OCT - Part 2 - Cumberland

Jogging down in fog from the summit, we're looking out for the Wyhtburn path dropping to the right. It fails to appear, and after a couple of hundred of yards of not appearing, we convince ourselves that we've missed it and we're back on our way to Dollywagon Pike. We drop off down steep wet grass to get reunited. After a couple of hundred feet of increasingly slippery going, it becomes clear that the capricious little path (only a two or three metres
wide!) has gone the other way, and we get involved in some interesting traversing across grass, boulders, and eventually crags. By looking down on the right, we'd missed seeing the main path going up on the left!

We eventually rejoin our intended route, and make much quicker progress down the stones and pitched boulders. I pass the scene of one of my most exhausted moments in the hills - the final climb up Helvellyn on our English 3000s circuit a couple of summers ago. I pass the corner where Conan and Lindsay waited for my wobbly legs to take me up to them, and then the blocked steps where we'd been encouraged with a bit of A A Milne, despite feeling like death on a stick.

Before long, we're down in the carpark having breakfast and Paula is handing out our supplies for the rest of the day. The dogs are confused about not coming, but 27 miles of hill is a long way to go with a small dog, even one as fit as Dizzy. Twenty five minutes pass by without us noticing, and we're consequently behind schedule as we set off. The main purpose of the schedule is to make sure we finish in daylight, but also helps to keep us moving at a reasonable pace through the day.

Going up the Wythburn path to High Raise seems a whole lot more pleasant than coming down it on the 3000s did. There are trees and waterfalls, and it's actually quite pleasant. Even reasonably dry at first, although that soon changes. My feet won't be dry again until we get back to Elterwater. There's even a bit of weak sunshine, but climbing the wet rough grass to pass just south of High Raise soon gets rid of that as we meet the cloud base again.
Lindsay is wandering dangerously far to the north, and we warn her not to get sucked in! There's no need to capture any more summit cairns than the necessary three!

We catch up with our fellow OCT-er, who hadn't stopped for Breakfast, on the way over to Sticks Pass. He tells us he started out from Grasmere and is planning on taking around 16 hours to do the route. We don't envy him his benighted finish over Red Bank. We don't see anyone else until Angle Tarn, then suddenly, the crowds appear. We skitter up the pitched path away from the tarn, passed on so many of the big Lakeland circuits, and enter the fog. We pass people all the way to the summit of Scafell Pike - almost all of them in jackets, hats and gloves. We must look odd to them, sweating away in our t-shirts. It might not be the most scenic or interesting way up England's highest, but it's easy, only the short stretch over boulders from near Ill Crag provided much to think about. The summit platform is relatively quiet, with only a couple of dozen people around or on it, but in the fog we only stay long enough to take a photo (3 heads and some fog!) before pushing on to Mickledore. We're over half way now, but there's still plenty of rough ground to cross.

Descending the loose path to Eskdale, we pass a woman who asks if we've come from Foxes Tarn. She looks quite angry when Conan tells her no, we've come from Mickledore. The Foxes Tarn path isn't far away though, he says. The news doesn't seem to cheer her up much. Near the bottom, we find a grassy platfrom and a few across the Great Moss, and stop for lunch. This is a quiet place, far from any road, and it seems a different world to the crowded path from Esk Hause. Fog cloaks the upper crags, but even so we can see enough to make Eskdale stay in the memory as a place to come back to when time is more plentiful.