Nailed It! – Scafell Range

. I nailed it today and felt fit as a young person might feel. I’m 66 you know! Sixty six – clickety click. Oh those heady days of bingo on North Sea Ferries.

You might have gathered that I had a good day.

Breakfast at the Inn was great…..Yeeeeessss!!!!!! Give me clogged arteries any day of the week. And the day was cool but beautifully dry.

Apparently St Olaf, the patron saint of Norway, came over to these parts over 1,000 years ago to help build defences against the Saxons for the local Viking community. This is St Olaf’s church, rebuilt 1550 but there’s been a church on the site since 950AD.

I decided today to head up Wasdale, over the top, and cut back towards Scafell Pike (highest peak in England), scrambling up Ill Crag and Broad Crag (4th and 5th highest peaks) on the way. And the scenery was like this.

The lower path wandered up the valley, but I took a higher route so that I was higher up when I began to feel tired. A good strategy from a wily old fox.

Looking back was lovely, seeing Wast Water in the early morning.

I made really good time, without a rucksack, and the Inn soon shrank.

It was a long slog up to the top of the valley, and beyond it was another world of higher moorland and mountain peaks. Really lovely stuff. And looking back the way I’d climbed was great.

Then I turned round and looked to my right as I was climbing.

How good is this? Windy up here, cold and essential that I got my scarf, gloves and woolly hat on. But nowt else. Schooldays.

Eventually I reached the top of the pass where the land dropped down towards Morecambe Bay in the far distance, but I turned right, up another mountain side, before the drop. Half a mile of steep climb took me to Ill Crag, the 4th highest peak in England. The view from the top was great, all the way down to the sea.

I scrambled over and up the northern side of the Scafell range to the peak of Broad Crag, the 5th highest peak in England, with lovely views again.

Then the last long push across the range to drop down a few hundred feet before a steep climb to the exposed summit of Scafell Pike, the highest mountain in England. It was windy and cold and there were a lot of day walkers. It brassed me off that other folk were there. I’d come up the long and arduous back route. These folk had climbed the less difficult front route. Maybe I should relax more. But the real summit was rough.

Three of the highest five in England. I’ll settle for that today. I set off down but there were so many folk climbing up the main route that I pushed off it, round towards the valley I had walked up. It was a rough route but eventually I met up with The Corridor, a half decent path, with great views of my route up.

Eventually I was back at the Inn. Great day, three out of the top 5. Great day. 

Night night.