Back to the Peaks

At this time of year the alarm which wakes you for sunrise doesn't have to be early. Of course your chances of actually seeing the sunrise are somewhat diminished by the temperamental British weather, but that makes the nice ones all the more special. 

I had taken a day off work and decided that the best way to use my 'adventure day', perhaps ironically, was to go back to my old office; back to the Peak District National Park. I hadn't had a day to myself in the wild for a while and I wanted to make the most of it. To me 'making the most of it' means either out early or out late and with two children waiting for Daddy to come home the preference is always the former. So I set my alarm early enough that I could drive to Edale (which really is where my old office is) and hike up onto Kinder Scout in time to watch the sun rise. 

My plan more or less worked. I was a good way up the southern slopes of Kinder with a few minutes to spare until sunrise when I stopped at a vantage point below Ringing Roger. Overlooking Edale and the Great Ridge it was an ideal spot to watch the sun rise at the mouth of the valley, behind Lose Hill. It was great to be out in the fresh air, watching the world waking up for a short winter day - that never gets old. But my view of the sunrise itself was mediocre, there was just a bit too much cloud. As technically I shouldn't have been able to see it at all I didn't feel to complain too much - the weather forecast had been for thick fog. And anyway, this was just the start of my day.

I often forget how narrow the top of Kinder Scout is at this western point; only a few hundred meters from southern edge to northern lip. Having quickly crossed it, hoping across boggy patches and mini streams, passing the trig point on my way. Reaching the edge I turned west along the northern ridge to reach the head of a stream, Blackden Brook, which would lead my back down again.

A friend had previously remarked about how scenic Blackden Clough was, with its steeply falling stream and many waterfalls and cascades. Ever since that conversation I had been looking for an opportunity to see it for myself. This was my chance and it didn't disappoint, but like many beautiful spots you have to earn the sight. The descent along the stream required hands as well as feet particularly with the rocks slick from over-night rain. 

The tumbling water was clear and strong, the normal peaty darkness of the streams diluted by the freshly fallen. I followed it right down to the valley floor, to the Ashop River. I'd had a relatively crazy plan to make it all the way up to Alport Castles which I quickly realised wasn't going to happen that day - it was an extra 10 km or so, and I while I had been making a reasonable pace, stopping to take photo's and timelapses doesn't cover miles, and I wanted to get back at a reasonable hour to see the family. The long walk would have to wait for another time. 


I turned west and followed the river upstream, until I couldn't without getting wet! The valley slopes transitioned from steep to vertical and I backtracked to get up onto a passable grade. At another time of year, and with some company as a safety back up I'd have happily continued in the river itself, but not in December, flying solo and after a decent rainfall. After a few gentle kilometers, numerous dead sheep and dozens more mini-falls and cascades dropping off the steeply rising land to my left I crossed Fairbrook and started heading back up again. 

The weather up to this point had been changeable, the fog rolling in and out sporadically. As I started up the clough I could see Fairbrook Naze, and then I couldn't - the low cloud obscuring it from view, before breaking and flooding the hillside with sunlight. By the time I reached the top the fog was pretty well set it and remained for the rest of my time up on Kinder that afternoon. 


I crossed the plateau from the top of Fairbrook clough across to Kinder Downfall, a route I had taken before, but I was glad of the reassurance that the Ordnance Survey app on my phone gave me that I heading in the right direction as at times I couldn't see more than about 30 or 40 yards in any direction. I could barely see the downfall when I got there, having followed the Kinder river along its shallow gravelly course for a few hundred yards. The contrast between peat soils and sandy, gravel river bed has always stuck out to me - the Kinder plateau is a funny old place. If you haven't ever visited, I highly recommend it. 


The rest of the trip was really just a return to home. I followed the Pennine way south from the downfall along the edge of the plateau, veering off to pick up the second trig-point of the day and cut off the south-western corner before picking up the path along the southern edge and following past the Woolpacks and Crowden Tower to the head of Grindsbrook Clough. The path down Grindsbrook is a decent and a half, it's one that I have done many times and don't think I'll ever really get tired of it. 

Looking back up at Kinder along the flagstone path which leads you back to Edale and civilization I knew I had used my day off well. 

