Day 3: Rosthwaite to Grasmere

Weather: Stunning to start, clouding over later

Distance covered today: 14.5 km (9.0 mi)

Last night's B&B: Royal Oak Hotel

% Complete: Cumulative distance: 21.2%  64.3km Total Ascent/ Total Descent 635m/ 652m

GPS satellite track of today's route: Day 3 (click!)

The walk out of Borrowdale is one for the connoisseur.  The exquisite contrast between lush green fields in the valley and the stark brown mountains on all sides is breath-taking.  Wainwright argues that “the Lake District is the loveliest part of England and Borrowdale is the fairest of its valleys”.  The buildings of Rosthwaite are more or less unchanged since he roamed these parts, and even then they had been around for a very long time. I have always argued that the architecture of rural England uniquely compliments the environment.  Strict planning laws reinforce the status quo, despite the economic opportunities that these preclude. Anyone walking along the beautiful Stonethwaite Beck on an ancient track flanked by dry-stone walls will fervently hope that these laws prevail.

Not, of course, that the Lake District is in any way a normal environment.  I learned recently in a fascinating book about a shepherd in the Lake District that only 43,000 people actually live here. They minister to the needs of 16,000,000 visitors every year, a ratio perhaps more usually associated with a major theme park.  These visitors spend £1 billion a year in the local economy.  The vast majority of them and especially those actually spending serious money, visit in the few short months when the deluge abates (or, at least I fervently hope, it abates).  Apart from tourism, almost all the remaining economic activity is agriculture, essentially sheep and cattle farming.  The travails of the livestock industry in the UK are very well known, especially in environments like the Lake District where the opportunities for innovation and intensive farming are almost non-existent. Yet the cattle and especially the sheep are entirely responsible for the way that the fells appear. As in almost all of the rest of England, nothing in the natural environment is as it was before man changed it, first through tree felling, then agriculture and finally the industrial revolution. So the least rewarded guardians of the very essence of what the visitors seek are facing long-term ruin. Someone better do something about it…..

Which brings me back to the Royal Oak in Rosthwaite.  I left you last post with a reluctant climb-down from the steely face-off between myself and the staff and residents of the Royal Oak. By the time I had written the post in the TV room, while watching the election exit polls with a couple of residents who admitted impishly that they were breaking the rules of etiquette for even showing interest in politics, I was beginning visibly to soften. At breakfast, I was amazed to observe myself exhibiting the very best of St Aidan’s manners (my Jesuit school), and the staff and guests seemed also to have warmed to me.  On the white table cloth, the butter was a work of art, the marmalade served in a silver bowl (none of those annoying plastic containers and oily foils), and the Earl Grey served with tea-leaves and a strainer. The English breakfast was perfect. Most of the tables were now talking to me, the only exception being the thirty-something, who in the morning light appeared to be more of a forty-something, ostentatiously ignoring me!  By the time I left the Royal Oak, going the wrong way of course, I had decided I would like to take Veronica there. What a transformation!

Digressing back to last night is a psychological expedient for avoiding the present.  I finally face the decision of the journey. In principle, I was intending tomorrow to climb the third highest peak in Britain, Helvellyn, and from there, by way of a precipitous scree decline, proceed to traverse Striding Edge. My good friend Bob informs me that his Grasmere B&B host, a mountain rescue man, had recovered a body of a man who had slipped off Striding Edge and rolled three kilometres to a stop! Helvellyn is 950m high, compared with Dent Hill, 352m!  Climbing almost three times that height when I am already very tired seems a big ask! Even if I made it, I suspect I would be very wobbly on the Edge. The final arbiter is the weather. I promised Veronica I wouldn’t even attempt it if the weather wasn’t perfect. A cold front is closing in bringing rain and wind and my host here tells me that I would be in danger and anyway see nothing in the cloud and mist. He also claims that the alternative route which also demands a prodigious climb (sigh!) is very nearly as attractive.

I’ll take the low road….   The wisdom of old age or pragmatic cowardice?

The Royal Oak Hotel

Sheep in Borrowdale

The path towards Greenup Edge pass

Sheets of water

Getting ever more energetic as the slope rises

Beautiful Borrowdale from on high

Water everywhere

Eagle Crag

Africa or England?

The work of glaciers

Snow on Scafell Pike

A tiny tarn on the top

Outer space!

Over the pass of Greenup Edge, looking down to the Grasmere Valley

Startling formations on the way down to Grasmere

Grasmere architecture

The Elevation Profile