The Joys Of The Open Fell

By An Old Rambler.

“I have loved the sunlight as dearly as any alive.”

There still remain in our Club some men that have not fallen captive to the allurements of cragwork and to whom an ice-axe is not a symbol potent to raise happy memories; men who without undue elation can receive an invitation to share those recondite and specialised discomforts which appear to constitute so large a proportion of the attractions of a pot-holing expedition ‑ who only accept such an invitation in a spirit chastened by knowledge of what it involves, just for the good of the side, or who can, on occasion, even decline it.

Several times of late the writer in the company of such members has listened ‑ not without sympathy ‑ to the plaint that “nobody walks nowadays for the sake of the walk only; climbing and pot-holing occupy all the spare time of those fellows one could once rely on for a week-end tramp”; and so on.  Unfettered speech (which, alas! may not here be quoted verbatim) like a mountain stream in flood is poured on those wights who leave the open and the sky to go burrowing underground ‑ “You get indescribably filthy: eat anything that comes to hand, usually scented with naphtha and flavoured with candles and cave dirt ‑ or go without food altogether because the man in charge of it has either dropped it down the hole, or left it behind ‑ and, finally, you come out soaked to the skin, ghastly tired, and say you’ve had a ripping good day!  A poor game, I call it, compared with the grand tramps we used to have.”  While one can but feel that the holders of these opinions lose much that a wider sympathy would confer upon them, thoughtful consideration admits some justice in their plea and makes more vivid many cherished memories of days spent in fell walking.

Casting memory back to the early days of the Club before the development of the ‘mere fell-walker’ into the climber had taken place ‑ as has happened with so many of us ‑ the recollections of a long tale of days afield bring pleasure, and from among a multitude of wanderings certain days stand out bright and shining, their lustre scarcely dimmed by the passage of time.  Why such eminence should be so specially their attribute is somewhat difficult to explain.  Their elements were present on many other occasions that are but grey and flat by comparison.

The open fell, one’s chosen friends for company, and the day before one were, and are, common factors of such days; and yet, if any one of the men who shared the walks whose joys are but faintly suggested herein were asked what was the best day’s walk he ever had, it is almost certain that one of these would be cited in answer.

A dozen years ago three of us took the opportunity afforded by an Easter holiday to spend a day on the hills.  We left Leeds at 6-0 a.m. (we were enthusiastic enough to consider rising at five o’clock convenient) in spite of the fact that on the way to the railway station our maiden attempt at tying up a newly acquired rucksack ‑ knapsacks were just ‘going out’ ‑ resulted in its untying itself, turning upside down and distributing impartially over a considerable area of badly lighted road our day’s food, spare articles of clothing and the other usual trifles which serve as ballast to the Rambler.

At about half-past eight we stepped out of the train at Dent station into an air of tingling crystal.  Down the dale we went, stopping for second breakfast, or first lunch, by one of the prettiest bits of its beautiful beck.  What though our food had acquired a lurking and subtle bouquet of rubber solution from the interior of that same new sack ‑ we cared not!

Leaving the road and taking to the moor we rose quickly towards the top of Gragreth, on whose ridge stands the County Stone marking the junction of Yorkshire, Lancashire and Westmorland.

In the valleys Spring’s first delicate traces were just beginning to show, but Winter lingered on the high ground.  On we went, now over bents and ling, now plunging through snow drifts, to Gragreth’s top.  The air had that curious thin keenness so noticeable to townspoiled lungs and its bracing stimulus sent us along at a rare pace.  Eyes so long cramped by narrow bounds of bricks and mortar gratefully scanned the familiar windswept expanse.  Spirits were high and the stir of Spring was in our blood.

From Gragreth we crossed Kingsdalehead in a gradually warming air to Whernside, and from the highest point of its long whaleback raced down to Ribblehead.  Then a sturdy trudge down the road in a beautiful clear twilight brought us to Horton with just time to catch our train.

There seems little in such a simply spent day of about twenty miles of cross-country walking to single it out for golden remembrance; yet the sun and the wind that cool, sweet breath of the hills which never fails to bring content to their lover ‑so subtly wrought upon one and all that to this day each man treasures the memory as of a time when the Gods gave out happiness without stint.

In the earliest days of the Club the ‘three peak walk’ loomed large.  To tread the round of Ingleborough, Whernside and Penyghent was distinctly a thing to be done, and a rare good walk it is.  But in time it got hackneyed and some of us, growing blasé, cast about for variety and extension.  To this end, one week-end in August, 1893 (the years of that period seem now to have had a vastly greater number of week-ends than do these later ones!) three members foregathered at Kirkby Malham, and on a misty morning set forth at 6-15, hoping to sleep that night at Dent after walking over Fountains Fell and Gragreth in addition to the traditional trio.

As we passed through Malham and by the Cove the mists hung dense around us to the top of the hill.  Malham Tarn gleamed faintly, mirage-like, then more clearly, until by the time the curious, tarn-besprinkled top of Fountains Fell was reached the sun had conquered and with the brightness came serenity, for with good weather we had no doubt of the issue of the day.

