The whole of Europe is in the middle of a scorching heatwave. Here in the Cotswolds the grass is as brown as a hay bale and the thermometer has been touching 30°C. Meanwhile, colleagues in Geneva have complained of temperatures approaching a scarcely bearable 38°C.
For Edita, none of this is extreme. She is currently working in Haiti, where these temperatures are on the moderate side. She was home for ten days of R&R, and it seemed like a good time to go hill walking. We decided to head for the Lake District, where good weather seemed guaranteed for a change.
We’ve been gradually bagging Britain’s county tops, the highest point in each historic county. There are three of these in the Lake District: Scafell Pike, the highest peak in the old county of Cumberland; Helvellyn, the highest in Westmorland; and the Old Man of Coniston, the highest in the old county of Lancashire.
The last of these was the only one that Edita hadn’t done. I had climbed it previously on 29 April 2011 (I remember the date because there was nothing else memorable happening that day). On that sweltering day, I whizzed up the main tourist route like Max Verstappen, overtaking everyone in my path, before completing a circuit of its two connecting peaks, Swirl How and Wetherlam. I remember it as a nice ridge walk.
I booked a cottage in Coniston, a place where almost everything has the word bluebird in its title. Coniston Brewery makes a Bluebird Bitter that is served at the Black Bull Inn. There is a Bluebird Café on the shores of Coniston Water, a Bluebird Lodge B&B, and a Bluebird Car and Coach Park. The password for the Wi-Fi in one of the pubs (I can’t tell you which one) is even ‘bluebird’. This is not a tribute to Vera Lynn, but to Donald Campbell who broke the world water speed record four times on Coniston Water. He eventually died there when his boat Bluebird took a nosedive into the lake after taking to the air at nearly 300mph. Sadly for Bluebird, 300mph wasn’t a record for flying.
All these references to water should have set alarm bells ringing.
‘It’s still quite green and lush here,’ Edita remarked as we took the road from Windermere.
Of course it was. This was the Lake District, home to the wettest place in England (Seathwaite, which is nowhere near the coast but is so-named because it’s actually wetter than the sea). If there was anywhere in Britain that was destined to miss the summer heatwave then we’d chosen it.
A glance at the weather forecast for Coniston confirmed my worst suspicions. We had two possible days for our hill walk. On Friday it was forecast to piss down and on Saturday it was – you guessed it — forecast to piss down.
When out hill walking in Britain, it’s useful to check the Met Office Mountain Forecast which also provides wind speed and visibility forecasts for the summits. The first of these showed a pretty horrendous 35 to 40mph. In winter this would be frostbite territory, but in a summer heatwave I decided we could chance it with good windproof jackets and trousers.
The visibility forecast offered a glimmer of hope, however. In between a constant line of VPs (Very Poor) there was a short row of Gs (Good) and VGs (Very Good) between 10am and 2pm before the heavy rains came. I realised that if we set off at 8am from Coniston, we could be reaching the summit close to 10am and enjoy that window of clearer skies as we traversed the ridge line.
I decided to reverse my previous route by climbing Wetherlam first and following the ridge over Swirl How to the Old Man. On the north-east side of Wetherlam I spotted a feature on the map called Wetherlam Edge. This suggested an airy scramble along a knife-blade of rock to spice things up a bit. I programmed this route into the OS app and decided that we had time for it.
By breakfast the forecast had worsened. There was now an unbroken line of VPs from dawn to dusk, but we were committed. We just had to put our waterproof clothing on, keep our chins up and go for it.
We left at 8am and were pleased to discover a hidden pub, the Sun Inn, on the hillside above our cottage on Station Road. The pub may have been tauntingly named for a day like today but it would offer a safe haven if we were caught in the rain on the way down.
We climbed through woodland beside the crashing waters of Church Beck, the river which runs through Coniston, with a name that belies its violent nature.
Above the woodland we emerged into the historic Coppermines Valley, a place scarred with quarries, slag heaps and abandoned machinery from the mining that took place there over the course of 500 years. Hikers are advised to keep a good distance from any holes in the ground; many of them disappear into the bowels of the earth and there could be dragons down there.
At this stage the weather wasn’t too bad. The rain had not yet arrived and the visibility was pretty good. But up on the mountaintops it was a different story. Thick curtains of cloud were draped across the ridge, all the way from the Old Man of Coniston across the valley, to Wetherlam where we were heading. It was obvious why the forecast had changed to VP. Had the cloud line been a hundred metres higher, it would have hovered above the mountaintops. leaving good visibility. But now the hillside rose into a thick gloop. A visibility rating of VP seemed generous; it looked more like FP up there to me.
