Walks

Walna Scar Road

A text message sent at two-thirty this morning saved us today. "PS don't forget the clocks," it said. So I was the one running round trying to persuade the others that the seven o'clock they thought it to be was in fact eight.

Jon was out with his Mountain Rescue team today, so Matt and I walked alone. We returned to Coniston to walk the reverse extension of yesterday's planned route: up Walna Scar Road (a track that rises 600m), across Brown Pike and Buck Pike to Dow Crag, then back down to the Road via Goat's Water.

We left the car in light drizzle and almost immediately entered the clouds. The locals call this weather claggy, a word whose sound carries all the right connotations. (The Scots have a hundred words for rain; the Eskimo have a hundred words for snow. The Cumbrians, it seems, specialise in categorising cloud.)

Grim. And on top it was worse: the damp mist, the low (20m?) visibility and the biting wind didn't make it a great place to dawdle. By the time we'd dropped to Goat's Water we were almost out of the cloud, but the temperature was still low so we didn't take long over lunch.

Back in the car-park an energetic woman bounded up to us asking our opinions of the traffic using the track. While answering I realised how much I'd been focussing on getting back to the car: events of just an hour or two earlier were as unclear in my mind as the view from the top.

Once again we had a good energetic walk but again I'm tired and aching, ready for a cup of tea.