Count Your Blessings #112 – Pushing for one more peak

While we were on holiday in the Lake District last week Jonathan and I managed a day in the mountains. We’ve been trying to climb hills that we have never climbed before. Travelling new paths is something that seems to be deeply engrained in my character, it’s never quite as satisfying when I know where I am going. This time we (I) decided upon Grassmoor.

Grassmoor is one of those mountains that comes in parts. You don’t just go up and then come down. I suppose you could go up and then come back the way you came, but that seems very dull to me. If you want to come back via a different route you have to do some more climbing.

We were travelling from the Keswick, Braithwaite side so we took the long walk up the Coledale Valley until we started the 852m climb to the top via Coledale Hause.

Once you’ve reached the top you have three choices for a way down:

• You can carry on down to Crummock Water, but then you end up miles away from where you started and you need to get someone to pick you up.
• You can go back the way you came – dull.
• You can go back a little way and then climb Crag Hill, but once you have taken this route you are also committed to climbing Sail also.

The easy route is to go back the way you have come but it doesn’t bring any new excitement with it. It’s the path you have just travelled with the same views as you’ve just seen.

If you take the harder path you get new perspectives on things, you get to achieve new things. It requires more effort and takes more out of you but the rewards are higher.

As we came down of the peak at Grassmoor Jonathan and I looked at each other and then we looked at the climb up to Crag Hill and then we looked back at each other.

“Are we up for doing this?” I said to Jonathan.

“Yes, lets.” He said in reply.

So we set off and we climbed back up nearly as far as we had come down, there’s only 13m difference between the two peaks. We enjoyed the new views across Crummock Water and Buttermere. We looked over to Great Gable standing majestically overlooking the whole scene and reminisced about our last climb. We looked down the other side to Keswick and beyond to Skiddaw.

But we hadn’t finished, we’d still got to climb down and back up Sail.

Between Cragg Hill and Sail there is quite a narrow ridge with a steep climb back up. It was hard work, we were tired.

Back on another summit we enjoyed our last breaths on the peaks before our descent. We enjoyed the new views down to Derwent Water and across to Helvellyn. It felt good to be on the top, it was good to have pushed to achieve more and succeeded. What a blessing.