins and go up the hill from the back via Floutern Pass, where there were fewer stream crossings to negotiate though bog was still likely to be a factor. 

Wainwright walks 98: Knott much sleep before the High Street (again)

• Hills: The Knott, High Street, Mardale Ill Bell, Thornthwaite Crag, Froswick
• Classification: Wainwrights (174 to 176 plus 2 repeats)
• When: Saturday 9 September
• Who: Me, the mountaineering minion, and Tiny Paddington
• Distance: 11 miles
• Weather: Humid, warm, some sunshine at times, pea soup fog at others
• Conditions underfoot: Good paths throughout
• One that got away: Gray Crag
• Post walk drink: Robinsons Dizzy Blonde
• Post walk watering hole: The Queens Hotel, Troutbeck
• MAMBA factor: Medium, though this could be due to lots of people blundering around in fog who I couldn’t actually see.
• Uses of the arse crampon: Basically MIA.
• Mishaps: Disappearing buses (from the timetable and in reality); insomnia; fog which was definitely not forecast!

It’s been a while since I have done a blog post –for very good reasons, i.e. that of not doing any hill walking for a couple of months, which was quite deliberate. Instead, I’d had a 2 week holiday in Egypt with Stuart, where our daily entertainment consisted of snorkelling, reading, drinking the odd cocktail and generally chilling out. Instead of seeing mountain vistas we saw rather a lot of tropical fish, the highlight being seeing a sea turtle (ok not a fish I know), as well as loads of puffer fish which our area of the reef seemed to have rather a lot of! It was fair to say that going back to work came with a bit of a bump going right back into the busy period, although it seems these days there is never actually a period where things are not busy!

It also segued into a burst of travelling which was driven by various factors. A pre booked trip to the Lake District in September (which is the subject of this blog post) was one of them but on top of that I also needed to attend a funeral in the Midlands, a conference in Birmingham and a wedding in Glasgow over the course of a couple of weeks. Suffice it to say that having come out the other side of that period I’m pretty knackered, as even though it is generally less tiring to take the train than drive, there is still the stress of having to wonder if Avanti West Coast are remotely capable of running a decent service on any given day you actually want to travel. I’m not sure this constitutes a rant as such given it is basically self inflicted at least in part, but this time it is the best I can do… at least until getting into the main body of the blog post.

I decided to travel up on the afternoon of the 8^th and work on the train, which works pretty well as long as the train’s WiFi is playing ball which is by no means guaranteed. This time it did and by some miracle the train was also not delayed. I managed to get plenty of work done, checked into my accommodation pretty seamlessly, did another hours work and then wandered off to get something to eat and the inevitable couple of glasses of wine. Mishap one, such as it was, was discovering that a watering hole in Windermere (where I was staying) had been taken over by a chain that also owns my local. This was a bit disappointing as while there is nothing wrong with my local it feels a bit odd having exactly the same selection of drinks in a nice old pub in the Lakes as in one round the corner from my house (not that I have been in it much recently, the pub or the house).

Wainwright Walks 97: A Crag, a Tarn, and a silly amount of bracken

• Hills: Tarn Crag (Easdale)
• Classification: Wainwright (173)
• When: Sunday 2 July
• Who: Me, the mountaineering minion, and Tiny Paddington
• Distance: Allegedly 6 miles but felt like twice that.
• Weather: Very changeable. OK mostly wet. Sun tried to come out at the summit
• Conditions underfoot: Very mixed. Way too much wet bracken. Bog situation not too bad though.
• Post walk drink: Sauvignon Blanc
• Post walk watering hole: Golden Rule
• MAMBA factor: Fairly high. Not many people were mad enough to be out there.
• Uses of the arse crampon: In use for security once, on the way back down.
• Mishaps: That depends on what counts as a mishap. If stupid amounts of wet bracken plus wet weather count, then definitely.

