The Lake District is rightly famous for its beautiful lakes and its mountains, but from our point of view it has a few other noteworthy features. For starters, many of its so-called major “A” roads are actually narrow, endlessly winding single tracks that are a nightmare for anyone towing a caravan (that would be me). It also has some ridiculously expensive pay-and-display car parks. On the plus side, it is tremendously dog friendly, to the extent that some shopkeepers appear slightly hurt when we decline their invitation to bring our two naughty Beagles inside. “They look so well behaved, and there’s nothing in there they could eat”. Ha! Wrong on both counts.
One other notable feature of the Lakes is the preponderance of silly names, like “Lesser Craggly Bottom” and “Wrinkly Winklethwaite”. It’s as though an ancient naked hippie went scampering through the entire region on a cold windy day and named everything after parts of his anatomy. To be fair I should confess that the above examples aren’t real, but what about “Skiddaw”? If it makes you think of soiled underwear you’re not alone, yet that is the actual name of the fourth highest, and possibly most visitor-friendly, mountain in the area.
There are two popular routes up to the top of Streaky Underpants; one goes from Keswick town centre, while a shorter 6 mile trail starts in a car park part of the way up. Due mainly to shortage of time (we’d only just set up the caravan and there wasn’t much afternoon left) we chose the latter.
The Howell Memorial, near the start of the route
The path quickly steepens and begins to zig-zag which provides a great excuse for taking frequent breaks and admiring the views that open up almost immediately.
After a while the path splits; you can continue straight on through a gate to go direct to the summit of Skiddaw, or you can branch left and take in a couple of minor peaks before rejoining the main path. We were keen to get the most out of the walk so we took the left branch, and consulting the guide I discovered that the two peaks are known as “Lesser Man” and “Little Man”. It’s kind of a shame they didn’t call the first one “Little Boy”, because our little boy definitely enjoyed the scramble up to the top!
The summit of Lesser Man, marked by a pile of stones and twisted metal, with Little Man beyond it.
Little Girl and Little Boy lead the way
It’s windy up there, with lots of flapping ear action
Looking back at Lesser Man..
And forward toward Little Man
We now rejoined the main path to the summit of Skiddaw. Thanks to the high wind and many groups of grazing sheep, it got pretty wooffy up there.
The remaining walk to the summit was easy going, if cold. We passed a few little cairns and improvised shelters on the way, and as I stopped to take photographs I fell behind.
By the time I approached the final rise I’d completely lost sight of Susan and our two Beagles. I took out the camera and zoomed in on what appeared to be another adhoc shelter, and suddenly a Beagle head popped up into view. After a second it disappeared, to be replaced by another Beagle head at a different point along the “wall”. This second Beagle bonce also disappeared and I had to wait through several more iterations of Whac-A-Beagle before I saw them both together.
Susan was sensibly huddled inside the windbreak, but Beanie & Biggles’ insatiable curiosity compelled them to keep trying to venture up and over the stones.
To give you an idea of just how windy it was up there, take a look at Biggles’ mouth-malfunction. It reminds me of Space 1999, where they represented intense gravity by blowing a strong hairdryer in the actors’ faces.
The summit..
And one of the views from it
Needless to say we soon headed back down, but this time I took charge of our two intrepid adventurers. All those scree paths that had been so easy on the way up became treacherous slides on the way down with Beanie & Biggles doing their best to pull me over, and I started to feel that maybe Skiddaw was an appropriate name for this mountain after all.
A brief moment of calm before the frenzied pulling begins again!
The next day the weather gave us rain, and lots of it. We filled the morning by visiting Aira Force, which had clearly benefited from all the extra water that was now feeding it.
I like posing for photos but make sure you’re holding me tight, Mum!
We retreated to the caravan and hoped the rain would die down..
Just so we’re clear, I’m not going out in that rain again, OK?
Just as we reached the decision to brave the downpour once more, it abruptly ended, and we spent a very pleasant late afternoon in Whinlatter Forest.
Apparently our Beagles quite like swings!
Next day, we managed a quick trip to Castlerigg stone circle. I was half expecting Biggles to cock his leg against the stones, but he and Beanie were oblivious to them, preferring instead to roll in the plentiful sheep poo on the site. I got a few shots of the stones as a grey clouds made empty threats of more rain, and then exposed a little more of our “Mighty Oak” car air freshener (to combat the twin Beagle air defresheners) before we headed back home.