Richard  

Wild Moments: The precious privilege of cultivating the spirit of adventure in a young heart.

** Another 'Wild Moment' considering something close to my heart - family, children and introducing them to the natural world and adventure **

Life is busy, isn't it? I'm sure it's not just mine. Commitments pile up, calendars fill and free time dwindles at an ever increasing pace. I often talk of needing to 'make' time and it sometimes does feel like a significant project to engineer opportunities for time out of doors, or for 'an adventure'. Adding children to that mix doesn't make it easier (or cheaper) - 'bed time' is suddenly 4 or 5 hours earlier; a 'good nights sleep' becomes an exception rather than an expectation; a 'walk' with a toddler can be considered long if you leave the car park rather than the county!

BUT - and it is a big one - as a parent you have an opportunity to plant the spirit of adventure in a fresh heart, and to see the excited twinkle of exploration in new eyes. I have always loved the outdoors, I still do, and I am fairly confident that I always will. I still enjoy spending that time in the natural world alone and at my own pace (which I like to think is reasonably quick... unless I'm taking photos). But there are very few things I enjoy more than witnessing the excitement in the eyes of our children when they are presented with the opportunity to do something new, something adventurous! Adventurous to them is at a different place on the spectrum than it is for me, of course it is. After all every one starts somewhere - Sir Edmund Hilary didn't start with Everest, nor was Amelia Earhart's first flight an around the world venture. *Add your favourite example of an intrepid adventurer here*. 

As parents we have tried (there is still a lot we could do better) to cultivate that adventurous spirit in our children because we hope that if we start them young that it will sink deep and they will seek 'adventure' for the rest of their lives. Yes, there are times when this meets with resistance: 'it's too cold', 'it's too wet', 'it's too windy', 'it's too sandy'. But that resistance will weaken over time. Our daughter once spent a whole warm, summer day on the beach sat in a folding chair with her feet on a towel because she refused point blank to get sand on her feet! The following year we visited a Scottish beach in April (it was much colder!) and she loved it! She played in it, rolled down sand dunes, dug holes and jumped in them - when we got back to where we were staying there was sand everywhere. Stick with it and the resistance will fade.

I was 24 when our daughter was born - that is pretty young these days to have a first child and I often have conversations where the reaction to learning this (sometimes spoken and sometimes inferred) is that my opportunities for fun therefore ended at 24. But I see it entirely differently. The way I see it is that when she becomes a teenager I'll still only be 37 (and 40 when our little boy becomes a teenager). Hopefully I will still be fit enough at that relatively young age that I will still be able to keep up with them when they take that spirit of adventure which we have instilled in them and want to do something really interesting!


So yes we may have sacrificed some of our perceived freedom as young adults to have a family early. But to me, rather than missing opportunities for fun and adventure, we have created the opportunity further down the road to share our fun and adventure with the people who matter most to us - our children.

 

Snowdon - at last.

Oh no! The alarm hadn't gone off - I'd overslept!

Except I hadn't. I'd just dreamt that I had. This recurring (and very irritating) dream plagues my sleep whenever I have something exciting or important to look forward to the next day. And I certainly had something to look forward to. Even the thought of a 3:30am wake up and a long drive were not enough to dampen my spirits.

I dragged myself out of bed after what felt like a woefully inadequate sleep; that dream has a lot to answer for! My kit was all packed and stacked ready to go. After well over a decade of procrastination I was finally heading to Snowdon.

Having double-checked and loaded my kit, I left home and headed west for the Welsh border. On my drive I listened to the audio book of that classic tale of British wilderness (albeit Scottish rather than Welsh wilderness) 'The 39 Steps' by John Buchan. The sky was bright with a nearly full moon, although I knew that clouds were forecast to be my fate as my journey progressed.

Sure enough shortly after I crossed into the land of the Red Dragon the clouds blocked the moon as completely as if I had driven into a cave, limiting my view of the wider world to the reach of my headlights for the remainder of the trip. I made good time across Wales - at that time of morning traffic isn't exactly heavy - and arrived at Pen-y-Pass car park and the proper start of my days adventure at about 6:30am.

