What a Weekend!

Wow what a great time!

The three walkers decided to climb Scafell Pike last weekend. We chose Scafell as it is notorious to navigate in the dark, rain and mist. As we will be tackling it at about 3am, and none of us had ever been there before we thought we better become a little more familiar!

Saturday

Nicole and I drove up there on Saturday afternoon and arrived about tea time at a lovely old building that had been bought by the YHA. we were on the side of a lake ad could see the foot hills of Scafell Pike at the other end of the lake in the swirling mist. It looked cold, desolate and very very wet!

The Lake District, for anyone who has never been is one of the most beautiful parts of our green and pleasant land. Wet, yes but absolutely beautiful, relaxing and everyone is so friendly. If anyone needs to get away from it all for a long weekend I cannot recommend enough hiring out a B&B in the Lakes and going for a few walks, even if it rains.

Brigid had been working at the Nottingham Tournament and couldn't leave till later but she eventually meet us at about 11pm. Quick dinner and to bed in the YHA dorms.

Sunday

We were up early (well 8.30), YHA breakfast and out the door. We drove to the car park that we would be starting the real walk from. It started raining. Waterproofs on and off we go. Then it started raining hard, nice.

There were a few minibus' scattered around and we guessed that another three peaks challenge was going on. It was for the British Heart Foundation, another very worthy cause. Everyone coming down the hill looked knackered. Best not to dwell on what was ahead. We continued up the hill and the weather continued to rain. Despite the rain the walking was great and the view was fantastic when you could see through the rain.

The first part of the path was on a muddy track but then it turned to stone. The track had been built by tightly packing boulders that were on the mountain naturally. It was just like a dry stone wall on its side. I though this was a brilliant idea. It stopped erosion caused caused by the high volumes of walkers, lets everyone know where the path was and used natural, local material and didn't need vast quantities of concrete to keep it in place. On top of that it looked really good in it's surroundings.

We carried on... in the rain.

About half way up the weather took a turn for the better. The rain stopped! :0) Then the mist set in. :0( One of the reasons that we chose to climb Scafell Pike was that the top is really tricky. There is no path, it is totally scree (large rocks and boulders) covered and visibility can be reduced to just a few meters in a few seconds. We needed to know our route in the day before we could tackle it at night.

Another excellent idea that the custodians of Scafell have implemented is to cover the top in cairns. Cairns are just piles of stones about three feet high. They were placed about 10 to 20 meters apart so even in the mistyist (?) of conditions we should, in theory, be able to find the top. The trick was to make sure we followed the right ones!!

Eventually we found the top. Woo Hooooooooooo!

The view was mist. It was cold and wet so we had a quick sandwich. Sorted ourselves out and we were on out way down again. Besides the lads that had carried their iPod and speakers to the top were playing rubbish music!!!

I was a bit disappointed with the way other walkers had littered the top of the highest mountain in the country. There weren't that many crisp packets but there were alot of apple cores, orange peal and banana skins. I do understand that they are biodegradable items but what they don't seem to comprehend is that there is no vegetation on the top of Scafell Pike, let alone Banana trees. This means that fruit skins and cores are alien items and haven't got anything (i.e. soil) to biodegrade into. Duh!!

Anyway, rant over, back on the trail. We made our way back down the mountain, the weather held off and the views were fantastic when we got out of the mist belt. We could see the lake we had seen from the other side that morning.

We got back to the car six hours after we left. We had been taking it quite easy but there is still alot of work to do. we need to get our fitness and our stamina up. So its back in the gym this week for some serious cardio work and some hours on the stepping machine.