Wainwright walks 62: a Cockup (but no mishaps) in the Northern Fells

Hills: Brae Fell, Great Sca Fell, Knott, Meal Fell, Great Cockup
Classification: Wainwrights (123 – 127)
When: Thursday 6 June
Who: Me and the mountaineering minion
Distance: I forgot to check. Would guess around 7 or 8 miles.
Time: About 5 hours, including breaks
Weather: Glorious sunshine! Quite windy higher up.
Post walk drink: A local pale ale though I can’t remember what it was. Later various ales at the beer festival
Post walk watering hole: The Magnolia, Keswick; later on, Keswick Beer Festival sponsors party
Uses of the arse crampon: Still missing in action…
Mishaps: None as such, unless having to be off the hill for a certain time in case some work needed to be done counts.

After the pleasant toddle up Binsey and the otherwise relaxing day on the 5th June, for once the weather forecast for the following day was actually pretty good with the weather due to be sunny and any early cloud lifting off the summits. It was a day where it was time to think about something a little bit more ambitious than a short blast – a decent length of walk with the opportunity to pick off several different hills was very doable. The only caveat was that yet again there was a chance I might need to do some work in the afternoon so I had to try and be off the hill by around 3 at the latest.

This kicked out one possible idea which was to do the Buttermere round of High Stile etc as I want to do that by bus and having a time constraint didn’t really fit with the bus logistics, plus it looks to be quite a tough walk and one I will need to take my time over. Plan B – and the actual plan as it turned out – was to pick off some more of the Northern Fells which would enable me to string a few together and still get back in time to do some work if I needed to. An early (ish) alarm call saw me parked up at the bottom of Longlands Fell for the second Thursday in a row, although the weather couldn’t have been more different! I don’t really like the single track road though, it is very narrow at times and several awkward reversing manoeuvres were required before I parked up – once again the only person there at 9.30 when I set out, and still the only person there when I finished shortly after 2. I’d managed to get most of the faffing out of the way before leaving the cottage but inevitably there was still some i.e. check I had got everything, check I’d locked the car, check I’d locked it again, then check where I had put the car keys etc… (I always worry about losing the car keys although it hasn’t happened so far – that really would be a mishap!)

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Wainwright Walks 53: A bit of festive Barfing

Hills: Barf
Wainwright number: 109
When: Monday 24 December
Weather: Glorious!
Time: 2 ½ hours, including breaks
Conditions underfoot: Mostly ok, though terrain in shade was frozen at times. (On the plus side, so was the bog. Result!)
Who: me and the mountaineering minion
Post walk drink:  Prosecco
Post walk watering hole: The Ambleside Tavern
Mishaps: None whatsoever!
Uses of the arse crampon: No need for it.

Christmas Eve. The sky was blue, the birds were singing, and on surfacing from bed in our holiday cottage, the conditions on the day would have been ideal for a long walk. However, a few libations the night before, and not setting an alarm, had meant that by the time I was actually awake, showered, gear sorted and ready to throw said gear into the car and get underway – as well as needing to engage in some serious de-icing of the car – it was already gone 11am and the time to do any sort of walk other than a short one was fast disappearing. I was also knackered despite having not done very much the day before, following on from the high Tove bogfest on Saturday, and a pretty frantic period of work in the run up to going on holiday. However it was far too nice a day not to do something.

What’s in a name 2 – from the sublime to the ridiculous

No not the ongoing debate about the BMC rebrand (at approximately the same time indoor rock climbing was made an Olympic sport: coincidence? I think not..) but the names of hills. These range from the truly sublime to the absolutely ludicrous and of course when translating from the Gaelic there is an added element of weirdness.