Friday the Thirteenth…?

Well, after three days’ walking, yesterday was a day off and an opportunity to assess how things had gone. On paper, all was according to plan, but more importantly my cold was a nuisance, not only giving me a tight chest but also making legs feel like lead. So with a poor weather forecast for Saturday and a good one for Sunday, it seemed better to do one day only today and swap the next rest day for a walking day – avoid the rain and hopefully help recovery from the cold. And perhaps it would make sense to bring forward some of the ‘easier’ walks and postpone the harder ones.

So today saw us setting off from home at 8.00 to climb five tops in the St John’s Vale area – on the itinerary as Day 12. Well, I said the schedule would be subject to change!

As we were getting our boots on at the appropriately named LEGburthwaite, another car parked up with four gentlemen on board, about to tackle Raise and White Side – peaks south of our intended route. It turns out they were friends of Allan Boardman – Allan and his wife Sandra are kindly providing me with accommodation later by putting me up at their home – which just shows what a small world it is!

It’s a steep climb up to the top of Sticks Pass and then easier to the summit of Stybarrow Dodd (2770’). Wainwright reckons it’s 2½ miles and 2300’ of ascent, which we managed in about 1h 20m, feeling good, so perhaps the cold has been more or less conquered. The cloud, which at first seemed as though it might stay high, now came down so once again we were up in the mist and light rainy stuff. The wind was getting up too, so on went the waterproofs and out came the compass for the otherwise easy walk to Watson’s Dodd (2584’).

Next came an easy climb to the highest point of the day – Great Dodd (2807’), where the wind was strong enough to give you face-ache and the rather grand stone shelter was a bit deceptive, being about 100 yds from the highest point. A two mile walk to Clough Head (2381’) is fairly featureless apart from the rocky tor of Calfhow Pike about half-way. There was nothing else to see as the cloud /mist / fog got thicker.

Clough Head has dangerously steep

craggy slopes to the west, which was the direction we wanted to go: there is an ultra-safe descent on gentle grass NE, but it adds the best part of another mile, so it was a matter of taking a bearing from the misty summit and pacing the distance to find the safe path down the route directe. No problem. As we dropped out of the wind, we had a bite of lunch and during this ten minute break the clouds blew away to give us a great view down to our next objective – High Rigg (1163’).

This is a knobbly ridge between the main A591 Ambleside – Keswick road and the B5322, which we climbed from behind the Diocesan Youth Centre by St John’s in the Vale church. Absolutely lovely, but the ridge route back to Legburthwaite meanders and undulates so much that it must have added a mile and at least another 500’ of climbing over and above the map estimate, and took the best part of an hour and a half to traverse. Spotted the first frogspawn of the year up there, and a couple of Buzzards enjoyed circling on the air currents.

So Friday 13th passed without a hitch. With tomorrow off, the next outing (possibly Grasmere to the Langdales) will be on… the Ides of March.

Skiddaw from High Rigg