Jopplety How Adventure

Tuesday, and we decided to climb the Grange Fell Wainwright. But Grange Fell is just a large area packed with weirdly named summits like Esther Knott and Jopplety How. None of these, please note, is actually called Grange Fell. Hmmm... According to the map, Ether Knott is the highest summit, but Wainwright himself opts for Brund Fell.

Being independent-minded, we decided to climb Jopplety How, mainly because it has the weirdest name. If we managed to get up this, we'd take things from there

The day started well because we were up early enough to snag a parking place in the NT car park at Rosthwaite. We'd also timed things just late enough to find the tea room at Watendlath open. I can recommend the home-made gingerbread!

Refreshed, we took a quick poll on exactly where to find Jopplety How and set off with minimal confidence up a fellside packed with disturbingly complex features. Fortunately, these eventually resolved themselves into a clear track beside a wall that seemed to know where it was going, so we followed it.

A good mile or so later, a prominent summit appeared to our left, and so we climbed it. Was this Jopplety How? The OS mapping app told us"no" and suggested we look a bit farther north. Fair enough. Things now became clear. On the other side of a ladder stile reared a splendid turret of naked grey rock. Jopplety How. But could we actually climb it? I mean - just look at this - what do you think?

Frankly, I had my doubts - and perhaps would have had quite a few more if I'd ever thought to check out this"Secret Garden" video (click the lower of the two embedded video links). Yes, it turns out that Jopplety How is quite a favourite with proper rock climbers.

Ignorant of all this, but having enough sense to realise that a frontal assault was suitable only for battle-hardened SAS types, we had a look around the back and found a thin track that got us safely about halfway to the top. But thereafter, "thin" turned to "sketchy" - a ten-foot section of steep, slabby rock generally devoid of the sort of generous ledges that sensible folk would demand. But the top was in sight, so....

It was a small summit, and took, I would say, all of two seconds to fully explore. Worse still, it was now glaringly obvious that Grange Fell is quite a bit higher.

So down we went, except that the slab that had looked "sketchy" on the way up now looked more like "suicidal". I found myself wondering if it was better to ring Mountain Rescue now or wait until we'd actually had our accident. But things always look worse than you imagine, of course, and we were soon back on solid ground with no harm done beyond another dent in one's self-confidence.

Brund Fell turned out to be much more civilised and genuinely enjoyable. One was happy to accept Wainwright's choice. After all, a Wainwright has to be what Wainwright said it was. And, anyway, Ether Knott was much too far away.

We topped our day off with a quick "out and back" to King's How, where we somberly watched the Rescue helicopter land down by the lake while an ambulance screamed up the road from Keswick.

As we gratefully took the easy path back to Rosthwaite, a cuckoo was sounding off continually somewhere in the trees ahead. I could have cheerfully shot it. The last thing you need is an avian critic - as far as I was concerned, it had been an excellent day!

TallPaul and beth like this post