Scafell Pike.

Well, as previously mentioned, there has been some (silly) talk (not even involving alcohol) of doing the Three Peaks Challenge later in the summer. I have long since convinced myself that going uphill is not in my nature so thought I better have a few practice runs to find out if I should be the one volunteering myself to be the driver and to not bother with the hills. (However Mark had already suggested this and been given "the look" so the pressure was on not to be the dead weight on the hillside!)

We decided to climb Scarfell Pike today and got a fabulous day for it. Foggy when driving over but beautiful blue skies the whole way up. We were treated to an air display by the RAF and Mountain rescue were out and about, and giving us a cheery wave! The climb up was ideal in that it was all uphill, none of the silly going down just to come back up, it also meant the downhill was genuinely that, all downhill - yay!!

I only had one wee wobble when we got to the last 600ft and I was faced with a patch of compacted snow, slipped down 20ft on my backside and Mark got out the ice axe... errr did I sign up for climbing with an ice axe? I thought this was a tourist route, with sign posts and coffee shops, oh and a loo? However Mark got me over the slippy bit and soon we were at the top, two lads climbing up after us thanked Mark for the path as it saved them getting out their crampons (crampons??? I thought the wooly hat was being organised!!) I felt quite good on the top of the hill as everyone else looked like rather serious hill climbers, though yes, some I was giving thirty years to... but still! You can also see from the photos that I may well have had a small advantage in that I carried the camera and nothing else and Mark carried my warm clothing (I don't like to be cold), chocolate (lots) and all the water.