Rhinogydd
James Forrest finds rugged adventure in Wales’ wild west
EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE, an idea thwacks you from left field. In my case, the impact was all the greater for being encapsulated in a single word: fastpacking. Yes, I’d done backpacking before; and yes, I’d done fellrunning. But the idea of a hybrid sport seemed absurd. Backpackers totter under rucksacks tall as Manhattan skyscrapers, whereas fell runners go out in singlets and grumble if they have to carry both a cagoule and a cereal bar.
And yet, the idea of moving quickly over mountain terrain with the means to stay high overnight was so beguiling I had to try it. And that meant assembling the kit that would occupy that tiny overlap in the Venn diagram between comfort and portability. During lockdown, it became an obsessive dream – I saw myself perfecting the tireless lope of the wolf over the hills, then unfurling my den to hunker down for the night. But successive Covid-19 lockdowns made it impractical to visit gear shops, so I had to rely on internet research.
The first priority with fastpacking is minimising the weight of the big five: tent, sleeping bag, sleeping pad, stove and rucksack. Most people, I suspect, tackle them in that order, with the final decision being a suitable sack to carry the gear. I decided to approach it from the other direction and have no rucksack at all. Running with rucksacks is something you make squaddies do as punishment, isn’t it? In my experience, rucksacks bounce, chew into your shoulders and make your back sweat buckets. When you want a snack or want to adjust layers, you have to stop, release a thousand straps, lift the thing down, undo the buckles and slacken a drawstring. Then reverse the process. Hardly the ideal of free movement.
So my starting point was a bumbag. I use them all the time for short fell runs and love their compactness and simplicity. I am not troubled by bouncing and I can easily access my stuff on the go – the one featured here has commodious pockets built into the waistband in which I can stash industrial quantities of cereal bars and grab them while moving. I also find that bumbags keep the centre of gravity low – important for the ridge runner.
And on warm days I can wear the minimum clothing compatible with basic standards of public decency.
The other advantage of starting from the bag and working inwards is the well-known phenomenon whereby kit expands to fit the space available. As anyone who’s ever been on holiday knows, if you lay out a 50L suitcase, you’ll squeeze in 51L of stuff.
And so my idea for taking lightweight backpacking to the extreme – ditching the backpack altogether in favour of ‘bumbagging’ – was born. But would it work?
THEORY MEETS PRACTICE
When the first Covid lockdown eased for overnight stays in mid-April, I held off. I reasoned that the hills would be swarming, with evidence of fresh trowel-work behind every rock. I watched beautiful pictures flood social media – endless sunsets and sunrises through tent doors as tarns gently lapped their rocky shores. Still I waited. May brought an unexpected reprise of winter. I gladly retrieved my winter fell shoes from the cupboard for daytime runs, but my ultralight setup wasn’t going to cut it in the snow. At least I could practise running with the full bag.
Finally, May ended and it was safe to cast our clouts. I decided to make the inaugural outing a very modest overnighter to stay within safe limits. Sunrise would be around 4:30pm on a north-easterly bearing. That suggested St Sunday Crag as a suitable eyrie, with the sun streaming up the length of Ullswater as it crested the Pennines. At least, that was the plan.
I got away on a fine Friday evening.
The day still held its heat and the hedgerows burgeoned with white – huge tresses of hawthorn and horse chestnut blossom overhanging froths of cow parsley and ox-eye daisy. Cumbria looked prepared for the arrival of a June bride.
I stashed the car at Patterdale and
saddled up. Everything felt snug and I set off at a steady jog, warming up on the level. But it wasn’t long before the contours clustered together, I engaged low gear, and the shirt came off. In the cool of dappled woods, a sparrowhawk swooped past my head, which I involuntarily dipped. Well, it’s only natural to bow to the hunter. Everywhere, I could feel spring ending; on north-facing slopes, the bluebells were fading to a steely grey, with fresh green bracken poking through the rust of last autumn. A dragonfly, fat with the promise of summer, busied past.