Here I listed my spare kidney on Ebay to fund the parking charges, donned my warm clothes and a head torch and rechecked the map of my route. When I initially started planning for my trip to Snowdon I had hoped to complete it in milder weather and follow the Snowdon Horseshoe route, along two precarious ridge lines up to and back down from the summit. When I learned that there was sure to be snow on the higher ground, and that I would need to start my ascent in the dark because of when I needed to get home, I shelved that plan for a later day. The revised plan was to get as far into the ascent as possible as quick as possible in case there was a sunrise worth photographing. So I settled on the broad and well surfaced Miners track and started on up.

The thick cloud still obscured the moon, and sunrise was still over an hour away so I began in total darkness with no view ahead, but I knew that the mountains towered ahead of me. Soon a few chinks opened in the cloud letting through the first hints of dawn and giving me enough visibility that I could turn off my torch. As my eyes adjusted to the new, lesser darkness I could make out a snow capped outline ahead of me! I assumed this was Snowdon and smiled to myself, my goal was in sight - I was wrong though. What I could see was just a part of the ridge, some 300m below the still cloud bound summit.

The Miners track is straight forward and easy going until the far side of Llyn Llydaw where it gets a little steeper and rougher, but it is above Glaslyn that the path, and the view, starts to get really interesting. This is about 2/3 of the linear distance into the route, but only 1/3 of the vertical ascent, leaving a steep route to negotiate over the last few kilometres. It was also around this point that the laying snow became persistent and the rising sun started to break through a chink in the low hanging clouds. The combination of cool blue lake, majestic snowy mountains, broken cloud and warm sunlight made for a breath taking view!

But the concept of 'a view' was about to become irrelevant. The laying snow and the lowering cloud merged into a wall of white before me. I lost the route of the path in the snow several times and struggled to gauge how much further I had to go. I couldn't see the track 30 meters ahead at times, let alone the summit. The wind driven snow had done a comprehensive job of smoothing out the hill side, blending series of steps into smooth icy slopes. With the aid of poles and studded snow walking aids (proper crampons don't feature on my kit list yet) I made it to the summit ridge feeling in my inexperience as close to a proper alpinist as I've come yet, with just a short walk along the ridge remaining to arrive at the actual summit.

The ridge looked alien! The frigid temperatures and driving winds over the preceding days had sculpted icy feathers over every inch of it. Snow remained only in the most sheltered of spots, the rest blasted off by howling winds. The swirling ice traced the eddies of the wind as clearly as smoke in a wind tunnel and coated the entire landscape, with only the dark rocks beneath breaking the white of the ice. The now brightening cloud still firmly clamped on top of the mountain cast a flat, contrast-less light uniformly over the ice-coated everything and created conditions unlike anything I have seen before - a completely monochrome landscape.

The summit cairn and trig point looked like a chaotically iced wedding cake, and the deserted train station like a movie set from 'The Day After Tomorrow'. I was the first to the top that morning - no one else had been crazy enough to start out for the summit as early as me - and the solitude was palpable, although short lived. A trio of walkers had been gradually catching me for the past hour while I kept stopping to take pictures and they arrived just a few minutes later. I'd like to think that pioneering a path through the fresh, unsullied snow for them had slowed me down, but the reality is almost certainly just that they were faster than me!


I didn't stay long at the top. I had made my pilgrimage, had my adventure. Call me anti-social but sharing these special places with throngs of other people spoils it for me. More often than not it is the solitude itself that I am seeking, and the personal challenge of completing the ascent in the first place, the views are a bonus, but a very welcome one when they are there! Sure enough I passed many other hikers toiling upwards while I descended, but even when the cloud lifted and the iced-gem summit appeared against a bright patch of blue I didn't envy them, because they had to share it, and I had had it to myself, if only for a few minutes.

Now that the clouds had lifted and the sun was properly up the views on my trek back down were every bit as stunning as you would expect of the Snowdonian Mountains in winter. Snow capped peaks were there to be seen in every direction and the low winter sun picked out the finest of topographical details in a landscape which begs the question why we Brits ever feel the need to travel abroad to see beautiful scenery. I made it down about 5 hours after I originally left the car. I shed my cold weather kit, now feeling distinctly over dressed among gaggles of children and young couples who at midday were only just arriving. I left quickly, keen now my adventure was over to get back to my family for the remainder of the day. A few miles away I had to stop and take in the view behind one more time. The clouds had now lifted fully and the snowy summit of Snowdon had revealed herself to all the world. It was the perfect parting memory, one that is certain to bring me back again soon. This may have been my first visit to Snowdon, but it won't be my last!

