Ten years ago right now — at precisely 11 a.m. on May the 5th, 2005 — I was taking my first steps on an amazing journey. At the time it didn't feel like very much, but in a very real sense that journey continues to this day, and maybe I never left the trail at all.
Background
Between 2002 and 2005 I was a lowland walker. I walked hundreds of miles through the forests, across the heaths and along the coastlines of Suffolk, but I only rarely ventured into the hills. I was not a hillwalker, although I wanted to be one.
In late 2005 I had a place at the University of East Anglia coming up, and I had the idea that this would spell the end of my wanderings. I wanted to do one last big trip while I still could. The trip acquired a code name: the terminal trek. I planned to do a hell of a lot of walking and visit the tops of as many Lakeland fells as possible in twenty days, transforming myself from a rambler to a hillwalker in the process.
So, on the 5th of May 2005, I found myself slogging up the Walna Scar Pass towards Dow Crag in horizontal rain and 40 mph winds. I had a cheap non-breathable waterproof coat, a decidedly non-waterproof rucksack, and had never heard of gaiters.
Say hello to the eighteen-year-old Alex Roddie:
Are we nearly there yet? |
View of the mountain from my camp |
Another very cold morning. Most of my clothes are still damp, which means I am forced to stay inside my sleeping bag to keep warm. My boots are the real problem: a lot of water got into them by the ankle cuffs yesterday, and they haven't dried out yet. How am I supposed to go anywhere if my boots are wet? I can't risk getting these socks wet as well. I only have another five spare pairs.It makes me smile. It was, of course, the first step of a long learning process in the mountains, and ten years later I'm still learning.
May started cold and wet that year. Over the following week I frequently encountered torrential rain, sleet, snow, the lot — more like April in Scotland. Nevertheless, the weather did improve, and I moved my base of operations into Langdale.
The Langdale Pikes |
My first glimpse of the Scafells |
Great End |
Base camp at the Barn Door Shop Campsite, Wasdale Head. This tent was a TNF Particle 13 — not a bad tent, but heavy by modern standards and tricky to get a perfect pitch. |
View from the Westmorland Cairn |
How the trip changed me
Looking at the numbers, the trip was nothing spectacular. In twenty days I climbed twenty fells and walked 160 miles — certainly no marathon. However, this trip was greater than the sum of its parts, and in the course of those twenty days I fully transitioned from a lowland walker to a hillwalker. The experience was profound, and many of the lessons I learned in that month still yield benefits today.
So was it the 'terminal trek', as I feared at the time? Absolutely not. It was not the end. It was the beginning — the first step along a bigger trail and a better path.
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