One ridge to rule them all
short, sharp and thrilling. Is this route up one of Lakeland’s most iconic peaks the best ridge-walk in the country? We reckon so...
Over splashes of ale and torn-open crisp packets, hill-weary walkers debate the important matters of the day. What makes a proper pie? Which is the best hill in the Lakes? What’s the best ridge-walk in Britain?
If you were going to get into the best ridge in Britain then we’re heading into territory more divisive than whether ketchup, gravy or mayonnaise is going on the chips. “Crib Goch!” some yell. “Carn Mor Dearg Arête!” demand others. “Striding Edge!” claim some. But if we’re talking walks – no proper scrambling required, no head-spinning exposure, just an exhilarating sweep to the summit – then things get a little simpler and a lot more interesting. Because these are topclass mountain trips that anyone can enjoy.
Right up there, jostling ahead of all the other contenders, is a ridge on one of the most iconic hills in the Lake District, which you can be climbing within half an hour of getting out of the car and which leads you directly to the summit. If you know it, you’ve probably already guessed which one we’re on about. Hall’s Fell Ridge on Blencathra is one of the best ridge-walks in the four nations.
And here are four reasons why...
I let the sun-warmed rock slip from my fingers and stand to walk across a brief slope. Just a little away above me is the cloud-buffeted sky – we are so close to the top – but directly ahead is iron-grey rock worn smooth by hundreds of boots. The breathlessness of the goal and the climb behind me catch in my chest as I straighten to make the final few paces upwards. One-two-three steps, and the horizon sprints out for miles. A swathe of cropped turf drops to a distant range of rough, rounded hills, heaped beneath a huge blue vault.
I spin around to see the edges of Blencathra fold in and out between sharp-angled spurs and sweeping, mossy corries. The top of this hill is over 2km long, so while at 868m it may not be the tallest, it is for sure one of the most massive. The corries swoop down to the A66, now a trickling line with tiny cars beetling along. Then the green fields of the fertile valley hemmed with walls and trees; the shine of Derwent Water and, rising again, the massed peaks of the central Lakes. I turn and see a well-beaten track leading to Sharp Edge, secreted behind Scales Fell. It’s one of the best ridge-scrambles in the Lakes (there’s another pint-spiller of a debate), then 360 back to the wild expanse of the Northern Fells, where almost nobody ever goes.
Closer than all this, so close that I almost trip over it, is a new concrete doughnut engraved with the words ‘Ordnance Survey Trigonometrical Station’. Hall’s Fell Ridge finishes up right at the highest point of this whole behemoth of a mountain. And everything that comes before it is just as magnificent.
Hours of tarmac, the gentle bump of the car over the rolling humps of the A66 and the morning sunlight baking through the windscreen have lulled me into a pleasant kind of coma. But the sight of Blencathra sparks me awake. Within minutes of seeing the mountain, we are walking up the road towards it, eyes still bleary, limbs still weary. I would say it looms ahead but that would make it sound menacing and shadowy. And this thing, bathed in golden afternoon sunlight, the ridge swinging thrillingly to the top, is irresistible.
Through a farmyard, via a strand of trees and by a shallow river, and we’re on the hill itself, cutting left and right through bracken and heather. The upward pace soon kneads the stiffness from my limbs so that when we arrive at the rocky outcrops that mark the narrowing of this broad ridge I feel bright and limber. The thick foliage has given way to a crunchy carpet of dried, low heather. Skylark song yields to the echoing clank of shifting slate. Up ahead, the ridge crimps to a narrower crest. It curves like a spiny alligator’s tail swinging left and right. And that’s no false summit we can see, that triangle point at the top; that’s the real thing.
3 THE ASCENT
The excitement is dished out bit by bit, the ante slowly building. First, a
“THE RIDGE CURVES LIKE AN ALLIGATOR’S TAIL SWINGING LEFT TO RIGHT”
warty fist of rocks punches up out of the heather in front of us and, even though there is a perfectly good path nipping round the side of it, I race towards it, grab one rock, push my foot against another and weave a brief, scrambling way to the top. An aisle of greying heather leads on to the next one and the next. These punctuations of knotty, lichen-spotted rocks burst up in intervals, getting closer and closer to one another until eventually the heather catwalk between them is squeezed out altogether and the ridge becomes one long, chaotic line of rock. If we were climbing the alligator’s tail before, we have just clambered onto its back.
It must be dozing, because the way up continues without a snap. We can see now into the corries on either side: Gate Gill to the left, Doddick Gill to the right. The upper edges of the first are still crusted with old white snow. Its steep banks – a mess of moss, boulders and loose rocks – funnel young trickling burns to that shallow river we crossed at the start. Looking over Doddick Fell and Scales Fell after that, we can see out along the Eden Valley and the thread of a road that brought us here, to the Pennines and the outer fells. But enough of that. The wind is low and the rock is dry. It’s time to make the most of this incredible ridge-walk in the best of Lake District conditions.
It’s true: this really is a walk. The crest is a jumble of rocks, pocked with gaps for hands and feet, but a path twists up beside all of it. A scramble is usually defined as a route that requires the use of hands on rock. Here you really only need them for balance. And although the views on either side are great and get increasingly better, it is never that exposed, more comfortably thrilling. Unless you really try that is. I scramble up one rock face to find myself gripping, sweaty-handed, onto a bootwide wedge that I absolutely decide not to balance my way along. Tom can’t resist the dare and takes two quick steps along it to arrive at the end with an unassuming ‘ta-dah’.
4 ALL OF IT
What’s not unassuming at all is this whole walk. This ridge doesn’t lead you to the top of just any hill, but to the top of one of the most iconic hills in the Lake District, beloved by thousands. The climb is so delightful that we barely notice we’ve put about 700m between us and the ground below. After switching between climbing over the crenellations and strolling along beside them, we stride onto the summit to oversee the whole exquisite panorama. The ridge swings out and kinks right, the last of the sunlight casting its western side in iron and bronze. It points straight to the heart of the National Park, lakes gleaming and hills proud. What could be better?