The path led up the wiggly wall, with many a backward glance at the shimmering head of Ullswater. The gleaming steamer moored at Glenridding looked increasingly toylike as I gained height. At the top of Arnison Crag, a party was setting up camp just below the summit. Their tents looked
solid and luxurious, and I wondered again whether the micro-shelter tucked into my waistband really was going to hold up at 800 metres.
Up the bluff of Birks, the Herdwicks watched the progress of this panting old-timer with their customary detached bemusement. Wheatears struck poses on boulders and pipits flitted through the cottongrass. The turf was crispy dry, so I took a pathless detour into Cold Cove to fill up the bottles at a tiny, well-named spring trickling with brain-freeze-inducing water. The extra portage slowed me to a walk, but it wasn’t long before I crested the summit ridge. From empty Deepdale, the massive ramparts of Greenhow End thrust up to the rim of Fairfield. On the northern flank lay Grisedale, the tiny Ruthwaite hut lending scale to the vast coves of the Helvellyn range.
As I set up camp, the temperature fell away in a keen breeze. The logic of ultralight was about to be tested, because there’s no room for anything luxurious like a down jacket. But I’d planned for this moment. Checking there were no witnesses to this rather gawky innovation, I coiled the sleeping bag around myself like a Highlander’s plaid, and fastened the thin gilet over the top to secure it. The stove soon served up a steaming pouch of spaghetti Bolognese, followed by custard with apple and a flagon of lemon tea. The sun sank into the hammock between Helvellyn and Catstye Cam, rendering them charcoal silhouettes; 120 kilometres (75 miles) away, The Cheviot stood guard over the north-east horizon.
“I lingered on Fairfield, watching first light break over the fells. The sun raised its head and ridges stretched themselves out in morning light. The world was quieter than a barn owl’s swoop.”
It was to be an early start, so I bedded down. A sliver of orange light persisted in the north sky, visible under the beak of the flysheet. The wind cut cold, but I zipped up the bivvy bag and was soon toasty. I fell asleep to the rustle of the flysheet in the dry grass, accompanied by the wind tunefully humming the guy line.
A DREAMLIKE REALITY
Well before sunrise, the light had returned enough to penetrate the cobweb-thin fabric above me, prising open my eyes. I decided to embrace the Alpine start and scoff breakfast before the light reached photographable levels. Down went the porridge with strawberries and a pint of strong, hot coffee. It was not even four on a Saturday morning and the day was properly under way.
I packed up, observing the timehonoured principles of ‘leave no trace’.
All that marked my passing was two square yards of flattened grass, the tent-print pale against the darker hues of dewfall. I ran my fingers through the dampness of the grass to tease it back.
I trotted down to Deepdale Hause and scrambled over the pinnacles of Cofa Pike. Arriving at Fairfield summit, I surprised a couple of Bob Graham Round runners. They soon vanished towards Seat Sandal in a flurry of studs. By contrast, I lingered, watching first light break over the fells.
The sun raised its head, and ridges stretched themselves out in morning light. Pendle Hill stood out in the south-east. The world was quieter than a barn owl’s swoop. A wheatear’s scratchy song on the plateau counterpointed the fluting disyllable of a ring ouzel on the screes below – a duet as eccentric as swanee whistle and kazoo.
The warmth had returned, and I was soon back to shorts and t-shirt, though it was not yet 6am. I retraced my steps over St Sunday Crag, galumphing down pathless terrain, and picked up Coldcove Gill again to romp through shallow bracken to the dewy pastures of Deepdale.
The world was fresh and new, the air clean, the light vibrant. Welsh poppies swayed in the verges; the hawthorn blossom was rich; and the sky filled with the aerobatics of swallows and house martins. It was barely 7am and my day was done. What had started as a rather geeky thought experiment in lockdown had been realised, but it was a dreamlike reality. The best kind.