A Plan, but not a Cunning Plan
Something about the name “Helvellyn” inspires a sense of awe, and, if you’re a walker, as sense of I-wanna-do-that. Wikipedia will tell you that Helvellyn is the third highest point in England (behind the Scafells). It’s part of a long ridge running north from Ambleside north towards Keswick and Skiddaw, and is home to a number of the lost iconic walks in the Lake District. Wikipedia will also tell you that the name probably means “pale yellow moorland”, which is not quite so fear-inducing.
So we thought all of that was worthy of an attempt.
Not the Best Week
It was our last full day of a one-week holiday in the Lakes. We’d done this kind of thing before, but I’m sad to say this one was maybe the worst trip we’ve had there. Two reasons contributed to that.
Firstly, the accomodation we’d picked was not to our liking. It was a static caravan / lodge in mone of those “parks” that offers communal facilities such as restaurants and swimming pools. In the case of this one, and I won’t name it because I don’t want to get sued, the communal facilities were 100% stuffed with out-of-control screaming brats, whose parents were enjoying their downtime by totally ignoring their kids whilst sitting and knocking back a few beers. That, and the lodge we’d booked was not quite as advertised. Oh, and on the day I used the laundry someone decided it would be a good idea to dump a load of lumps of slate and canine excrement onto the bonnet of my car, leaving a permanent scratch.
The second reason was that it rained more or less every day. It didn’t stop us from attempting to do things, but we spent most of the week being wet.
To the Walk
The weather on the Saturday looked good by comparison to the rest of the week, so we decided we’d give it a go. There are a number of ways of climbing Helvellyn. We picked what looked like the shortest (and hence the steepest). That leaves from the Highpark Wood car park alongside Thirlmere and climbs past Browncove Crags and Helvellyn Lower Man up to the top.
We were suitably armed with lunch, snacks, drinks, and so on. Even though it’s the shortest route we were expecting it would take us a while. All day, in fact.
The walk began with a very short area that was relatively flat alongside the wood, before panning out onto the mountainside and one of the traditional Lake District upgraded pathways of large boulders and compacted stone. They use the boulders to make steps on the steep parts. There were a lot of boulders. Not surprising, because it’s a typical glacial u-shaped valley, and hence steeper at the bottom than at the top, but this is also the steepest was up.
The weather was cool and cloudy while we were climbing, making it fairly comfortable for walking, as I remember. We made decent progress by walking for a while and then standing for 10 minutes to get out breath back.
On Top
Once we got to the top, it was definitely lunchtime. We wandered over to the cairns and shelters on the top. These were properly stuffed with other walkers. A part of that was because it was lunchtime. Another part was that you couldn’t see didly from the top. The clouds had closed in, and as a result it wasn’t possible to see Swirral Edge, Striding Edge or Red Tarn, or anything beyond. So lunch was much of a huddling-together-for-warmth affair.
There was a bunch of late-teenage, maybe early-twenties types who were on a long walk from Glenridding. I don’t know if they were supposed to be doing an organised tour, but if they were, they should sue the organisers. If they were doing the walk off their own bat, they should sue themselves. Why? They were all wearing regular trainers. Most weren’t carry a coat and most also weren’t carrying food. And most dangerously in this weather, none of them had a map. That proved entertaining later.
Photos
After lunch, we got the obligatory photo next to the trig point on the top, just to prove we’d been there, and then began our descent.
And so to the entertaining bit. Some of the large group started to follow us downhill. I wasn’t entirely sure it was them until, maybe a third of the way down, some of them caught up with us. I asked them if they were part of the group going back to Glenridding, and they were. So we politely advised them that the path they were on did not, in fact, lead to Glenridding. I figured it would be the decent thing to ask them, because they’d have a nasty shock if they descended most of the way to Thirlmere before realising. Anyway, they turned back and climbed back to the top again. I hope they got back OK.
Complaining, Maybe
Their problem was, of course, that they didn’t have a map. The path that leads off the summit down towards Swirral Edge is less than obvious. When it’s cloudy, you might not realise it was a path at all. And so it proved. They had walked right past it, just assuming that everyone exiting the summit plateau at the north end would be going the same way that they wanted to go. I can’t really complain about their lack of preparation, to be honest. We’ve seen many, many ill-prepared people both here and elsewhere in the UK (such as a bloke taking two sub 10-year-old kids up Snowdon in shorts at 3pm at the end of October). So I can’t complain mainly because they are clearly not alone in underestimating how much trouble they could get into. They were on the top of England’s third highest mountain, and had no protective clothing, no food and no means of navigation. It’s just as well for them that there were plenty of other walkers around.
Back Home
So the walk down Helvellyn was a bit quicker than the climb up, and my car was where we left it. It’s possible we stopped in Ambleside for coffee and cake before heading back to the shack. But in any case, it was well into the afternoon, and as it was our final day, we had some packing to do.
