OK, so it looked dark and there were a few drops of rain bouncing off the windscreen on the way over, but, driving up to the car park above Coniston, the clouds cleared and all looked good to go. Walking up, as we left the corpse road and turned toward Goat's Water, aside from a little apprehension on Sue's part, the sun was in the sky and all was good below. It was completely understandable that Sue was wondering "what if I can't do this?", given her climbing experience to date - once on the Keswick Wall, once to Buckstone Howe (aborted before we got off the ground), once to Kern Knotts (aborted half way up our route followed by helicopter evac. of injured climber from adjacent route) and now, here we are, strolling up to a 460' multi-pitch. The wind was rising as we sat under Goat Crag, drank coffee and worked out the line of the route - Giants Crawl, graded Difficult and leading virtually to the summit of Dow Crag.
Dow Crag and Giants Crawl
The stretcher box is at the foot of the crag; there are 5 climbers in shot...
Off we go; closely followed by another team, an instructor and client on his second outing on rock. Good craic with the other team, but s...l...o...w with ropes crossing, leaders jockeying for position and cramped belay ledges. Eventually Sue arrived on belay as the others lead off on the second half of the long gangway seen in the photo. Bless, she was frozen, so it was time to move, down by abseil rather than continuing upwards. Interesting, inviting Sue to ab. off on 30m of rope with a vague suspicion that it might be - how to put this? - possibly more than 30m to the ground....
Thankfully, it wasn't and we had fleece, mitts and cake to help the rewarming process...
Sue starting to warm up(that or she remembered that the cake was still in the rucksack!)
Back in the sun as we headed back to the Walna Scar track; the hills were bone dry having seen no rain for weeks. Odd then, that I took a header into the only patch of wet spagnum moss for miles around. Must take on board Mr Wainwrights suggestion that one stops walking while admiring the view!
As Sue vanishes into the distance, I prepare to flop into a bog....
Ravenglass and the Solway from Corney Fell
Hmmmm.....