Walks I grew up with

Yorkshire

As Yorkshire is the county where I was born and lived until 1971 it was fairly obvious that this would be the first area to be explored once the family obtained its first car and we became aware that there was an alternative to having to go to the coast for recreation.

Yorkshire is the largest county by area in England. It contains a very wide diversity of landscapes. Elsewhere on this site it explains how once I realised that there were vast areas of seemingly empty countryside in the county’s hillier areas to explore, that’s all I wanted to do.

I remember the two very first walks that I did with my father back in 1964. We had no idea what would be involved and we had almost no appropriate clothing at that time. It was to be the start of a long learning experience, one that only a sustained commitment to being in remote areas in all weathers can give you.

The first walk was to a popular spot close to the city of Leeds. So for a very first encounter with the Great Outdoors at least it would be safe, if anything ‘went wrong’. At the end of the day I really enjoyed this very first ‘proper’ walk. So the following weekend we went somewhere a bit more adventurous….

Ingleborough in the Yorkshire Dales. A shortish walk but a reasonable height, by English standards, at 2373 ft above sea level. But for an 11 year old at the time, it may as well have been Mt Everest. After the descent my father took me to see the other natural wonders of the area:- White Scar limestone caves.

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For the budding geologists out there, this region has a vast flat area of Carboniferous limestone known as ‘pavements’ all at an altitude of 1100-1400 ft above sea level. On top of that rest hundreds of feet of shales and sandstones that form the highest mountains/hills that adorn the landscape. Ingleborough along with two other hills Penyghent and Whernside form what is known as ‘The Yorkshire Three Peaks’. In the early days we would ascend them individually. But for a number of years the combined ascent of all three has given rise to a very popular challenge walk which is 25 miles long and involves 5200 ft of vertical ascent. The idea is to do it in less than 12 hours …..and yes I’ve done it at least half a dozen times. It’s a great day out though and a real workout.

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The open spaces of Yorkshire were also a great attraction for the medieval monks and the county hosts many ruined monasteries/abbeys. The one below is Bolton Abbey founded by Augustinian monks in 1156. The tranquility of these areas is a perfect match for the contemplative atmosphere that such ecclesiastical orders were seeking to attain. On a more pragmatical note the monks became quite wealthy and self sustaining as they realised that the hills and the land surrounding their abbeys were ideal for the grazing of sheep. They helped to create many of the overland tracks and paths that still exist today, in order that they could ‘drive’ the sheep to the nearest market towns. After the ‘Dissolution of the Abbeys’ by Henry VIII in 1538 monastic life, as it had been, came to an end. But of course the buidings, the tracks and the hills still remain and provide much scope for walking and other outdoor reaction – the following images hopefully convey something of what the area is like. It was all within a couple of hours drive of where we used to live.

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The Lake District

This area has the highest mountains in England and because it rains so much of course many many lakes. But as it was a bit further away from where we lived it was always a weekend visit where we would have to camp out for a couple of nights. Quite exciting though when you’re still only 12.

I remember it all very very fondly even today. In the days when summer did seem to be summer and winter was always winter. I was lucky to have been granted the opportunity to see these sorts of areas and to develop and grow in it, to appreciate the simple act of just wandering around in this sort of environment. Of course back at home I’d be coping with school and other powerful influences that being a teenager at that time brought to bear in my life. But having this kind of thing to fall back upon every other week was a great tonic for everyday life. Oddly enough I vividly remember May 1966 early summer Bank holiday camped by Lake Ullswater on a beautiful sunny weekend and it was the time of (would you believe) Frank Sinatra!!!! doing ‘Strangers In The Night’ which was being given plenty of air-play on those amazing transistor radios of the time.

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In the summertime the area provides a huge variety of walks ranging from very easy strolls by the various lake shores to strenuous ascents of the rugged central section that contains Scafell Pike, England’s highest mountain at 3210 ft above sea level all the underlying rocks being volcanic in origin. My father took me up Scafell Pike in 1965. I remember it vividly even now as I write this. He was never one for studying the map of anywhere that we went. Rather he would just head off in as direct a line as possible for the target ahead, regardless of what was in the way and I was never allowed to rest for any more than a few minutes at a time otherwise he said I’d stiffen up too much. So that day in addition to Scafell Pike we both went over the intervening peak of Bowfell twice….first time on the outward route and again on the way back. At 2960 ft above sea level Bowfell itself is a worthy daytime objective in its own right, but to do it twice on the same day as Scafell Pike was quite a challenge to say the least for this 12 year old. In the winter the area is transformed. Any ascent of the mountains becomes a much more serious undertaking, something not to be underestimated. It’s where I first experienced winter mountaineering. The good thing is that the region is quite compact and most of the time you could descend fairly quickly to safety if you got into serious trouble.

