Even better weather, even a little blue sky and sunshine tempted us to give Blencathra a go. Unfortunately, one of our party had “twanged something” in his leg and wasn’t sure he’d be able to complete the walk – so, we set off on the basis of splitting into 2 groups of two if he had a problem, with me returning with him, and Chris, the more experienced of the other two keeping an eye on things while they continued and finished the walk.
Amazingly, his leg held up fine all the way to the first subsidiary peak on Blencathra, but as we hit the snowline, and began to descent he instantly realised that the downhills on snow were causing real pain. So, with around 1km to go, I turned back, helping Kel back down the hill – fortunately, when set up with a pair of walking poles properly adjusted, and allowed to go at a nice steady pace, he managed to get back down to the car under his own steam. Just before we reached the final flat bit we were joined by the other two, who after asking if everything was ok, proceeded to complain that the cloud had sacked in when they began to climb and had rendered any views from the top completely invisible. Then to add insult to injury, 10 minutes down from the summit, they looked back and it was as clear as a bell. Sodding Typical!
Anyhoo – there’s the Strava from this walk as well – though the figures are a little “strange” – especially the “moving time” against the “Actual” – reflecting the fact that I was pretty much walking down 10 yards to show the best route, then standing waiting for my mate to pick his way through…