By this time we had got well into our stride and swung rapidly across Silverdalehead to the summit of Penyghent.  The glorious purple bloom of the heather ‑ then at the height of its splendour ‑ clothing the flanks of our old friend Ingleborough drew us straight across country to its honeyed fragrance.  So straight, indeed, in our eagerness, that the existence of the Ribble was forgotten until we drew near its bank and a fordable place had to be found.  During the crossing, a sharp stone cut into a bare foot and in the ensuing struggle to recover balance a pair of hobnailers slipped from the hand of a whirling arm and described a parabola ending in a splash.  They were ‘marked down’ but when the spot was reached they had disappeared.  Weighty though they were the rapid stream had carried them off.  One was soon found, but the joy inspired by its recovery was short-lived and gradually gave place in the mind of its owner to gloomy visions of a journey home shod in a hobnailed boot and a carpet slipper borrowed from the nearest inn ‑ two miles away down the dale.  For nearly an hour we three chilly mortals patrolled the stream in search of the lost boot, and intimate acquaintance with almost every stone in a considerable length of its bed was acquired before the boot was found.  Dreary forebodings were now dispersed and when one good fellow, emphasising a feeble crow of triumph with a flourish of the arm which upset his equilibrium, dropped bodily into the stream, our normal out‑door condition of unregenerate mirth was completely restored, and as soon as we had fitted him up with dry underclothing from the contents of our sacks we were afoot again.

From Ingleborough’s cairn to the top of Whernside is the least interesting part of the walk and we did not linger over it.  From Whernside’s highest point we trotted down to Kingsdalehead hoping to get to the top of Gragreth before the menace of an impending storm could be fulfilled.  But just that one thing was denied us.

Although fairly weather-seasoned and not easily daunted by the elements the torrential downpour which now commenced and in five minutes wetted us to the skin was beyond a jest.  Darkness too came with the mist and rain, effectually blotting out the landscape; so on reaching the road we of compulsion set our faces towards Dent and fought our way as fast as we could lay foot to ground through as wild a storm of wind and rain as the writer ever faced.

By the time the hospitable doors of the ‘Sun’ had admitted us it would have been difficult to match our drenched and miry condition, but neither that nor our thirteen and a half hours’ tramp damped our high spirits.  The clothes lent by the good folk of the house made us feel but puny creatures compared with the stalwart men of the dales.  The picture of three oddly garbed figures variously disposed on six chairs rises at the recollection of the evening closing a day marked with a white stone for remembrance of its full content and good fellowship.

One more outstanding day of simple pleasure before these lines end.

Four men of the Club wandered far and wide in Lakeland during twelve days of wet, wetter and wettest weather in 1894.  The thirteenth day, which by superstitious canon ought to have far exceeded its predecessors in spitefulness, dawned brilliantly clear.  The wind was in the north, the air of that transcendent clearness which so often follows ‑ and precedes ‑ heavy rain, and that land of happiest memories looked its loveliest and best.

It was the first fine morning since our arrival at Wasdale Head where we had fumed in impatient discontent for several days; the misty lid of that pipkin had never lifted nor had the rain ceased during that time.  We went first to the Pillar Fell : by the aid of Prior’s little Guide and its diagram we found the easy way up the Pillar Rock and managed to get up and down safely though how long we spent over it is best left untold.  We were just beginning the transition period and thought no little of the feat.

Thence away eastward over Looking Stead and Kirk Fell to Great Gable.  What a day, and what a view from that finest vantage ground in Lakeland!  And there we lingered long to let memory gather food for cheer on duller days, the air like wine and in our ears the music of the flooded streams rising to us from the valley and the channelled slopes beyond.  So long we stayed that only late evening saw us descend Rossett Ghyll into Langdale.

Such is the tale, inadequately told, but understandable enough to those lovers of the hills whose affection is not a cramped thing.  They were days whose memories are cherished not for any one reason alone ‑ all good things combined to make their excellence ‑ but if for one thing more than another they deserve remembrance it is for the sake of the men who shared them.  The friendships of those early days are still intact and rank high among the things that sweeten life.

Since those days of small beginnings increased knowledge of the high places of the earth has shown other and more adventurous joys.  The crags and the snows at home and abroad have claimed their share of homage and have given that gladness which is the reward of the true worshipper, whilst days and nights have been spent in exploring the caves and pot-holes which honeycomb our Yorkshire fells.  There have been days of higher achievement and keener excitement than those here recorded; other days when foul weather and difficult climbing have combined to test our manhood; and, yet again, days of defeat.  But all things that the hills give are good and all their memories are excellent, and it is not unfitting that some of the simpler joys should find a place in the records of a Club so catholic in spirit as our own, a Club, moreover, which owes its’ existence, largely, to the desire of union felt by men who understood well the goodliness of such rovings afield.