The Lake District (UK)

Ok, this post is for a good colleague who is plannig a trip to this area. :-)

I went to Honister Slate Mines in the Lake District in Cumbria north in England almost two years ago. The plan was to do a via ferrata tour there and then afterwards hike towards the highest peak in England, Scafell Pike at 978 meters above sea level.

The view from the start of the via ferrata route. Beautiful light, but freezing cold!

We spent the first night at a youth hostel near Keswick. We were discussing a bit on our way there if they would let us in or not, as we are no longer students and were uncertain if we were in the "youth"-category anymore. This concern was wasted energy, as it turned out we pulled down the average age with about 60 years or so!! No need to be concerned about lack of sleep due to late night partying, as almost everyone staying there were well past retirement age! Guess the "youth"-term is stretch quite far these days.... haha... Anyway, these old people had done a lot of hiking in the area, so they had some good advise for us youngsters, which they were happy to share! Only thing was that the most eager of them did not hear a damn thing, so he never heard where we had planned to hike, he therefore explained us routes for completely different areas. Oh well, the info might come in handy one day!

"Via ferrata" is latin for "iron way" and was used during WW1 for soldiers to transport themselves over the mountains. It is iron steps in the mountain side, and it is now secured with a wire and you are attached with a climbing harness at all times. Perfectly safe!

"Don't look down!" Yeah, that's easier said than done if you ask me!

It was quite steep at times and a few of the iron steps were a bit loose - not very comforting!

The via ferrata is not compliacated, and you do not have to have any climbing experience. It does however help not to be terrified of hights... This year, Honister Slate Mines has also opened a new route that is supposed to be a bit more extreme than the one we took.

The last part to the top, then through a bit of the mines,
before we hiked back down on the other side of the mountain.

Beautiful view from the top.

After we had finished the via ferrata tour, we started to walk along the road down from the mines. This was a bit further than we had thought, but luckily, a nice guy drove by and we hitch hiked with him. He could also give us some valuable tip on where we could put our tent. So we followed the locals' advise and started the hike towards this famous peak. It was a bit late in the afternoon, but the weather was ok, to start with.

The valley we started our hike in towards Scafell Pike.

 As we got closer to the peak, the weather got colder, the fog came and then it started snowing. We decided the most prudent thing was to set camp and they try for the peak the day after instead. The night was freezing cold, and we were not prepared for such cold weather. We did not get a very good sleep laying there in the cold tent in the snow.



We camped just below the peak.

The day after we woke to the same weather and no visibility at all, so we decided to skip the top, hike back down and head back to London. When we reached the main road, we got a ride with a some very nice exchange students that had been on the via ferrata trip that day. They had not seen a thing due to the fog!



Somewhere hidden in the fog was the top of the mountain.

The hike towards Scafell Pike is not difficult, and there are several different routes one can take, some longer than others. The hike towards the top was very nice, I can however not say anything about the top, as we unfortunately never made it there. Guess I just have to go back one day...