When I was a child my favourite series of books was the Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis. Completely oblivious to the Christian undertones of the stories, I read with delight and jealousy as the four Pevensie children adventured into the back of the wardrobe and discovered a magical world where animals could talk.
I longed to find Narnia. Didn’t we all? Who else can admit to checking (head butting) the back of a few cupboards or trying to strike up a conversation with a horse (surely not just me)?
There have been certain memorable moments during my hiking trips where the strangeness or perfect beauty of my surroundings has made me feel as if I have wandered straight into Narnia. The first was in the Scottish Highlands – Glen Nevis to be exact. We had abandoned the idea of hiking the Ben due to bad weather and instead decided to walk the Cow Hill circuit, heading up above Fort William and around the hill into the forest.
After a while following a well-trodden woodland path, we stumbled across this oddly elaborate boardwalk that went off the main route and led into the densely-packed trees:
Intrepid explorers that we are, we decided to follow it a little way.
We were soon swallowed up by the silence of the pines. And what an oppressive silence it is deep inside a pine forest. No birds, no rustling of leaves or whispering of winds, no sunlight. It was an eerie experience and even Pete was a little freaked. When you walk deep into a wood, you can see why they form the backdrop to the scariest of fairy stories. We didn’t go far enough to find out where the walkway ended but I like to think that maybe it led somewhere posh like Lothlórien (one for the Tolkien fans among you).
The second time I felt like I might be in Narnia was on the slopes of Ullock Pike.
In my research for the route I found out that the name Ullock Pike translates from the Old Norse as ‘the peak where the wolves play;’ úlfr meaning ‘wolf’ (think Fenris Ulf of Narnia) and leikr meaning ‘play.’ I was already hooked. Wolves are no longer found in the UK since hunting and deforestation wiped them out in the seventeenth century although there is talk of reintroducing them to Scotland. A similar initiative in Yellowstone National Park in 1995 proved highly successful and completely transformed the landscape, even changing the course of the rivers as the ecosystem found a new balance (you can watch an incredible short film about it here).
So whilst Catbells might have been home to the wildcats of yore, Ullock Pike was once the playground of the wolf. Sitting in my living room at my computer the idea of reintroducing these predators to the UK countryside sounds really rather wonderful. I’m sure that the idea of meeting a pack of hungry wolves on our hike might change my mind.
The peak rises out of the woods, forming the first section of a ridge that runs all the way to the summit of Skiddaw, taking in two more Wainwrights on the way: Longside and Carl Side. I had photographed it on our previous summit of Skiddaw some months earlier.
Long Side is the summit to the left with Ullock Pike to the right. So, once you’ve climbed up to Ullock Pike, you’ve done all the hard work. With this in mind, I had mapped out a route for us that took us from Dodd Wood up to Ullock Pike and along the ridge to Carl Side, where we would then descend via Dodd back to the car. That would tick off four Wainwrights in one go.
What I hadn’t accounted for was the fact that we would be doing this walk immediately after a three-hour drive from Stoke-on-Trent.
We drove straight from Stoke to Dodd Wood where there is a small car park with a large fee. Modern methods of payment haven’t reached the Forestry Commission car park at Dodd and the entire £6 fee for four hours parking has to be paid in coins. I’d love to watch them empty it at night – it must be like hitting the jackpot on a Vegas fruit machine. We changed a note in the Old Sawmill Tearoom and had a cup of tea and a bacon sandwich in preparation for the journey. I took the opportunity to show Pete the route we were taking on my OS map, though he was too engrossed in his sandwich to take much of it in. As far as he knew, I was leading us to our certain deaths.
The first section of the walk takes you through Dodd Wood, which has that similar eerie stillness to it that we experienced in Glen Nevis.
The wood itself is a popular place for family walks and is owned by the Forestry Commission. This explains the high parking fee. On a camping trip to Yorkshire some years ago, Pete and I decided to visit Dalby Forest, another Forestry Commission stronghold, to spend the day mountain biking.
Maybe I’m naïve, but growing up in Devon and going for a walk in the woods most mornings with my mum before school, I don’t expect to have to pay for the privilege of being surrounded by trees. However, as Pete and I drove up the wooded road into Dalby Forest that day back in 2011, a young man wearing a hi-vis jacket stopped us and, in a bored voice, said:
“Seven pounds please.”
I looked at him with some surprise. “For what?”
“To go in.” He helpfully motioned towards the forest with his hand. We must not have been the only ‘idiots’ shocked by this sudden turn of events during his shift.
“To the wood?”
“Yeh.” He rolled his eyes.
I looked at Pete. Was this some kind of rouse? Had this man stolen a hi-vis jacket and waited by the sign for an unwitting tourist to pass by? If so, why only charge seven pounds? Sensing our suspicion, he handed over an official map of the forest and repeated his plea: “Seven pounds please.”
I repeated my astonishment: “You want us to pay seven pounds to go into a wood? We are heading to the mountain bike hire place. Do we pay for that here?”
“No that’s separate. It’s seven pounds entrance fee.”
“Do you take cards?”
He shook his head. Now he wasn’t even wasting his breath on us.
“Do you have change for a £20?”
He shook his head again and looked at his watch, clearly late for some pressing appointment in his portacabin.
A puzzled silence ensued in which Pete and I exchanged looks of disbelief. Feeling defeated, I asked what felt like a pathetic question, considering we were in the middle of a forest: “Where’s the nearest cashpoint then?”
“Not sure. There might be one at Thornton-le-Dale. About three mile away.”
