Vivienne Crow explores an icy landscape
AFTER SEVERAL sub-zero nights, the ground was solid as I set off from Braithwaite. The pavements were slick with a build-up of frost, the back roads were just as bad and even walking on grass, normally such a welcoming surface, brought no relief. I was glad when I reached the snow on Stile End’s north-east ridge. Donning Micro-spikes put an end to my painfully slow progress on the valley’s ice rinks and enabled me to push on with greater confidence.
Looking behind, I could see that, despite my late start, the mist over Bassenthwaite Lake and the Keswick area was lingering. It barely registered as a temperature inversion, so shallow and broken that treetops poked
through in places, but it lent a softness to the scene, concealing many of the blemishes of habitation – roads, power lines, scars left after works on the new water pipeline from Thirlmere.
The last time I’d been up
Stile End was just after the first lockdown of 2020. I’d set off soon after dawn on a gorgeous early-summer day and had this little top to myself. Having just been freed from the confines of ever-busy town streets and parks patrolled by overzealous police, the solitude and tranquillity left me gasping for breath as I fought back tears of relief. I sat at the summit for almost an hour, just soaking up this rediscovered liberty.
There was no chance of such solitary self-indulgence on a crisp, clear day between Christmas and New Year though. I had the top to myself for just five minutes and then another walker appeared. We chatted and were soon joined by another four. They went and were replaced by a couple more. Another group were on their way. I didn’t hang around…
I continued to Outerside – at 568m, the highest of this trio of hills squatting in the mouth of Coledale. The top of Grisedale Pike, on the other side of the valley, was crowded; and its lower slopes were scarred by the remains of the Force Crag Mine. One of the last Lake District mines to close, this was worked intermittently for lead, zinc and barytes from Elizabethan times until the late 1980s.
Today, its rusting buildings are maintained by the National Trust, which runs occasional tours of its surface workings.
From Outerside, I dropped into the upper reaches of Stonycroft Gill, gripped by the cold, dark shadow thrown out by its towering guardian to the south, Causey Pike. Eager to be back in the sun again, I flew across Stile End’s southern flanks and up to the summit of Barrow. The sun was low in the sky now. Beyond the still, inkyblack of Derwent Water to the east, the snow-covered domes of the Dodds were starting to take on a pink glow. So benign, but I knew that a fresh layer of ice would be forming on the roads and pavements below. It was time to head for home. [Captions clockwise from top] From Barrow, looking east across Derwent Water; Blease Fell and Blencathra; Grisedale Pike on the north side of Coledale