Stolly's Running Blog: Bob Graham recce weekend

Well last weekend brought a completely brilliant extended 3 dayer of ‘Bob Graham sussing outing’ on Friday, Saturday and Sunday in less than perfect (and then some!) weather conditions.

Me, my fellow Bob Graham conspirator Gavin, my trusty sidekick Harry, and my even trustier sidekick Hester, had originally planned to ‘do’ a 3 day Bob Graham round in its entirety and, due to logistics of parking and camping over, we had decided to do segments of the round all clockwise (even though mine and Gav's actual attempt planned for 22nd June is going anti-clockwise). For Friday, with what was looking like a worsening weather forecast set for the weekend ahead, we thought that doing a full on, humdinger that day with all of BG leg 3, Dunmail to Wasdale, followed by all of BG leg 4, Wasdale to Honister, would be a good idea..... really, we really did think that!

So off we jolly well went....

BG sussing outing – day 1

I don’t think it was raining when we started (to tell you the truth the whole weekend has now disappeared into a haze of wind and rain so I could be mistaken) and we made pretty good progress getting all the way to the top of the climb to Bowfell, circa 3 hours in, before the weather hit. It had been windy and rainy on and off up until that point but suddenly the wind and (the sideways stair rods of) rain became ferocious just as we poked out heads over the top of the trod under Hanging Knotts. We waterproofed and gloved up to the gunnels and forged on but it was tough going and by the time we reached Esk Pike (with pretty much all of the Scafell Pike boulder field still before us) we decided to ‘fook that for a game of soldiers’ and blew out plan A and came up with a Plan B fastish!

Honister, our final destination and where Gav’s car was parked, was still some way to go so we dropped off the tops down to Styhead from where we courageously climbed back into the maelstrom again, up Aaaron Slack, over Green Gable and, after some hair raising adventures and dodgy navigation on my part, eventually reached Honister like a group of drowned rats six and a half hours after starting out.

Fan-flipping-tastic..... but not quite as planned. The tea and chocolate rice crispy cakes at the Honister Slate Mine cafe went down well with the rain still chucking it down outside the window.

Hester and Harry climbing Steel fell with my red car far, far below

What a beautiful boy!

Two more beautiful boys......

Super Hester running the fells


The weather starting to close in

Pike O'Stickle I think

Harry finding time for a quick swim - no more photos after this as the rain made my hands too cold

Later that evening in the warmth of the Royal Oak in Braithwaite, while supping pints of Jennings Cumberland, we rearranged our plans for the ‘morrow and decided to do an anti-clockwise (the right way for us) running of our leg 4 (Dunmail to Threlkeld).

And so we dashed back to the tents through the pelting rain....

BG sussing outing – day 2

Day 2 was slightly different to day 1 in that it was absolutely hammering down with rain right from the off. And once we'd climbed up and over Seat Sandel and down and up to the top of Fairfield, the hammering rain had turned into hammering snow and hail, once again blown into us sideways by super strong winds. Whatever.... We then followed a fabulous descent from Cofa Pike down to the edge of Grizedale Tarn before plodding up Dollywaggon Pike and getting up onto the Helvellyn ridge line proper where we would become fully exposed to the elements for some time!

The route over Seat Sandel, Fairfield and up Dollywaggon

On the climb up Dollywaggon me and Hes saw a beautiful weasel trot right across our path, not ten feet away, before it whizzed further up the hill and popped out under a tussock to spy on us. A gorgeous little critter.

From there it was a succession of 850 metre plus peaks all the way to Clough Head, with the wind reaching a crescendo somewhere around Helvellyn Lower Man, although with the rain thankfully stopping somewhere around the same point. The descent down off of Clough Head to Threlkeld was fabulous, not least because we had survived all that weather!

Hester forcing a smile going up Seat Sandel

Jumping a bog....and failing to fall in :( at the bottom of the descent from Cofa Pike

I think Hester was cold

Is that sunlight????

Hester losing the will to live

What you can't see in this picture is the hurricane strength winds

Harry found the whole thing a piece of piss

Me as seen through a rain smeared lens

Thirlmere below

Gavin seeing no ships

The weather improving just as we're about to finish goddamit!

Clough Head cairn

More day 3 planning at the Royal Oak followed that evening and we decided to run our final leg, Threlkeld to Keswick anti-clockwise as our final outing.

BG sussing outing - day 3

For day 3 we finally had some not too bad weather and fairly whizzed up Hall's Fell from Threlkeld and definitely whizzed down the descent to the river Caldew after that, an absolutely stunningly fast run. Then it was a stiff climb up Great Calva followed by a very boggy trog through to an even stiffer climb (that went on a bit) up to the top of Skiddaw. Here I forced Hester to run the last bit to the fence line beneath the summit (ho, ho, ho)....

Once on the summit, surprise surpise the wind was horrendous and we didn't hang about almost sprinting all the way down off of Skiddaw. Total respect for the half dozen hill walkers huddled in the wind shelter right at the top of Skiddaw eating their picnic like true Brits!