Fun and Games on Causey Pike

Today's adventure in the Lake District with Hester and Harry was made 'ever so slightly' epic by the incredible wind and rain that, as is often the case with me, seemed to blow in just as we got to our destination of Stair, near Keswick, and got seriously worse the higher we climbed up our very first peak, Causey Pike. Our original plan for the day was to recce the route of the Teenager with Altitude fell race, so called because its 15.4 miles long (i.e. a teenager) and includes 7,600 feet of ascent (i.e. with altitude). Hmmm... see what they did there?

Anyway Hester is competing in this race in two weeks time and, given that the first half of the route is all new to us both, our plan was to suss it out for her in advance. I knew the weather forecast was grim (although may have forgotten to mention that specifically to Hester) but, if it was just the heavy rain, we'd have been fine and dandy but it wasn't.... 

The wind was just mental and, although it was 'merely' gusting super duper strong once we reached a height of 350 meters, at the top of Causey Pike it became ridiculously and dangerously gusty. Anyway, despite some serious rock clinging onto-ing and not wanting to budging by Hester in a couple of (the most exposed) places imaginable, we managed to summit Causey Pike and move on. The next peak was the easy peasy Outerside but, by now, the wind was if anything even stronger and getting strong lower down too and, although the ground was less rocky and more grassy and it all round felt less exposed, that was probably just as well as Hester got blown over twice as we descended Outerside.

Our next peak on the TWA route was Grasmoor, which is 300 meters higher than Outerside, so we quickly came to the conclusion that Grasmoor (completely invisible in the hammering rain and low cloud) was a fools errand. Rather than suicidally carry on up there, we decided to bail out and take a looping run at a lower level back through Coledale to Braithwaite, before cutting across the fields back to Stair. It was still a cracking adventure though with 7 miles run and something like 2,300 feet climbed.  An yep fantastically epic too what with the weather.

We sure earned our massive pot of tea and chunky cheese sandwiches in the farm shop cafe on the way home!

Our route with Grasmoor left well alone, bottom left

The weather was okayish at the start

The delightful Hester

Hester crouching to avoid take off, near the top of Causey Pike

Harry looking nonch at the summit - what you can't see is the 100 mph gusts of wind and rain
(and Hester gripping the ground on all fours just out of shot)

Looking like a drowned rat

I think this is usually the parking field for the Anniversary Waltz and TWA fell races!

The troops wading home to the finish