Hunting and following hounds on the fell was at best difficult, with the weather ever changing and then there was the terrain, with steep grassy slopes which caused you to gasp with the effort of getting oxygen into your lungs and a chest which felt like it would explode, the calves of your legs screaming for rest, wet boggy ground where you could quite easily go “ower t boot tops“, occasional rivers to cross, and finally the places one encountered known as “steep drops and bad spots”. Although there are dozens of places on the Lakeland fells which qualify for this title, the following are some of most famous. I have at some point or other been on them all, sometimes following hounds sometimes not. These are some of my memories ...

Please do not be silly and use this as any kind of guide to these places! It isn’t, there are proper guide books or trained guides if you feel the need. Don’t go up, have an accident and blame me!! I only “whet” your appetite!!

At the bottom of the page are some selected videos from You Tube - but please note that I don't appear in any of them!!

Jack’s Rake: Pavey Ark in Coniston Foxhound's Country
(For Wendy, who makes it all possible)

The hounds had “found" in Easedale above Grasmere and after a fast hunt has ended up marking at the borran below the huge cliff in Langdale known as “Pavey Ark”. We arrived just as the terriers were being put in; as usual hounds were taken well back and the waiting began. This borran is quite a bad one, well known as a refuge for hunted foxes. In the mid 1930s my Great Uncle Brait had himself a little adventure with some trapped terriers, but that story is for another day.

After a while the fox emerged, glanced around and took off, back towards Sergeant Man, at 2414 feet not the largest fell in the area but a big one all the same, with the hounds in hot pursuit. Soon they all disappeared from view, their music fading. We moved further along the boulder field to keep the hunt in view - suddenly the “music” increased

“Turned t bugger” somebody said,” its garn thru t top o Pavey, better git up theer.” We were now faced with three options, the first two were gullies, the North and Easy Gully respectively. So called by, I think, Wainwright, they lead onto the summit plateau. Basically both a slog onto the top, one on loose scree, the other a path of sorts (well it was in the early 1970s, today it’s as wide as the Motorway).

The third option was Jack’s Rake, a 225 yard long climb diagonally across the crag face, with an ascent of 400 feet. The Rake brings you out near the top of Pavey Ark.

I left the rock I had been standing on fruitlessly scanning the fell side in the forlorn hope that the fox would turn and come back and made for the start of the Rake.

“Don’t like heights,“ my companion said, “se tha on top,” and made off for the nearest gully. I began to climb.

The first recorded ascent of Jack's Rake was by Richard Pendlebury in the 1850’s; this marked the beginning of rock climbing in Great Langdale, following behind the developing sport centred in Wasdale. It’s very probable that shepherds had used it for several hundred years prior to Pendlebury but no record remains. I suspect the men who quarried the Neolithic Axe heads used it as they scrambled around the cliff searching for suitable sites from which to quarry the axe heads. The vein of slate used by them begins on Pavey Ark and continues almost to Scafell Pike.

For me the difficult bit on the Rake comes about 30 yards in, with a climb up a steep rock groove. A couple of years before I'd been “cragfast” (stuck) there for a good hour one afternoon in the snow, trying to climb the Rake alone without a rope, after a day spent wandering around the Langdale Pikes covered in snow, which crunched under your boot, and hardly left a print to mark your progress. Icicles hung from the crags and the air was cold and sharp as you inhaled. There was a blue sky overhead with weak muted sunlight, insufficient to melt the snow to any great degree.

With this day in mind I continued climbing. Basically the Rake is a collection of ascending grooves and after rain these collect water running off the crag above and funnel it towards the ground. The exposure is not as great as you might think as a comforting parapet of rock accompanies you on the left as you ascend the steeper parts; however the water running down was not making it any easier, as my rubber soled boots were slipping from time to time, and the walking stick in my hand an encumbrance I could well have done without.

I climbed on, passing the start of several of the routes Bill and I had climbed a couple of years earlier. Soon the Rake eased off and I reached the pinnacle which marked the top. Turning to the right, it took only a couple of minutes to reach the pile of stones which mark the highest point. There was no sign of my friends from below.

Looking across, I could see the hounds running towards Sergeant Man, flecks of white against the grass slopes now past their best, occasional snatches of music drifted in my direction. My friends from down below appeared, jackets undone and shirts open to the waist, sweat dripping from their faces. I was amazed at how quickly they had come up the gulley.

“Missed out?” one of them asked. “Just running through that larl ghyll, to the right of the top.“ I pointed in the direction of Sergeant Mann. “Hod on a minute, before you sit down.” I licked my finger and held it up. “What the bluddy hell are you doing?” someone asked. "Checking the wind,” I replied, ”want to smell clear mountain air not thy sweaty bodies!”

They sat down. “Bet you move before we do.”

“Why’s that? “I asked.

“Tell him, Jack.”

“Cause your sitting in a big pile of sheep shit!” Jack said, smiling.

Striding Edge: (Ullswater Foxhounds Country)

For Andy, who when we were on the edge one wet, misty Good Friday morning, looked down the thousand feet to Red Tarn when the mist parted briefly and uttered the immortal lines “F*****g hell I don’t like this.”

