Buckden Pike

07/01/12

Top Mere Road topped off with snow.Cold breathe condensing in the darkness just before dawn.Dog scatty with excitment and legs pumping steeply uphill out of Kettlewell into a winter day on an old favourite.Buckden Pike.

I've lost my half descent winter coat and have been using a fairly lightweight summery effort which seems to be keeping out wind and cold in a fashion.I knew today up here the wind chill would be pretty evil so the fact I'd also lost my bombproof winter hat and was using one of the kids further weakened my defences plus I looked dafter than usual too.

Watching the sun struggle vaguely over my Eastern horizon whilst thick bruised cloud belted in thuggishly from the West to mug her as she got out of bed I forgot about the cold.The landscape had drawn me in and I was absorbed by the struggle willling on my fragile sun.

In theory daylight follows dawn but I watched dawn disappear and an almost dusk like light fall as those black Western clouds inked out the day for a few more minutes of night.

Light and dark became today's story.A violent contrast between the two. Ever changing speed dating weather.

With the dark episodes came hail like shotgun lead on a lean into wind.Not good on eyeballs.My lost hat has a peak which would have kept it off.My kids replacement opened the door and let it in.Kept my mind off my draughty coat.

With the light came poetry of snow plastered hills.Black drystone walls etching out contours,distant glimpses of coming weather or summer walks and the hulky shoulders of the Pike above.We'd have some fun up there.

Lie of the land and walls was set against us on the way up and there was no good shelter to stop.The need for a brew found us half out the wind against a wall surround by frozen soft rush.

A cold jog followed up and away onto the moorland ridge which rises from an empty area of bog and heather.Now behind a high stone wall I weather watched a while as black dark and yellow light chased each other in an endless race to the North Sea.

The top was a place to leave as quickly as it was possible to do so.

Back down in the dale we wandered through muddy fields from Buckden back down to Kettlewell.Looking upwards often at the wind and snow above.