‘There is no such thing as bad weather, only inadequate clothing’. Apparently this quote has been ascribed to Wainwright; I’m not sure whether this is actually correct or not. There is a Billy Connolly version apparently, which adds on an extra sentence ‘So get yourself a sexy raincoat and live a little’. I quite like this version, but am not a fan of the initial phrase in question for all sorts of reasons. Firstly, because although decent clothing and in particular decent waterproofs do mitigate the impact of inclement weather, there is no clothing known to man which can properly cope with really strong ‘blow you over territory’ winds or which can somehow help you get a view when the clag is down. More importantly, the phrase also gets used as ammo by the ‘hillier than thou’ brigade to make fair weather walkers, one of which I would definitely consider myself to be, feel bad for not somehow being hard enough to go out in crap weather. As has been clear from some previous blog posts – and will be from this one – I do sometimes walk in bad weather but I really don’t enjoy it. Not enjoying walking in crap weather shouldn’t mean being ‘less’ of a hill walker somehow; after all hill walking is supposed to be fun otherwise why do it? Yes, there is a challenge element to it, but clearly it is a personal choice as to where the ‘nah let’s do something else instead’ line needs to be drawn. After all it’s not like the hill is going anywhere.

After my trip North with Stuart at the end of May and beginning of June, which coincided with a spell of hot, settled weather but also me going down with a stinker of a summer cold, it was inevitable that I had probably used up my quota of good weather for the moment. My next planned trip was at the end of June/ beginning of July, when I had 3 nights booked in Ambleside YHA. I got there in the early evening and settled in before going for some pub grub and a few drinks in Ambleside, but was to be honest not feeling great about the prospects for the weekend. The weather forecast had been pretty reasonable a few days out but had gradually got worse, and the day after in particular was looking to be seriously windy, with MWIS in particular coming up with gems like ‘you may be blown over’. Argh! Ideally the plan if the weather was decent was to go for Seathwaite Fell with the possibility of a swim in Sprinkling Tarn afterwards, which is easily doable from Ambleside via the buses, but I decided to play by ear and make a call in the morning.

Wainwright walks 96: Two crags, lots of beer, not enough water, and no bogs

• Hills: Sergeant’s Crag, Eagle Crag
• Classification: Wainwrights (171 and 172)
• When: Thursday 1 June
• Who: Me, the mountaineering minion, and Tiny Paddington
• Distance: Probably about 6 miles in total.
• Weather: Scorchio!
• Conditions underfoot: Good paths to start off with, then pathless ascent up the side of Eagle Crag. Hardly any bog which for Central Fells is a miracle.
• Post walk drink: Lots of beer!
• Post walk watering hole: Keswick Beer Festival sponsors party
• MAMBA factor: Saw a few people on the Coast to Coast route but had both hills to myself.
• Uses of the arse crampon: That depends if squeezing between a wall and a fence counts.
• Mishaps: Lurgy; a false start on a totally different hill; disappearing buses

After my walk on Catstycam on the 26^th May, which kicked off a week in Cumbria in a good way, things from the perspective of walking went a bit downhill. My hip was still a bit sore on the Saturday, so rather than risk it we decided to go and pay a visit to the extremely interesting Lowther Castle before driving to Carlisle for a couple of days, before then spending a couple of days at the Mortal Man Hotel, which we had visited back in 2020 on our first post lockdown trip away and thought was well worth revisiting. The forecast was – amazingly – for settled warm weather for the whole of our time in Cumbria – I’ve never seen the like – so given my dodgy hip I thought a couple of days pottering about rather than necessarily trying to do any walking would be a good idea and the walking could be picked up again on the way to or when staying in Troutbeck. Plus I was knackered after a tough few weeks at work and the horrendous journey North and quite frankly needed a bit of a rest.

Of course, the mishap fairy had other ideas. After staying in Carlisle on the Saturday and Sunday nights, it was clear on waking up on the Monday that I had gone down with a stinker of a cold. I felt, not to put too fine a point on it, pretty rotten and we took the call rather than trying to push for a hill to go and have a swim in Shap open air pool which is the highest lido in England. This was pleasant enough although seemed to be more designed for kids than ‘proper’ swimming but never mind – it did perk me up a bit and after that we drove to the Mortal Man where we had some drinks in the sunshine and an early night in the hope I would feel well enough in the morning to tackle a walk.