We crossed a pass into the delightfully named Yewdale and had an enjoyable hour passing through a quiet corner of Cumbria wedged between Coniston and the busier Langdale peaks ahead of us. Our path crossed bogland and curved around to join the base of Wetherlam Edge.
The name that had drawn my attention on the map turned out to be exaggerated. The word ‘edge’ suggests a degree of exposure, but Wetherlam Edge is about as exposed as a nun wrapped in sheepskin. It reminded me of the time that I took Edita along Striding Edge on Helvellyn. We were about halfway along its metre-wide crest when Edita muttered behind me ‘when do we get to the edge?’
In Wetherlam Edge’s defence there was a modicum of scrambling, including a couple of moments when I had to take my hands out of my pockets.
We had enjoyed Yewdale and its feeling of remoteness. We had also been sheltered from the wind for over an hour. About 50m short of Wetherlam’s summit, we entered the cloud. At the summit, the wind hit us hard and the summer vanished like a distant memory.
For the next two hours we worked our way around to the Old Man of Coniston in a thick grey soup of cloud. Only once, at the col of Swirl Hause, did we dip below the cloud to be reminded that we were walking through an attractive mountain landscape. We bypassed the summit of Black Sails because there didn’t seem any point. This summit is aptly named because if you unzip your coat at the top you’re liable to be blown across the Atlantic like a crewless yacht. Above Swirl Hause we ascended a feature known as the Prison Band, so named because a thick mist presses around you like a set of heavy chains.
As for the summit of Swirl How, what more needs to be said? Swirl How, Swirl Ho, Swirl Hey Nonny No. Crawling around the north side of its giant cairn we did manage to find enough shelter from the wind to sit down and have a sandwich, but it was the last time we felt like stopping until we reached the Sun Inn.
Beyond Swirl How we had a 3km walk along the ridge to the Old Man of Coniston. It occurred to me that we would be heading south, directly into the wind. You can normally find your way along a ridge simply by keeping to its top, but this one contained a few twists and turns; the mist remained thick and I felt the need to stop every few minutes to check my app and confirm that we were still on the right track.
Despite this abundance of caution, I contrived to make a navigational error. South of Levers Hause I noticed a path skirting beneath the ridge that I imagined might provide a degree of shelter. Perversely, however, the western side of the ridge somehow managed to be even windier than the crest. For the next ten minutes we leaned forward and fought our way into the blast. I felt like I was pushing one of those luggage trolleys that I always seem to select at airports, with wonky wheels that send you in the opposite direction to the one that you need to go.
When I next looked at my app I discovered that we were descending a path into the capriciously named Goat’s Hawse. It had been my intention to divert this way after we’d climbed the Old Man, and traverse the summits of Dow Crag, Buck Pike and Brown Pike. As I stooped to the west and clung to my hat, any fool could have told me this plan was madness. Luckily, only one of us was a fool. The wise one now spoke up.
‘Let’s climb the Old Man of Coniston then go to the pub,’ Edita said.
‘Good idea. I’m up for that.’
We climbed directly up grassy slopes to the flat top of Brim Fell. It was a lot less windy back on the ridge. This was because the weather on most mountains is governed by Sod’s Law, which states that if you make a cock-up then the conditions will suddenly worsen, even when there’s no logic to it.
We reached the 803m summit of the Old Man of Coniston at 12.15. We had seen no one since leaving our cottage that morning, but many students and teenagers were sheltering behind the Old Man’s summit cairn. We passed many more as we descended into the Coppermines Valley. Almost everyone we passed seemed to be half our age or younger. They say that age brings wisdom; it’s not true in my case.
The rain started as we passed through the quarries and slag heaps beneath Low Water. We descended past slopes of bracken in the lower reaches of the valley. I was still pondering my own stupidity when we regained the path alongside Church Beck. Back at a footbridge we had crossed earlier in the day, I happened to glance to my left and see something that reminded me that I’m actually quite a sensible chap. Just beneath the bridge, a group of people with helmets were groping their way through the water, clinging to a rope between the rocky sides of a ravine.
‘What are they doing?’ Edita said.
‘They appear to be abseiling down a waterfall,’ I said with a glow of pride.
But the last laugh was on the rain gods of Wetherlam, Atrocious Wetherlam, or Waterlam as it should now be known. By the time we reached the Sun Inn we were almost as wet as those idiots paddling about in the gorge. I was shivering as we sat in armchairs beside the bar, sipping our pints of cold beer.
It rained until midnight, and then some more. I will have to take Edita back to the Old Man one day, preferably not during a summer heatwave.