An hour later, having had a huge argument with the sat-nav, we returned with exactly seven pounds, for which we received a map of walking routes in different colours. The day continued in this way: by the time we got there, the mountain bike shop only had a tandem bike left. This seemed romantic to begin with but turned out to be a nightmare. Tandem bikes are probably fine for anyone of normal height but, at six-foot-one, I had difficulty. I had to be in back because I couldn’t physically manage the front seat going up hills. But my massive legs kept kneeing Pete in the backside when I pedalled, forcing me to point my knees out like some kind of circus clown. I ended up throwing the bike at the grass verge when we got back and we haven’t been mountain biking since.
Anyway, I digress. Back to Ullock Pike.
Once you’ve passed through Dodd Wood (use the yellow path on the Forestry Commission map) you reach a little gate that opens out onto the fell side where the real climbing begins. On a scale of 1 to Jenkin Hill (see my Skiddaw post), I’d class this short climb as a solid 7 – unless you’ve been squashed into a car for 3 hours, in which case I’d upgrade it to a 9.
Sure enough, a Wainwright wobble ensued and I began to think of ways I could get Pete to turn back to the car. Here were my (highly imaginative) reasons, all of them ignored by my determined hiking partner:
“a long car journey followed by strenuous exercise gives you DVT” (not necessarily true but sounds legit, right?).
“the clouds coming in from the south-west look ‘funny’ (i.e. like big clouds), which means there’s a storm coming. We wouldn’t want to be caught out in a lightning storm on a ridge, now would we?” (there wasn’t even rain forecast).
“I don’t know if we are going the right way.” (this one was totally untrue. I had my OS map and knew exactly where we were. Plus we could see that Ullock Pike was above us, it wasn’t rocket science).
“that lone figure coming up the ridge from the valley behind us might be a serial killer. Why else would someone be out here on their own? We’d better turn back before he catches up with us and cuts us into tiny pieces with his chainsaw.”
Despite my many foretellings of death by blood clot, lightning strike, exposure and chainsaw massacre, Pete didn’t budge. “Let’s just get up to the top,” he kept saying.
So I stopped wobbling and took photos instead. Here’s one looking back at the forest we’d just climbed out of:
Soon, we reached the top of the first incline and the long summit of Skiddaw came into view:
And then, after a false summit that really got my hopes up and almost induced another Wainwright wobble, Ullock Pike reared its pointy head:
Looking back along the ridge to the North we could actually see what I think must have been the Solway Firth (and those menacing/not menacing at all clouds):
I felt happier once we were on the higher part of the ridge. Not only did the path flatten out (a little) but the views were incredible.
The eastern side fell away steeply to reveal this beautiful landscape overshadowed by Skiddaw:
The western side fell away to look down on Bassenthwaite Lake:
About half way up, we were joined by two of the most photogenic herdies I’ve ever seen, the only two souls we’d met so far (the serial killer had turned down to Dodd Wood).
I chatted to them as if we were in Narnia and asked them what the hell they were doing on such an exposed slope in the middle of nowhere. Their facial expressions speak for themselves:
I couldn’t have asked for a better picture. The light and colours are beautiful and Skiddaw looms large in the background. I spent a bit of time getting the composition just right, employing the law of thirds (mainly to kill time because I was huffing and puffing quite a bit) and think it turned out pretty well. I later entered the photograph for the BBC Countryfile Photograph of the Week on Facebook and it was featured on their page! Exciting stuff…
The sheep soon lost interest in my inane chatter and Pete had surged on ahead. Here he is on the final push to the Pike above:
As you can see, he is wearing his usual hiking uniform: shorts, t-shirt and a backwards cap. He did have his coat this time though, unlike our previous hike up Skiddaw.
Just before the summit (on the far right) there is a nice little scramble. On approach I presumed the scramble was mandatory and, after an easy 30-second launch up the middle of the rocks found myself stuck, legs wide apart and unable to pull myself up. Despite my ineptitude, I figured that to any onlooker below I probably looked pretty cool right now, like a mountaineer scaling a rocky face maybe, until the first two people we’d seen all day – an elderly couple – came down from the summit.
Something in my face, perhaps a wild, reddish hue, must have prompted them to ask me if I was OK. They then pointed out the alternative path they were descending by and suggested I take it. Maybe I’m not Edmund Hillary just yet then.
Once you reach the top you are treated to spectacular views:
Here’s the tiny summit cairn. In the distance you can see the summit of Dodd, which we were to climb a few days later. That’s Derwent Water and Catbells in the distance. The ‘funny’ clouds that, in my imagination, promised to rain down all sorts of lightning and thunder, never actually got any closer to us.
Looking ahead along the ridge you can see Long Side and Skiddaw (left):
Isn’t that glorious?
Well, it was enough for me just to look at it. We abandoned our initial (let’s be honest, optimistic) plan to hike any further along the ridge and instead turned back the way we had come. As you can see, I was cream-crackered:
Coming back down was easy (it always is).
I used a special technique I’ve learned to descend the scramble section – I think the technical mountaineering term is the “bum slide.” This, of course, resulted in me ripping the seat of my leggings (a fact I didn’t discover until we got back to our lodgings that evening – luckily I was wearing black pants!).
I made Pete take a picture of me looking suitably heroic with my new pack on the way down, thankfully without any evidence of my “bum slide”:
After a long trudge back down the ridge, retracing our steps through the insect-infested ferns of the fell side, we reached the Narnia-esque Dodd Wood and the sanctuary that is the car. And no, the serial killer was not lying in wait (in case you were worried…).
Some lessons learned from this trip:
Take lots of pound coins to Forestry Commission forests
Don’t map out a crazily ambitious route on the first day of a hiking holiday when you’ve been cramped up in the car for hours
Don’t launch into scrambles without checking if there is an easier alternative
Not all lone walkers are serial killers
Narnia doesn’t exist but, if it did, you’d sure as hell find it in the Lake District
Five down. Two-hundred-and-nine to go…
Up next: Loughrigg Fell and Latrigg
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