Lakeland Sub-Aqua – Adrian (Nov 1997)

Being chauffeured by Bill isn’t at all bad once you’ve got the hang of these cunning Fords that if left to their own devices steer to the left.

The TrafficMaster warned in what was thought by the inexperienced to be Japanese of a twenty minutes delay on the M25 which amazingly increased to fifty in the time it took to reach the next bridge over the motorway. Sneaking off through Slough and then back to the M40 found us doing three circuits of the round-about above Junction 2 before we could decipher the coded messages from the gizmo and decide to take the plunge and join the queues on the motorway.

An otherwise pretty uneventful journey saw us in the lakes six hours from Surbiton having narrowly avoided a low flying owl on the shore of Ullswater.

This was the first time in ages that I’ve travelled late night to a hut. Arriving at one in the morning I’d forgotten how pleasurable it was to accidentally wake people up in the wee small hours.

Time for action came round all too soon and from the odours of firmly crisping bacon that were wafting up the stairs Mike seemed to have the cooking underway, I decided that another five minutes of shut eye was therefore required before descending for breakfast.

The smell changed to something a little overdone so I thought I’d better haul my arse out of my pit and investigate the remains (rake over the ashes?). But, surprise. Apart from a new item on the menu Oeufs Brouilles Croquant, (Crispy Scrambled Egg to the culinary challenged) the fry up went down very well.

Apparently Friday had been pretty wet in the Lakes and this morning didn’t look like providing those most sought after features to encourage a stroll over the hills. With low wet cloud hovering around lake level two teams were arrived at, one went off to conquer things to the north of Helvellyn and ended up taking in the big one for the hell of it; whilst my team took a drive up to the top of the Kirkstone Pass with the idea of taking in Red Screes, Dove Crag, Fairfield and St.Sunday Crag.

Conditions at the car park were rank but at least the scramble up to Red Screes kept our minds on other things. Part way up the ‘interesting’ section our new member Peter Park (the first from my rummage through the old RFTP clients) reminded me that he much preferred grass under his boots, still nothing ventured, nothing fallen off. Anyway we all reached safe ground without too many probs.

I began feeling my knees (or was that age) on the way up and was glad when the ground levelled off on top of Red Screes. The drop down to Scandale Pass involved a reverse slope aspect compass bearing, which I’m not sure, can be done on a GPS.

The flog up Dove Crag seemed to me to involve at least one false summit and with knees failing rapidly and weather conditions pretty unpleasant I suggested to the Sue, Carol, Peter and Chris that I was all for heading down the next available valley and plod back down the road.

I got the impression that it was one of those days when you hoped to save face by someone else being the first to suggest the cop-out. Well, the suspense was too much for me, I put out an open invitation “Before descending into Dovedale and walking out to the Brotherswater Inn, if anyone wants to join me - there’s a cave on the face of Dove Crag which would make an ideal lunch shelter”. Strangely enough - they were right behind me.

Unfortunately we couldn’t find the cave in the cloud and had lunch in a roofless ruin of a farm some way below the hilltop. A little work and a chair lift and we’d have a great club hut.

The walk down Dovedale is supposed to be one of the more picturesque in the area, most of it passed me by as I was concentrating on the smell of beer emanating from the Brotherswater Inn.

It took a fair bit of reaching and whilst Peter and I ordered up at the bar Carol dashed off to the phone to find out if her lottery ticket had down the necessary. She reappeared with a half of cider, so we presumed no luck.

Now, having reached the pub we were faced with a dilemma, the walk back to the hut was about 5 kilometres on the flat and Chris’ car was 4kilometres and 300 metres of ascent the other way.

Strangely, volunteering to leg it up to the car Chris and Sue it was thought must have either joined the Quakers or just hadn’t walked far enough today.

When they eventually arrived back at the pub we were subjected too much grumbling about a knackering pace and it being further than was thought! We were three or was it four too the worse by then and just nodded (off) appreciatively.

(I’m now finishing off this article some thirteen weeks later, so the rest of the Meet is a bit vague).

From what I remember (or was it the beer?) the White Lion PH in Patterdale was heaving but we all managed to get seated in one end of the bar. Mixed views on the grub but the Pedigree went down a treat.

Waking up Sunday to find my knees still felt shagged and the weather not looking too clever a cunning excuse to avoid any walking was produced by my sister.

The “Excuse” goes like this: -

Back in the Second World War (Chris A probably remembers it) our Uncle had had the misfortune to be on HMS Glorious an aircraft carrier which went chasing up to Narvic in Norway, it was thought to evacuate people and possibly to act as a decoy for another ship carrying the Norwegian royal family.

Anyway, it was apparently unaccompanied by other boats and none of its aircraft were flying when it got U-Boated. End of everybody on board and curiously, this is one of very few incidents of the war where the records have not been released to the public.

The Captain of the Glorious came from Martindale over on the east side of Ullswater. The village church had a number of themed stained glass windows one of which commemorated the Glorious. Well, (my) mother dear wanted a picture of said church and window and so came about a pretty good excuse (if ever one was needed) for not going for a walk.

With happy snaps safely in the Box-Brownie we lunched in Pooley Bridge, watched the rain teem down and thought of those brave souls from the club flogging over some Lakeland fell.

Not a bad weekend. Very good hut.