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My favourite ‘town’ has to be Keswick. The open fire in the George Hotel is to die for at the end of a winter’s day on any of the surrounding mountain groups.

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Nowadays the region has become the victim of its own success. Over the years improvement of the fast road networks from the South has opened it up to hundreds of thousands of visitors every year. As a consequence of its compact size it becomes phenomenally congested much of the time. Which is great for the local economy but the feeling of peace and quiet that people visited it for, in the past, is much harder to obtain because of it.

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Scotland

Scotland is a wonderful country, full of national character and a landscape to be truly truly proud of, especially that part of the country known as the Scottish Highlands, that is north of the Edinburgh-Glasgow line. It is a land of vast open spaces with freedom to roam. This picture of the red deer above and the one that graces the home page of this website symbolises for me this very notion. Geographically, the Scottish Highlands are at the North Western extremity of the European continent. They look out onto over 3000 miles of Atlantic Ocean whose winds and rain have smashed unimpeded into the land for thousands of years. This has etched its mark on the landscape, which is one of highly eroded mountain ranges straddling a multitude of lochs, lochans and countless smaller bodies of water all set in a bleak, barren, treeless trackless but utterly magnificent wilderness. If ever you wanted to be at one with nature then this is the place.

Fort William is one of the main ‘tourist’ towns in The Highlands. In fact it is one of the very few towns in The Highlands. One reason for its popularity is that it is at the foot of Britain’s highest mountain, Ben Nevis (4406 ft). Fort William is about 380 miles from where I used to live so it was well out of reach for a day trip or even a long weekend. Instead we would spend one or two weeks up there every time we went….which was very often in those days, i.e. in the years 1977 up until 1988.

Fort William

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The Scottish mountains are the highest in Britain. The area covered by the mountains is much more extensive than anywhere else in the UK. The approach marches out to them is usually much longer and as a consequence so is the return walk back to wherever you left your transport. So these walks tend to be much more demanding of physical effort than those in England, combined with the fact that the weather tends to be definitely windier and wetter and highly changeable even within the same day. In the winter the conditions in the mountains become what is known as ‘sub-arctic’ and unless you know what you are doing it’s best not to go into them.

Ben Nevis

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The Scottish Highland area is split into two physically distinct areas by what is known as the Great Glen which runs from Fort William north eastwards towards Inverness. See the map below. The Great Glen is a geological fault line. The rocks on the north westward side of that fault line are much older than those on the other side, just a few miles away. The change in appearance of the landscape is quite obvious as you drive from one region into the other.

The Western Highlands

The region within the area bounded by the four red markers.

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The far North West

Further north is a region of very ancient geology, the far North West Highlands, that has much in common with that of the Scandinavian tectonic plate as well as that of Canada’s Labrador/Hudson Bay area. This is evident in the appearance of the landscapes, one of almost bare windswept rock. The most ancient rocks in Europe are to be found here.

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Winter Survival 1978

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On a couple of occasions I went up to Scotland ‘solo’. The first time (1978) was to participate in a ‘Winter Survival’ course in what used to be the totally icebound Central Highlands. But even then climate change was beginning to be felt. The snow line that always used to be well below 1000ft in January had been closer to 2000ft above sea level for several years. So an extra task we had to learn was how to safely cross rivers in full spate due to the higher than normal quantities of snow melt water. But despite that it was good fun. In June the following year I went back up there to walk alone across the Highlands to the Isle of Skye through some pretty remote areas. From the Monday afternoon of that week until midday Thursday I saw absolutely no one. It’s the longest time in my life that I’ve been so totally and utterly alone. Just the mountains, the water and myself.

During the 1980s I went to Scotland quite a number of times with my three work colleagues Rick, John and Warren, sometimes in the summer, sometimes in the winter. As time passed by and our ambitions and aspirations as mountaineers began to expand we found the winters in Scotland incredibly useful as we had already decided to make a transition to the European Alps. We had to learn snow/ice techniques in order to be able to make a start in the Alps. Equally important was how to handle a climbing rope and gaining familiarity with the many many knots that have been devised some of which are designed to save your life if anything had to go wrong. As part of this overall period of training for the Alps we were particularly lucky one day to find Ben Lui (below) in superb wintry condition one fantastically sunny day. After a short while in the softer snow we came to the icier layers. So this was our first ever use of crampons (if you don’t know what these are see picture below). A weird experience. It was quite exhilarating after a while, once you learned to keep your feet apart. But it was a bit scary at the same time as higher up the whole thing becomes hard packed ice…all very shiny and very slippery. I just couldn’t help thinking that if the good Lord had meant us to be here right now he’d have given us spiked feet. One false move, one slip in that environment could have undesirable consequences, let’s say.

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