Looking at the OS map, the road west from Mosedale west past Swinside Farm towards the old tungsten mine doesn’t look very motorable. But it is, public and surfaced, till it branches where there are enough passing possibilities to go around, or at least there were today. Here I made an annoying discovery. I had left my compass in my hotel room back in Braithwaite. The tops looked misty. Oh well, I thought, with luck they will clear. If not this can be an exercise in the art of navigation sans compass. In the Cairngorms, say, that would not be too clever, but I reckoned these were not the most serious or dangerous of hills and any error I made might lengthen my walk but was unlikely to shorten my life. In fact it didn’t clear but by keeping my wits about me I found my way over four of the seven Back o’Skiddaw Nuttalls, leaving the other three for another day. It was a long trudge up pathless but fairly easy ground to the top of Carrock Fell whose gentle upper slope seemed to go on for ever. From there, there was a path to follow rather pleasantly through the mist west as far as the track that crosses the top of Hare Stones. I followed this north for a bit then headed straight uphill on my left sure that by so doing I couldn’t miss the top of High Pike. And indeed I didn’t, soon finding my way to its trig point and slightly incongruous park bench.
For here I took the path that leads back to the track and followed it south this time up to the top of Hare Stones where it was easy to find the tiny pile of stones – you could hardly call it a cairn – that marks the top of this most insignificant of Nuttalls. From here a decent path, not on the map, goes off diagonally right of the track to the slightly less nondescript and somewhat more cairned summit of Great Lingy Hill. The continuation to Knott and the Calvas didn’t look so straightforward sans compass so here I called it a day. Heading left to regain the track and all the way down to the old mines. I say track but it doesn’t stay tracklike long and soon deteriorates into a very muddy path. At one point I met an enthusiastic man with binoculars full of excitement at having heard his first skylark of the year, confidently announcing that it was now, in cosequence, very emphatically spring. , with not far to go disaster struck and I went into a skid on a particularly treacherous stretch of particularly squelchy ground. Landing, I went right over on my left knee. It hurt like hell. I lay there for five minutes as the pain eased thinking to myself ruefully that I knew just what would now happen. This pain will ease in the next ten minutes, I told myself, and I’ll be more or less fine the rest of today. Then overnight it will swell up leading me a hopeless cripple tomorrow and good for nothing. This prediction proved entirely accurate which is why my planned two days walking this weekend ended up being one day’s walking. Still my one day was a pleasant and straightforward walk though one for which I would recommend carryihng a compass. Do as I say, not as I do.
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