This weekend we had no gigs to distract us, so we went back to the Dales to do a bit more peak. It couldn't have been more delicious weather! The cloud was low and heavy and the carpark was correspondingly empty. But this didn't bother us as we started the walk towards Ingleborough.It was a bit disconcerting, 10 minutes in, to discover that walking through the damp grass had tranfered enough water to soak through my walking boots and into my socks, but we were not deterred and enjoyed the limestone pavement, boggy puddles, and gentle climbs on well made paths which were provided by the path. After an hour we started to wonder whether we would know when we got there - the climb had been so gentle, and the top of the ridge so totally obscured by cloud that we had no idea how far we had come.
The last bit was excellent - the path suddenly turned into small boulders and then into a well laid path of giant flatish yellow stones, and then climbed steeply into the lee of the peak. The wind (which had been growing steadily) immediately subsided and we were in an eerie silence where we could only see 1o feet in front or behind us.
We got to the top with little difficulty but were then lost as to where on the plataeux the trig point was! In our silliness we had not brought a compass with us (don't worry parentis, we will never do that again), so we had to make do by steering by cairns and laying paterans as we tried to explore the shrouded interior. After one last foray into the mist where we placing ourselves at the extremes of our visibility, we decided that we had got to the highest point, even if we hadn't found the marker, so we had nothing to prove! We set off on our way down and felt smug that we had noticed and marked carefully the route across the top to the path (there were lots of people looking faintly confused).
The way down was marred by realising that all my clothes underneath my waterproofs were soaked through (in addition to my feet which were now warming up the water that was sloshing around my boots), but after a quick break for tea, we pressed on to Pen-y-ghent.
This time we went up it the other way, confident that the path was obvious even in fog. We met pretty much no-one and enjoyed the scramble at the end where we kept disappearing into the mist. The way down dragged out - lots of fields to go past and our feet were starting to get a bit tired. I whiled away the last twenty minutes by irritating singing the themes to well known films!
But despite the precipitation, it was a wonderful walk - once you have resigned yourself to being wet, it doesn't really matter in the summer, and the joy of putting on dry clothes and drinking tea in the car at the end was marvellous!
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