THE GREAT ESCAPE
In August last year, James Forrest set off on a record-breaking Lakeland journey, aiming to leave behind the worries of a world in turmoil by climbing all 214 Wainwright fells in one single self-supported walk. This is his story…
“There seemed no escape from the atmosphere of gloom and despondency… things were getting worse day by day. But I was fortunate in having a fortnight’s holiday due, and I fled the familiar scene.” So wrote Alfred Wainwright just before WWII, as the rise of Nazism led Europe into a period of untold bloodshed and devastation.
I’m doing something similar over 80 years later in 2020. Gloom and despondency are in the air, fuelled by lockdown boredom and fear of the deadly coronavirus. News reports of economic disaster, ventilator shortages and inevitable second waves seem to get worse day by day. But, like Alfred, I have a fortnight’s break to flee the familiar scene
– and I’m heading for the hills.
In 1938 Wainwright fled a climate of despair (“Everybody felt sick, upset, nervous... nobody smiled any more”) by hiking 210 miles through the Yorkshire Dales, Northumberland, Pennines, Howgills and Eden Valley, a walk later known as A Pennine Journey. My plan is similarly grand, perhaps even more so.
I’m aiming to summit all 214 Wainwright fells in the Lake District in a continuous, self-supported hike, and I want to do it in record-breaking time.
It is a self-chosen mission. The antidote to the lockdown-induced cabin fever and wanderlust in my system, and my chance to re-connect with the Lake District fells I’ve longed for during a frightening year. Now that restrictions have been eased slightly, I want the mountains to cleanse my troubled mind. I want to taste escapism and freedom on my lips, to feel the adrenaline of a physical challenge coursing through my veins, and to hear the silence of solitude. I imagine Wainwright felt the same, as he set off from Settle on his solo walk towards Hadrian’s Wall. He was living through an unsettling, abnormal time and wanted to escape the noise. England’s rolling countryside would heal his residual stresses and anxieties, and the fresh air would rekindle his soul. Fear would be replaced by freedom; “acute urban depression” exchanged for the open trail; and – for two weeks only – the quill and ledgers of a Blackburn Town Hall clerk swapped for the boots and backpack of a footloose wanderer.
It seems a little crass to compare the hardships of coronavirus with the tragedy of WWII. The troubles of 2020 pale into insignificance compared to the horrors of 1939-1945, but I can’t help but draw parallels between the backdrops to my walk and Alfred’s. I too am living through an unsettling time, with a fortnight away from the day job for solo walking through northern England’s rural landscapes – an interlude from the social media-fuelled frenzy of COVID-19 angst, polarisation and fear.
My intended approach is somewhat different to Wainwright’s though. I’m gunning for a record. I’ll be treating the mountains like an assault course. And I want to climb so hard and so fast, I lose sight of my comfort zone and triumphantly smash through the barriers of my perceived limits. For old Alf, the fells were a spiritual place for meaningful, intimate travel – an experience not to be rushed. In many ways, I completely agree, but simultaneously I love a physical challenge. The exercise gives me a dizzying endorphin rush and gratifying sense of achievement. My hope is that I can have my cake and eat it. I want my round to satisfy both cravings – spiritual and physical – and to strike a perfect harmony between an arduous feat of endurance and a soul-enriching journey through the mountains.
And I know Wainwright would understand that philosophy, having once written: “One should always have a definite objective in a walk as in life – it is so much more satisfying to reach a target by personal effort than to wander aimlessly… and life without ambition is... well, aimless wandering.”
My objective is crystal clear – to walk all 214 Wainwrights in a single, self-supported round. Alone and unaided, I must hike 530km, ascend 36,000m – the equivalent height of four Everests – and wild camp every night for a fortnight. I must be entirely self-reliant, pitching my own tent, cooking my own camp meals and nursing my own wounds, both physical and mental. I must carry everything I need on my back, re-supplying every few days via stash boxes I previously cached in churches, farmers’ barns and pub outbuildings around the Lakes. And I must finish in 25 days or faster to achieve my goal of breaking the previous record for a self-supported Wainwrights round.
It is a daunting prospect, as I set off from Keswick’s Moot Hall towards Latrigg, peak number one. While ultra-runners like Paul Tierney (the overall Wainwrights record holder with a time of 6 days, 6 hours, 5 minutes), Steve Birkinshaw and Sabrina Verjee have big support crews assisting their rounds, I am a Lone Ranger. I have no team-mates or comrades to lift me out of the mental mire; no friendly faces to perk me up with a joke or smile when I need it most. Instead it’s just me versus the mountains, and that’s exactly how I want it to be. I am trying something different and unique, something that suits my skill-set – to survive in the mountains, alone and unaided. It feels like an authentic, ‘purist’ approach. No restaurants, cafés or pubs. No cosy B&Bs or hotels. No shops or supermarkets. Just a real, back-to-basics adventure.
But by the morning of day two, with 11 Wainwrights in the bag, I begin to regret this purist vision wholeheartedly. From the shelter of Millican Dalton’s Cave on the flanks of Castle Crag, I gaze out of its serrated mouth at wave after wave of hellishly torrential rain. Borrowdale, so often a romantic idyll, looks
“A blissful interlude of freedom"
foreboding and unwelcoming – and the thought of heading out into the squall is soul-crushing. But I know I can’t give up now. There’s no turning back. My only option is to leave the sanctity of the ‘Cave Hotel’ and get cracking – the remaining 203 Wainwrights won’t climb themselves.
For the next four days I’m tortured by the weather. The skies rumble and roar with a vociferous anger. An ominous clag clings to everything it touches, like a virus spreading across the land, infecting life with its heavy, depressing aura – the mountain equivalent of the COVID-19 crisis. At Great Gable torrential rain surges and seethes, falling vertically and horizontally and every other perceivable angle all at once, while in the Ennerdale fells the wind bays and barks with a rabid savagery. The mountains have morphed into something monstrous by the time I’m bagging the Scafell Massif. They feel terrifyingly inhospitable; dark and menacing and hell-bent on wreaking havoc. I am not welcome in this place of pain and anguish.
It’s tricky not to be overwhelmed by the enormity of the challenge. I feel like I’m in a fierce battle with my three nemeses – the weather, the mountains and my mind. The weather wields terrifying force, like a cruel monster determined to inflict pain and misery on its victim; whereas the mountains are more like a siren, luring you in with their beauty and majesty, only to cripple you with never-ending ascents, ankle-jarringly rough terrain, and knee-crushing descents. But worse still is the enemy in my own head. It’s the wiliest and most cunning of opponents. It can blind you with self-doubt; paralyse you with negative thinking; and torture you with tantalising thoughts of how easy it’d be to give up.
These self-doubts torment me by the evening of day five, as I camp in my oneman tent west of Cold Pike. Tears well in my eyes and drip onto my sleeping bag. I feel inconsolably miserable. Why the hell did I sign up for this godforsaken expedition? I’m cold, wet, exhausted and bereft of any fight. I haven’t seen the view from a summit for days. Several brutal rounds against the fearsome Cumbrian weather have left me battered and bruised – and emotionally beaten. This was meant to be escapism from a scary pandemic; not leaving one nightmare just to land head-first in another one.
But the following morning I unzip my tent and wake to a different, better world. Darkness becomes light; evil