Back in July 2021 Family Watson did a tour of the North West of Scotland. Hannah and I drove to Moffat on 27th June, stopping overnight before continuing to Dundee where we had another overnight stop. We met up with the kids in Dundee and on Monday, 29th June we set off on a lovely sunny morning on a trip from the east coast to Kerrera on the west coast.
I was very happy to be feeling fit again and, after a couple of wet-ish days, the weather was looking promising. After a quick breakfast I was driving back the way I’d come the previous evening. I planned to walk The Matterdale Dodds, the same walk I had completed just over five years ago, but this time using a different start point for a bit of variety. Five years ago, the walk had been a bit miserable, a thick mist had descended and I hadn’t seen much from the tops. Today was going to be a very different experience.
Tagged: Lake District, Wainwrights, walking
The government “Roadmap out of Lockdown” hit the next step as planned on 17th May, and my stay at YHA Ambleside was confirmed. I was going back to the Lakes, and I couldn’t wait to get out on the hills. Although I’d had a week off in April, I wasn’t really feeling refreshed and I was hoping that a concentrated period of solo walking might do the trick, and that’s how I’d planned the first part of the week. The end of the week would be a couple of days walking with my brother and nephew, both of whom had recently started taking walking more seriously, and I was looking forward to having some new walking companions. As usual, I stopped over in Southport…
Tagged: Lake District, Wainwrights, walking
Restrictions have been eased a little, but we’re still pretty much in lockdown. Teaching has come to an end for the year (my 26th in higher education), and normally I’d be reporting on a visit to the Lake District. Rewind 12 months, and I was saying the same thing. Back in December I had, rather hopefully, booked a week in the Lakes for April but YHA had refunded my money – ditto last year. I am, however, hoping to get up there at the end of May after the next easing of restrictions – my room is booked and my fingers are crossed. As I did last year, I took a weeks’ leave anyway. Fortunately (or ironically, whichever way you want to look at…
Today would be the day. The day I’d complete the challenge I’d set myself to summit all of the Wainwright fells and all of the Fellranger fells, 235 in total. My adventure had begun on 17th June 2015 with a tentative walk to Low Pike, High Pike and Dove Crag from Ambleside. Today, it would conclude with a high-level walk in Langdale, taking in the final Fellranger on my list, Little Stand. This walk was going to be my reward for a tough week of walking. Although I had enjoyed visiting the final Fellrangers on the list, they almost all were what Wainwright calls the Outlying Fells, and that meant they were lower and more scattered than the popular and better known fells in…
Tagged: Lake District, Wainwrights
So far, so good. My week in the Lakes had started very well and I’d bagged eleven of the seventeen tops on my list in just three days. You might think I’d be confident in completing the final six with three walking days left, but I wasn’t. Some were in far-flung locations, Black Combe and Muncaster Fell were each a trip in their own right, and others like Little Stand would require (or merited) a day walk. Added to the geographic complexity was my fitness, or lack of it. Ordinarily I’d have five walking days and then a rest day but I was going to have to walk at least six days straight to get this done. As it turned out, I walked seven…
Tagged: Lake District, Wainwrights
I had pretty much given up hope of visiting the Lake District in 2020. Lockdown had been frustrating and since restrictions were eased, finding accommodation in one of the most popular “staycation” destinations in the UK turned out to be almost impossible – almost. I had planned to return in April, with the aim of completing the Fellranger Fells. YHA accommodation had been booked back in December and I’d planned the walks that would take me to the remaining tops I needed to complete the challenge I’d set myself 5 years ago – to complete both the Wainwright and Fellranger fells, 235 in all. With the Wainwrights completed in July last year, and a few of the additional Fellrangers already in the bag, I…
Tagged: Lake District, Wainwrights
The last time I journeyed more than a few miles from home is now almost two months in the past. On the 19th March, I pulled in to London Waterloo on my usually rammed commuter train. Just six of us stepped onto the platform. That was the point at which I realised I probably shouldn’t even be there. I travelled on to Greenwich and had my meeting. Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to grab a spare webcam and a few other necessities. I watered my lovely ferns and went straight home. That was it, and the last eight weeks have been a strange mix of anxiety and comfort.
So I’d completed the Wainwrights and you might think that would be that. However, despite a final tick in the 214th box, it didn’t really feel like a completion. I didn’t have a complete photographic record of all the summits, and since this challenge had become mildly obsessive, that bugged me. During my early walks I wasn’t particularly focussed on photographing summits because I didn’t even know that I might be attempting a completion. And then there was the time I lost two days worth of photographs when the SD card in my camera failed. In short, I needed to return to the Lakes to complete the set. Earlier this year, over supper at YHA Eskdale, I was asked whether I was an incrementalist…
Tagged: Lake District, Wainwrights
In the summer of 1936, a Chinese artist made a visit to the Lake District and recorded what he found there in prose, poetry and painting. Chiang Yee was an academic who, at the time of his visit to the Lakes, taught Chinese at the School of Oriental Studies, University of London. He had come to London in 1933 and studied for an MSc in Economics at the London School of Economics. His Lakeland journal was published by Country Life in 1937, entitled, The Silent Traveller, A Chinese Artist in Lakeland. It’s a short book, running to just 67 pages, but it is rather wonderful and contains twelve plates depicting Lakeland scenes painted in the Chinese style and a preface by Herbert Read. The…
Tagged: Lake District