Lake District Hut Meet

28^th – 30^th October 2005

by Dave Stevenson

The base for this meet was the Cleveland Mountaineering Club’s Agnes Spencer Memorial Hut in Patterdale. The number of attendees was lower than for previous meets this year with only six of us making it along, but those who did all enjoyed it very much, despite the weather not being too good.

Nigel travelled up early on Friday, armed  with the hut key. The rest of us – myself, Dave J, Graham W and new faces Ben and Wendy – all travelled up on Friday evening and by great coincidence arrived within 10 minutes of each other in the White Lion pub, Patterdale just after 10 PM, no sign of Nigel though. Nigel finally appeared about 11:00. It turned out that after he had walked up to Grisedale Tarn in strong winds he had been in the pub for quite a while before going back to the hut for a bit. It was fortunate for the rest of us he had already found the hut and was able to lead us to it as it is hidden from the main road down a track. The hut already had eight athletic looking people from the Cleveland Club in residence who had come up prior to taking part in a two-day mountain marathon in the vicinity. They left early Saturday morning and we didn’t see them again. (We were glad not to be bivvying out like them on Saturday night!)

Saturday dawned drizzly with low cloud. The six of us set off walking from the hut to climb Fairfield via St Sunday’s crag (by the walking route up the main ridge as it was too wet and windy for us to want to take in the famous scramble there). Although the rain stopped and the cloud lifted to some extent the top was very much in clag, but an enjoyable walk nevertheless with good views both on the way up and down. Following this, a very pleasant evening was spent partly at the White Lion and partly back at the hut, where the solid fuel stove got the place really hot. We found the hut itself to be comfortable and as it is also well situated at the foot of some good hills, we agreed we would definitely consider a revisit there.

On Sunday it was very windy and also raining again. Nigel opted to go home but the rest of us drove over to the foot of Blencathra and set out walking up the valley from there that leads towards the top, in pretty wild conditions. We turned round after about an hour, having enjoyed being out in the fresh air but not wanting to linger for too long. After a final cuppa in the pub near to the start of the walk, we bade our farewells and went our separate ways early afternoon.