The first leg of an excellent adventure, in the pipeline since before the virus, with many moving parts. Wouldn’t it be embarrassing if we ballsed it up right at the start?
Paul and I arrive at the Moot Hall at 07:45, dressed in our stripy club vests like a pair of escaped convicts. There’s loads of time before our scheduled 08:00 start. We can’t get near the Hall, it’s covered in scaffolding and surrounded by market stalls. It feels like the building has finally developed a defence mechanism after years of attention from fell runners – enough already!
We have a few minutes before the start and we each choose to mark this special occasion in our own personal way – Paul heads off to the loo (a reassuring expensive experience at 40p, if you don’t choose to jump the turnstile) while I grab a vegan sausage roll from Greggs. We check the tracker is warmed up and see the minutes count down on the watch. Then set off bang on 08:00.
Now I appreciate you are a busy person and there’s reports from other legs to read, plus I want to eat my tea, so I’ll keep this brief. I can sum leg 1 up as follows:
Weather – warm, light breeze, excellent visibility.
Latrigg – the first of many, found the top, confidence is restored.
High Rigg – easy top with a bit of bushwacking through the bracken on the descent to A591.
Walla Crag – A mini plateau by the lake.
Bleaberry – it does look a bit like that.
High Seat – quite comfortable.
Raven Crag – there were no ravens.
High Tove – a bit of a slog, no idea what a tove is (will google later).
Ambroth – kinda just sitting there like it got stuck in the bog.
Great Crag – quite craggy and moderately great (at least when viewed from the east). A nice complex of tops.
Grange fell – some nice folding in the bedrock at the summit. Another bracken descent.
Castle Crag – there was no castle, a quarry instead and a nice little climb. The one way race to the top sounds fun.
Borrowdale school changeover – we hand over to Martin & Duncan a whole 15 seconds early on our 6h30m schedule.
1 down, 23 to go!
