Roger Butler enjoys a Skiddaw circuit

SOMETIMES you just know you’re going to have a good day; and when Skiddaw towered through thin strips of wavering mist, all thoughts of yesterday’s soggy battering were banished into the box of bad memories. Blue skies and strong hints of autumnal colour were accompanied by a soundtrack from the stony rapids on the River Greta, where a goosander bobbed like an out-of-control kayak.

The pencil-thin ash trees along the first track were soon replaced by gorse bushes as big as houses. Back in 1814, William Calvert, an agricultural innovator and close friend of Wordsworth, ventured here to plough the open slopes in an