- 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.
Mountains and Malbec 