Richard

The Dale of the Dove - or, For the Love of Maps.

Just like any loving parent, I want the best for my children. I want my children to learn to love maps. 

I love maps, I always have. There is nothing quite like unfolding a map, laying it out on the floor and then stretching out alongside it to take it all in. Automatically I begin to trace the rivers, follow the ridges, pin point the high spots and link them all together into hypothetical routes, continually re-drawn to include particularly appealing features not originally noticed. It's wonderful - lean too close and you might just fall in!

Dove Dale is a perfect example of a landscape which immediately catches the eye of any diligent student of cartography - the sinuous river, the formidably steep valley sides, the ribbon of woodland clinging on for dear life in an otherwise open, pastoral landscape. Potentially last, though certainly not least you notice the names! While the title 'Dove Dale' itself paints a relatively harmless picture, throw in 'Ravens Tor', 'Hurt's Wood', 'Reynard's Cave', 'Tissington Spires', 'Jacobs Ladder', 'Twelve Apostles', 'Lovers Leap' and 'Thorpe Cloud' and you have beginning, middle and end to a cartographical fantasy trilogy without ever leaving the living room floor. And that's before you consider the list of caves, weirs and natural arches long enough to keep Enid Blyton's Famous Five busy for their entire summer holidays.

I didn't need to keep my children occupied for an entire holiday - we were aiming for just a single morning. The scramble up to the caves, and indeed the majority of the path along the valley itself was out of the scope of the littlest legs of the family (just 1 year old) but these trips are about planting the seeds of adventure and exploring. So fully expecting to never make it past the stepping stones (perhaps less than 1km from our start point!) we left the almost entirely deserted car park in scruffy clothes to enjoy a couple of hours of family fun in stunning, natural-world beauty, without the crowds. It was a dull grey day, and only just turned 9am but it wasn't just the weather, or the (relatively) early hour which allowed us to beat the crowds. My daughters school was closed for the day so we were there on a week day in term time - a rare and perfect opportunity to see Dove Dale as God intended and it's name implies ... peaceful!

And so it proved to be - we only had each other for company on the path out along the river - that is unless you count the ducks, grey wagtails and almost unbelievably confident crows which stole the meagre portions of bread the little ones had brought along for the ducks. We, that is my wife and I, have been to Dove Dale before, and we've wanted to bring the children for a while because we loved it. But knowing just how busy it gets, we wanted to save it for a day when we could make it special and we could all enjoy it as much as possible, preferably with as few other people as possible. And obviously to enjoy any river valley fully, you need to get wet. Why wouldn't you? Hence the scruffy clothes.

Pretty much since the first day our youngest started walking we gave up hope of keeping him out of the water on family outings and instead embraced (and sometimes even encouraged) his fearless love for going the extra watery mile, even if it means the return miles are soggy. He was true to form making straight for the river and the puddles, splashing in the surprisingly bracing currents (given that it was early June) and loving every minute of it. The smile never left his face... until our little girl (3 1/2 years his senior) started scaling the scree slopes up the valley sides. This was beyond his still slightly wobbly ability and at that point he lost the smile and started to get cross, thinking that he was missing the fun! This is not a child who will need any encouragement to explore when he gets a bit steadier on his feet.

We arrived at the stepping stones without major incident and spent a few happy minutes hopping from stone to stone and trying to make sure our he didn't get out of his depth while following the ducks into the river. I even got to take a few pictures while the rest of the family were tucking into our modest picnic rations! The rain had started by this point, but we were already wet, and it wasn't too cold so we weren't going to let that stop us. But then the school groups started arriving and the relative peace we had enjoyed was at risk of being disturbed. So we called it a day and headed for home, wet, dirty and happy - exactly as it should be. 

A few days ago we had the map back out - the seeds are growing!

Richard