Skiddaw

After a mud-fest at Keswick C&CC Site last night, we took a quick jaunt up Skiddaw this morning. The first time I’ve been up there in about 25 years.

I like to set off up to popular summits as early as possible. A number of reasons: mainly the fact that you don’t have to share the path up with a thousand other people and don’t have to take a photo of the summit with nineteen other people in the shot; also, if you want to drive to a local car park, it’s a darn sight easier to park early than it is mid-morning.

The down side of reaching a summit by mid-to-late morning is that the cloud hasn’t had the opportunity to burn off.

So, once again, we stood on a summit with pretty poor visibility. This time we also had a little bit of an arctic ‘breeze’ with which to contend. I managed to stay on my feet, but only just.

By the time we got back down to the car park, the last wisp of cloud left the summit, so that long line of people we passed on our way down will have experienced spectacular views.

Hey ho. We still got the solitude … and the views from below the cloud level were pretty good anyway.

Getting back to Keswick by early afternoon, there was then a gear-fest to be had. But that’s another story.