Words & Photos Ian Battersby

September 15 2011

Heavy dew saturated the grassy path that led me to the summit of Seat Sandal, where I sat among the rock-eating breakfast in a silent pre-dawn. Many familiar fells that run along the western skyline were poised to greet the sun’s glowing curtain of amber light, which would draw down their eastern faces into hiding dales. I dropped steeply into the gloomy shadows of Grisedale Hause, and began toiling up the worn-out path towards Fairfield as warming rays lifted dew into cloud that hovered alongside the rocky tops. 

The summit came just in time. Groups of fells in the west became islands isolated in a rising sea of haze, and I glimpsed St Sunday Crag and the cliffs that finger north from Fairfield’s east ridge, before tendrils of creeping cloud slipped between, finally swamping the top.

After waiting in vain for the cloud to clear, I moved off through the milky mist, with blue sky hovering overhead and the song of larks accompanying my journey. 

By Great Rigg the cloud had lifted further, and beneath it a haze softened the drying earth. The clouds appeared almost ghostly, turning the landscape into a pastel dreamscape. A peregrine cut through the thin shroud, eyeing me as it passed the verdant crest, and then craftily vanishing into blinding sun.

Rydal Fell allowed a veiled view of Windermere, gently curling into the bright oblivion of hazy sky and imagined sea. Looking at the land from here I noticed numerous ridges reaching like tendrils towards the lengthy lake, as I dropped towards the knotted rocky outcrops above Nab Scar, where the ridge tumbled headlong into Rydal Water. Across the water Loughrigg Fell raised its cluttered top, still tanned with last year’s bracken, and contrasting with the green of woods that surrounded Grasmere’s puddle of sky. Even from here I could hear the distant calls of resident geese. I dropped further, hypnotised by 40 gulls spiralling with ease on hot air rising over the ridge, before entering woods that echoed to the laughter of a woodpecker. 

Grasmere provided lunch, and Steel Fell presented the test to burn it off. The climb was painless enough, up a grassy crest to a top supported on crags, from where thin mist limited views towards Grasmere and Seat Sandal (bizarrely the only other time I’ve visited this top was in almost identical conditions, with only the highest tops reaching out of a hazy inversion). 

The burn came on the descent. A faint, unmarked path, difficult to find in mist, dropped steeply to the left of a stream through the crags, just before the boundary line. This was followed by a thigh-busting plunge to Dunmail Raise and the end of a hazily memorable day.

Distance: 19km/12 miles Ascent: 1500m/4900ft Time: 8-9 hours Start/finish: Dunmail Raise (GR: NY 327116) Maps: Ordnance Survey 1:50,000 Landranger sheet 90 (Penrith & Keswick); Harvey Maps 1:25,000 Superwalker, Lakeland Central Tourist information: Ambleside, 01539 432582 Public transport: Trains to Windermere, buses to Grasmere; information from Traveline, 0871 2002233, www.traveline.org.uk

Technical Spec
Take path east-north-east to Grisedale Tarn. From here choose path south climbing Seat Sandal then drop steeply east-north-east to Grisedale Hause. Climb Fairfield via path east. Then take path south along the ridge, dropping over Great Rigg, Rydal Fell and Heron Pike to Nab Scar. From Nab Scar, take path south-east to Rydal Hall, then bridleway (the “Coffin Route”) west-north-west for 2km then lane and B5287 into Grasmere and past the shops. Take Easedale Road north-west for 750m, then lanes north to Helmside Farm. Climb track north-west up Steel Fell then head north-north-east along ridge for 500m. From here there’s a very steep descent to the left of the stream along a faint path to Dunmail Raise.