Borrowdale 2006

It’s that time of year again and a small but select group of members made their way north to partake in the annual Borrowdale meet over the Bank Holiday weekend ending on the 1^st of May. I didn’t make the best of starts by leaving my Borrowdale guidebook in the pub the night before and had to fall back on my old 1978 guidebook. By late afternoon on Friday Phil and I were at Shepherd’s Crag taking advantage of the spring sunshine to get in a couple of nice routes. Later we gathered in the bar of the Scafell Hotel for drinks and later still in the large communal tent which Martin had brought with him. On Saturday morning after coffee and bacon baps from the café at the foot of Shepherd’s Crag we made our way to the Brown Slabs area and gave Laura and Steve the experience of their first ever routes on real rock.

Later the group split with 2 ropes of 3 taking on 2 adjacent routes in the Jackdaw Ridge area of the crag with Rob leading 3 pitches (now you don’t see that very often), nice one Rob. Meanwhile I decided it was time to take on a notorious Shepherd’s E1 test piece called the Bludgeon and kept the half dozen or so on-lookers on Little Chamonix well entertained with my antics before finally making it to the top. Again the weather had been superb and well satisfied with the day’s activities we retired to the campsite to meet up with Christine and Tom and spent a long evening eating and drinking. Sheffield Mountaineering Club’s fire juggling activities of the previous year had been replaced by light sticks, no doubt due to some unfortunate drinking related fire accident. On the Sunday morning all feeling a little worse for wear (at least I was) I decided that it would be nice to make a mass ascent of the classic severe Troutdale Pinnacle on Black Crag.

After worrying that we might get caught up with other parties we managed get ourselves entangled, at one point seven of us being on the stance at the top of the first pitch together. It became obvious that the plan had been a little over ambitious and we decided an orderly retreat was in order but all credit to Laura and Steve (in trainers!) who had both managed the tricky first pitch. In what was left of the afternoon we returned to the campsite and on a small outcrop setup top ropes and an abseil for a practice and instructional session.

Another refreshment session followed in the pub at Rosthwaite and a Happy Birthday rendition for Steve, who was going to be 21 on 2^nd May.

Most of the group had chosen to walk there via the footpath alongside the river, arriving after an amusing (not for Rob) farmer and sheep related incident that can’t be repeated in print. On the Monday morning the Bank Holiday weather had arrived (twas ever thus) and having rained for most of the night it persisted into the morning. However Christine wasn’t going to let a bit of drizzle (or a prolonged downpour) put her off and led 5 of the group on a walk into the hills above Derwent Water and despite the damp end all agreed it had been a cracking weekend. The final comedy moment was given to us when Rob (who else?) drove into the only boulder on the whole campsite field, the car’s fine but the boulder’s a write off.