For newcomers

At the bottom of each post there is the word "comments". If you click on it you will see comments made by followers, and if you follow the instructions you may also comment and I always welcome that. I have found many people overlook this part of the blog which is often more interesting than the original post!

My blog nick-name is SIR HUGH. I'm not from the aristocracy - my middle name is Hugh which relates to the list of 282 hills in Scotland compiled by Sir Hugh Munro in 1891. I climbed my last one (Sgurr Mor) on 28th June 2009

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Saturday 5 November 2016

A bit of tidying up

What a good little outing arising from a prick of conscience. I have many times visited Hutton Roof which name describes a large plateau of limestone six or seven kilometres square with the village of the same name nestling beneath. There is a line of small crags which provide excellent one pitch climbs on a summer's evening which I frequented some years ago in my climbing days, and I have ranged all over tracking down Geoacaches. There is also a trig point which I visited when I was embarked on my trig campaign for that OS sheet, consequently I had, more recently, ticked it off as a qualifying Marilyn.

Recent conversation with Mick and Gayle informed me that the true summit is 110 metres from the trig bearing 64 degrees and 0.6m higher! I might well have trampled over that point at some time but couldn't be sure, and today was blue sky and the best of autumn so I had a double motive for the walk.

I ascended from the quarry car park at SD 552 761. On the summit I met a couple with a border terrier. It turned out they had bought the dog from people who breed them living only a few hundred yards from me in Arnside. Those people were also the same who gave me a lift back from Longsleddale  when I lost my car keys bum-sliding down the fell-side in October 2012 - one of my more self deprecating anecdotes  CLICK HERE TO READ POST.

Having given this couple a bit of directional advice (they had no map or compass) I paced out the 110metres to the grassy lump posing as the true summit then returned to the trig. All of a sudden there was a sort of whoosh behind me and a collie dog came flying through the air and landed on top of the trig - I am not making this up. The dog was followed by two more collies, all very friendly, but less ambitious to leap onto the trig. Their owner appeared and he turned out to be an enthusiastic walker and  very amenable, and we chatted for quite some time about our walking experiences, and our good fortune to live in such a splendid environment.

I decided to drive back on nerve-racking  narrow country lanes with few passing places and much grass growing in the middle. As I descended to Cawthorpe I had to pull in for a large 4 x 4 coming the other way heading for the worrying narrow lanes I had come from. The lady driver stopped and wound down the window, "we're not from around here, can we get to Lake Windermere up here?" I was just dumbfounded - how could anybody think that they may be remotely heading for our largest lake in England over sixteen miles away (even in a straight line) up this road which is not much more than a surfaced cart track. I often wonder what happens to people like this after my encounter.

Wonderful limestone country walking

A bit of a zoom back to the trig from the supposed highest point

Any walk within a radius of thirty miles from my home gives a good chance of seeing Ingleborough




The bottom red dot shows where I met the 4 x 4 and the top one is on Lake Windermere which is probably twenty miles away by road

5 comments:

  1. I bet you had been over that lump, 100m from the trig, before, at least once.

    Good to see the walking poles made their way back to you so as to be in shot in your summit snap.

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  2. Gah! I did type 110m. My phone decided I meant 100m. This time it decided I meant 11am, but I was paying more attention and caught it.

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  3. Gayle - I actually counted paces and allowing for my stride being a bit less than a metre it was more or less spot on 110m., and debatably apparent that it was marginally higher than the trig, although I reckon the top of the trig would be the highest point, but artificial.

    I bet you haven't told me that there's a list of Marilyns in France?

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  4. Good to have 10 minutes with you on Saturday.

    Fly was back to his trig-point jumping up on a slightly snowy Coniston Old Man yesterday!

    Clive Shelley

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  5. Clive S. - welcome to the blog. I wish I could leap onto a trig like Fly. I think the name is appropriate because at my first encounter with him he was hurtling through mid-air - very impressive.

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