Thursday on Cat Bells

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On a lane between Keswick and Portinscale, by the River Greta and much used by camper van cognoscenti, I measure out water for my coffee. Numbed fingers and chink of ice on aluminium speak to temperatures last night having plunged to a low of minus 8 but, in the warm embrace of thermal skinwear in thermalite liner in down summer bag in 3-season bag under 13.5 tog king size duvet on Expedia air mattress atop four storage boxes in a Berlingo Multispace stripped of rear seats – as described in A rubber tramp in Redcar – I’ve passed the night in 5 star bliss.

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After coffee it’s southways to Cat Bells …

… then a sharp southeast descent from Hause Gate to Manesty for a sunlit stroll along the lane to Grange in Borrowdale.

Grid lines 1 kilometre apart

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One winter in the ‘seventies I played football with strangers on Derwent Water. In those days a cold snap might last for weeks. A bloke from the Council would take daily test drills and, when the ice hit ten inches, pronounce it safe for cars between Keswick jetties and inhabited island.

Things ain’t wot they used to be. Our cold spells now seldom last more than a few days – that’s nowhere near enough, however chilled the air, to get ice you can truly trust.

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Psalm 121, KJV: I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills …

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On a rubber tramp in early March 2022, with the Russian SMO just a week in, I wrote:

In Grasmere by noon, I took the bus to Keswick, another to Portinscale, and briefly entertained getting up onto Cat Bells for the peerless vistas – to the east Derwentwater, Borrowdale and distant Helvellyn; to the west Grasmoor, Causey and Grisedale Pikes – but opted for the gentler anticlockwise circumperambulation of Derwentwater.

Today it’s the stroll round the lake I’ll eschew, in favour of said peerless vistas.

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The way is steep and in two places a scramble up ice encased rock is called for. I could’ve made good use of crampons.

To my right the western fells holding Grizedale Pike, Eel Crag and Causey Pike, and beyond them Buttermere and Crummock Water …

… while to my left Keswick huddles in the lee of windswept Skiddaw.

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I’m walking pretty much due south so, where you see the lake, I’m looking left and east …

… and where you see snow and mountain at more or less lens level, I’m looking right and west.

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Looking eastwards across Derwent Water to the Borrowdale Fells I’ll be treading tomorrow.

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Now for the descent; poles de rigeur. Especially lower down, where compacted snow on the path …

… gives way to ice coated rock.

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I make it down, without mishap, to that pretty lane into Grange.

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Is it me, or is there something stiffly suggestive here?

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The Derwent from the bridge at Grange. Fed by a thousand icy rills and plunging waterfalls from the crags and ridges of Green Gable, Seathwaite Fell and Glaramara, it hurries north to Derwent Water.

Styhead Tarn, nestling between Great Gable and Seathwaite Fell in the map’s southwest corner, is a watershed. Where Green Gable drains northways to Borrowdale, Great Gable, higher and better known, drains southways to Wasdale. In the summer of 1970 a brother and I, sent astray by swirling mist and compass fooled by iron in the rocks around Scafell, wound up at Wasdale Head – with our tent at Seatoller, centre of the map. Getting back before nightfall being out of the question, we spent the evening at the Wasdale Head Inn – and fifteen shillings (seventy-five pence) on bed and breakfast. To ensure the campsite didn’t call mountain rescue out we had to make a trunk call, along analogue wires strung from poles following the valleys thirty miles to Barrow in Furness then routing north to Keswick and back to Borrowdale, despite a crow-fly no more than five miles.

The Derwent, sunlit below the elegant double arched bridge at Grange …

… and a few sunless metres downstream of the same.

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On the far side of the bridge …

… I reach the bus stop where the lane T-junctions the main road up through Borrowdale. I’ve a fifteen minute wait for the 78 to Keswick, which arrives bang on schedule at 15:31. Its upper deck is open to the elements for sightseeing but, not wanting for fresh air, I opt for the engine-warm below.

After pint and meal – a Japanese ramen surprisingly good for a Wetherspoons – in town I take the moonlit path across earth hard as iron, past frozen shallow lakes on the flood plain north of Derwent Water, to the lane where van and warm bedding await.

Tomorrow it’ll be Stonethwaite Valley, Dock Tarn and Watendlath.

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