You can of course guess the rest. I did not feel any better and did not feel up to doing a walk. We decided to have a potter around in the car and try and find somewhere to do a wild swim instead. This could have been a good option had we been able to find anywhere at all to park! After trying Coniston Water, White Moss (for Grasmere and/ or Rydal Water) and Ambleside (for Windermere) we gave up and ended up having a picnic at the top of Kirkstone Pass, but the whole fiasco had me seriously worried about the parking situation and what walks would actually be feasible for the rest of the week – public transport starting to seem like the best possible option, or alternatively hills that nobody does that often and are not tourist hotspots. The following day we were off to Keswick and although I felt marginally less bunged up I was conscious that an attempt at a hill was likely to lead either to more failed attempts to park or to a failed attempt on a hill in the event we actually managed to park, so we ended up doing tourist stuff namely a boat trip on Windermere, which was pleasant enough, then driving to Keswick where we were staying for the next few days. I was pretty much determined to push for a walk the following day though unless I felt truly awful.

Wainwright walks 95: The journey from hell and a big Eastern fell

• Hills: Catstycam
• Classification: Wainwright (170)
• When: Friday 26 May
• Who: Me, the mountaineering minion, and Tiny Paddington
• Distance: Guide book said 7 miles in total. Also said 750m ascent and certainly felt like it.
• Weather: Generally good.
• Conditions underfoot: Good paths throughout (for once)
• Post walk drink: Helvellyn Gold
• Post walk watering hole: The Traveller’s Rest, Glenridding
• MAMBA factor: Low – which was expected given most of this walk is on the Helvellyn motorway. Only 2 other people on Catstycam itself though.
• Uses of the arse crampon: One minor one when descending the summit cone.
• Mishaps: Transport; physical niggles. Getting older is a bugger.

Wednesday 24^th May: 3.30pm and I’ve just about finished loading up the car for a trip to the Lakes of just over a week. These days, I don’t try and drive all the way in one go; I’m starting to find it too tiring,  particularly when travelling involves going after work. Gone are the days when it seemed sensible to get up at 5am to drive to North London, park the car and then blast a decent chunk of the M6 starting at 7pm after finishing work… getting older is not much fun! I was also on my own as Stuart was working away much of the week, though would be joining me in Penrith on the Friday night in advance of a few days travelling about then a few days in Keswick (which would inevitably include the beer festival where once again we were sponsoring a barrel).

To say that I was gobsmacked on seeing the weather forecast would be an understatement. Not sure I have ever seen a long range forecast which provided consistently good weather for so long! It was actually quite hard to believe – but hot weather comes with its own challenges, not least that trying to hill walk when the weather is really hot is bloody hard work. There comes a point when going for a swim instead seems a better idea! Nonetheless the good weather forecast did mean I could think about doing some more challenging walks – I’ve been trying to increase the amount of ascent recently and one of the hills high on my to do list was Catstycam which I have wanted to do for ages.

Needless to say there were a few things which did not go to plan. I had arranged to stay with my parents on the Wednesday night, before travelling to Penrith the day after. Of course, anything involving the M25 has the potential to go horribly wrong and inevitably that was exactly what happened. A journey which should take about 3 hours took me almost 6 due to issues on both the M25 and the M40 and by the time I got to my parents’ flat I was absolutely shattered. Any thoughts of starting out early and getting a walk in the following day were canned in favour of a later start, spending some more time with my parents and setting off late morning – still feeling utterly knackered and with a long way to go before getting to my destination. I finally hit Cumbria at around 3 and decided to go for a swim in Ullswater (a new lake for me) before heading to my hotel in Penrith and more or less collapsing in a heap. I did go out for a couple of drinks and some food later but was a bit concerned about the fact one of my hips was hurting and the long drive hadn’t helped.