It was the kind of morning you dreamt of, I’d parked the car and forgoing the rum and coffee at the farm house, climbed high onto the ridge between the vallies, Id seen the hounds loosed into the intake fields, watched them cross the wall and cast around the bracken beds behind, I began to scan the fell using my binoculars A movement in the corner of the field of view became, when I adjusted the focus, a fox moving silently up the fell, I kept him in focus for a good six or seven minutes, as he moved along the sheep trods and around and sometimes up small crags, crossed small becks and generally tried to put as much distance, between himself and the following hounds, who by now had found the line, the music of the hounds animated the huntsman and the sound of his voice and the cracking of his whip, carried up to us on the morning breeze. The overriding memory of watching the fox that morning, was how unconcerned by the hounds he was, covering the ground in a relaxed trot, pausing now and then to look back. If he knew he was being hunted and understood the implication it didn’t show.

I’m sorry to say my running commentary was not well received by the followers standing in the vicinity, “its garn ower t larl beck “I said “which beck?” there’s dozens of the buggers”.It had rained heavily during the previous night and the fellside was awash The fox moved up onto the high fell and we followed into the bad weather.

The rocky ridge disappeared into the mist, swirling around the path. Along the crest, the lichen covered rocks dripped water and shone with the rain, a wind blew intermittently, moving the mist around, and down below to the right was the tarn. But you couldn’t see it. To the left a big drop into the valley below, again hidden. We walked along the crest of the ridge, a large drop on either side. This was Striding Edge on a hunting morning, the hound’s had long since gone to goodness knows where, their music carried to us on the wind until it faded as they increased the distance between us and the bulk of the fell blocked the sound, and we were left in a sea of mist. The hounds had un kennelled a “travelling fox “from another valley which had come to ours with matrimonial intent perhaps the night before. The fox appeared to be travelling right back where it came from and there was little prospect of seeing it anytime soon. We huddled in the lee of a rock on top of the arête for the inevitable discussion about what to do next, “ have to wait for t hunting report int paper” somebody remarked, “ full and detailed report”! It was true no matter how bad the weather or long the run there always seemed to be a detailed account of it in the Westmoreland Gazette the following Friday, this was the late sixties before the paper bowing to political correctness, did away with the hunting fixtures and reports and substituted a picture of a sheep dog at work with an invitation to mark the dogs tail and win a prize. The consensus of opinion that morning was to turn back, too wet to sit and wait to see if anything would happen, for example the hounds would come back and we couldn’t see them anyway if they did because of the mist and Striding Edge is not a place to wander around on especially on a misty wet morning. We descended back to the valley. There was little conversation each lost in his own thought’s, mine as I remember was inwardly cursing the morning, which had begun so well and just as the prospect of a screaming hunt was about to unfold, the weather had closed in and now we were walking down in a mist shrouded world, our boots crunching into the stony track., the click of our metal tipped sticks as they occasionally made contact with a rock.

Striding Edge is the most famous of Lakeland’s “girt drops and bad spots”, the one every walker ticks off his or her list of “things to do” It’s a dangerous place especially in the rain and mist and lethal in ice and snow with a wind blowing, the first recorded fatality was the artist Gough who in 1805 left Patterdale with his dog to cross Helvellyn to fish in Thirlmere Lake on the other side, he fell from the end of Striding Edge probably around his own birth date of 18th April and was not missed for three months until a farmer found his body on the shore of Red Tarn, around July 24th 1805, guarded by his faithful terrier , a memorial on the summit ridge now commemorates this tragic event, it has to be said though that some say the terrier was surprisingly well nourished, apparently the few pieces of gold found with him given to the poor in Patterdale

At the time this event caused great sympathy Wordsworth was sufficiently moved to write Fidelity and Sir Walter Scott wrote “Helvellyn “in praise of the faithful dog.

For me though the most famous fatality on Striding Edge was the foxhunter Robert Dixon who on 27th November 1858 fell from the edge whilst following the Patterdale Foxhounds, today a memorial at the spot records the event, Sadly the record of the Coroners Inquest seems to have been lost, but it isn’t too difficult to imagine what happened, a screaming hunt coming up the valley beneath ( the fox probably one of the greyhound types referred to elsewhere on this site ) Robert leans over too far and that was it a long fall from the cliffs, onto the rocks below. Suprisingly, he survived the fall and was carried home in a cart only to die about 4 am the next morning He was buried in Patterdale church yard a few days later.

There are still accidents on Striding Edge, even today, sadly on a fairly frequent basis with serious injury and death not unknown, keeping the Patterdale Mountain Rescue team busy throughout the year.

There are several videos of Striding Edge on YouTube, some of them rubbish!! But this one may give you some idea of the ridge
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=VyZQ3ZSvaFo&feature=related

To be continued ...

CONTRIBUTED ARTICLES

Pennine Times

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Ramblings

Hound Trailing

Mérens Horse

Letter from France

Packwoman's Grave

Equestrian Art

The Visiting Hunt

PUB TALK

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The Fell Pony

Beatrix Potter

Girt Drops

Fell Hunter's Lament

Bugger Off

Rydal Deer Park

The Losts Foxes of Lakeland

The Lost Packs of Lakeland

Cartoons by Wilk

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