Return to
Whittle Wander's page
Return to
Whittle Wander's page
|
Watson's Dodd, Legburthwaite, Cumbria. Wed 05 Jan 2005 |
|
Yet another bad weather forecast threatened. Undaunted I set off with Eric up the motorway to arrive at a gloomy Legburthwaite, nr Thirlmere, at 8am. It was still dark and thick cloud zoomed over our heads in the strong winds. |
|
|
|
We set off north along the B5322 as far as the area known as Sawmill and took the path steeply up towards Castle Rock. The route is easy to find and when the foot of the cliff is reached a well-made path continues up to the right and then stone steps ease the climb to the top of Castle Rock. It is
a magnificent place and gives a fine view of the Vale of St John and NW towards Skiddaw. It's not surprising that Sir Walter Scott saw fit to refer to it in his poem 'The Vale of St John'. A. Wainwright's guide to the Eastern Fells quotes from the poem. |
|
"….midmost of the vale, a mound arose, with airy turrets crown'd… |
| It was still very gloomy when we arrived and I needed to use my tripod to take the only picture of the day. The exposure was 1/2s ! We continued up the west ridge of Watson's Dodd, which is a fine way up the mountain, but as we climbed the full force of the westerly wind hit us. At first it wasn't too bad and we found shelter about half way up to have our first coffee of the day. But as the summit appeared the wind hit us with it's full blast and the rain increased to add to the experience. It was obvious that a long walk over the exposed summits was out of the question in the screaming wind. I'd planned a possible escape route at Sticks Pass and we decided to go for that. But heading SE towards Stybarrow Dodd it became more difficult to make progress in the wind. So we descended to the east a short way to try and find some shelter and skirted the eastern side of the fell to drop down to Sticks Pass on the Glenridding side. At first Eric though I'd lost my way but I explained my reasons. To the west there was no shelter. But dropping down a short way to the east we found some respite in a shallow ditch. Here we stopped for an early lunch. It took a while to get my fingers thawed, even with gloves the high winds and 2deg C temperature had removed most of the feeling. Being wet didn't help either. We set off to the summit of Sticks Pass and received the full force of the wind, driven rain and hail, straight in the face. As we reached the steeper part of the descent lower down the wind force dropped a little but the trail was awash with water making the going treacherous. We reached the car at Legburthwaite just after 12 noon and did our best to change into dry clothes without getting the car's interior soaking wet. As the Army say "any time spent in reconnaissance is never wasted" |
