20th – 22nd September 2013, A Lakes Backpack

Orienteering (sort of) in the Lake District

Not much in the way of photos this time I’m afraid, all will be revealed later - read on……
September sees the Backpackers Club Treasure Hunt, a sort of orienteering event but with knobs on. And a cherry on top.
The idea of the event is to get round as many ‘check points’ as possible within a defined time limit. In addition to that, at each check you must answer a question that is relevant to that location, ie you can’t answer the question without actually visiting the checkpoint. Each check has a points value – although Colin, who sets the course and the questions, has some interesting ideas of what some of the answers should be….and don’t get me going on the (in)accuracy some of the map references!
The cut-off time for returning to base was 2pm on the Sunday, you are deducted 10 points for every minute you’re late.
Participants (rather than competitors – it’s more of a fun event than a competition) gathered at the rather nice Castlerigg campsite on the Friday evening. The pub next to the campsite offered the only chance of knobbling Colin, the event coordinator. This could be achieved by buying him huge amounts of beer. I didn’t, obviously…..’cos I am tight.
I was accompanied by Beryl the Peril AKA Margaret, who’d been gullible enough to join me once again – we had formed a team for last year’s event too. Walking with Beryl always worries me, she’s rather supremely fit although she denies it. I’m as gullible as Beryl, I actually believed her when she told me she was unfit. I never learn…

Cool dude Beryl on last year’s Treasure Hunt

We left the campsite at around 9.30am on a pleasant Saturday morning and headed of to our first planned check, High Nest at NY291228, just NE of the start. The question: ‘What is the Shropshire connection?’ had us well puzzled – but after wandering around for 10 minutes we spotted a drain cover, manufactured by ‘Wrekin’. We had our first answer!
Our next couple of checks involved trotting down some tarmac, but after that we were on the rough (and wet!) stuff for the rest of the day.
The map below shows our order of service, below that is the list of questions & answers – just to give a flavour of what’s involved. I find it prudent to plan an optimistic route with a couple of escape options. Although the distances aren’t great, the time spent in trying to answer questions significantly adds to what a normal day’s backpacking would take. Our furthest south check was No 24, just to the south of Blea Tarn. I would like to have got to Ullscarf but it just wasn’t to be.

We enjoyed endured an interesting afternoon, plodging over sodden ground, climbing up to High Seat and then going south by High Tove and Blea Tarn, ticking off the checks as our feet got wetter and wetter.
Although we got to most of the checks we wanted to, our answers didn’t always agree with what the course setter had settled on. Oh well. Our last check of the first day was at Blea Tarn, the map reference for the check was WELL out….so that’s one we didn’t get. Rather irritatingly, these clear errors on the the part of the course setter were brushed aside. Mind you, the extra points wouldn’t have made THAT much difference to our final score anyway!
We camped in the company of Lawrence & Lesley from Stockport, and Frank, who is from Darn Sahf – Northamptonshire I think. Frank is half of the editorial team of the Backpackers Club journal, ‘Backpack’, and a fine job he does. These three made up a very successful team. Lawrence & Lesley enjoyed a glug of my Magic Medicine – guaranteed to warm your wotsits up nicely. Frank abstained – he’s a beer man. I really must try dehydrating TT Landlord.
Saturday night was dry, the moon rose around 9.15pm, completely illuminating Blea Tarn and the fetid, boggy ground around it. I took photographs of the moonrise. In fact I’d been taking photographs all day, I was really looking forward to going through them when I got home.
Next morning I legged over to successfully to collect another check before we headed off to Watendlath and our next check. This stretch was the last of the wet & boggy routes, the rest of our day was on good, dry ground.
Beryl had A Plan: Watendlath has a rather good tea shop….need I say more? We made full use of the tea shop, drying my smelly socks, drinking tea, followed by soup & a roll,..and a scone. Yum!
The next couple of checks were easy enough, although disaster struck at Check No5, close to Falcon Crag to the west of Castlerigg Fell. We were nicely on schedule to arrive back at base for around 1.50pm. The sun was shining, my feet didn’t smell (quite) as much as before.
I left Beryl to keep an eye on the packs whilst I ran up the hill to collect the check, I didn’t have time to waste so I set myself a limit of 10 minutes to locate the check and answer the question, if I were to spend more time than that it would risk us returning to base too late. At the 10th minute I succeeded: ‘What colour is granny?’ The answer is blue*. Obviously.
Pleased with my little self, I ran (well it WAS downhill) back to Beryl and our packs. It was then that I realised that my little Lumix camera was missing. I checked and rechecked, but it was gone. I’d photographed the check location so I knew the approximate location of where it should be. I ran back to have a good look but it was no use, the camera was lost – probably in the thick undergrowth, never to be seen again.
By now I had eaten into our reserve time, it was unlikely that we’d get back by 2pm….and we didn’t. We lost around 100 points due to our lateness.
In spite of losing my camera – and losing points because of that, the very strange question & answer policy, the wet feet….I’ll be back next year. Unless the answers are screamingly obvious I won’t waste much time on answering questions though.
Margaret Beryl was good company (don’t tell her though, it might go to her head) and I think we made a reasonably well-matched team: she had the fitness and the superior intellect, whilst I had a car to get us to the start.
Colin had worked damned hard to put the event on, without him it just wouldn’t happen. He quite justifiably got an appreciative round of applause at the end.
It was good.

This is what we actually did (ish):

Day 1: 15km, 700m of up, 400m of down, Day 2: 14.5km, 450m of up, 750m of down
These figures exclude the faffs involved in locating the checks – some weren’t where the map references suggested!




*Q: ‘What colour is granny?’ A: Blue. There’s a metal sign at the location, on the rear of it was stuck a tiny (blue) Granny Smith label.

Sat & Sun, 15 & 16th September, A Lakes Backpack

 
But not just any Lakes Backpack, this was the Backpackers Club long-awaited Treasure Hunt.
The were a few hurdles to overcome before my weekend could get underway: Dad needed sorting, I had some business to deal with, stuff like that.
Nick, No2 son, was supposed to take part in this event with me but a university friend's wedding got in the way. Margaret, aka Beryl the Peril, stepped into the breach and did a handsome job of entering into the spirit of the event – which is a sort of weekend-long orienteering event....but with knobs on.
The basic plan (Plan?? Ho-ho!) is to navigate around as many predetermined locations as is possible and then when at each of these locations, answer a question. The question is relevant to the location so can only be correctly answered when you visit the spot. Cunning eh?
Oh, and there's a wild camp on the Saturday night.
I collected Margaret from Preston at around 7.45am (the one in the morning) on Saturday and we stormed up the M6 towards the Lake District. At least that was the general idea. Unfortunately the traffic gods were against us...big time: the M6 was closed due to a fatal accident. We should have arrived at Skelwith Bridge around 9am, we didn't actually get there until well past 11am. Not a good way to start a (slightly) competitive event.

Skelwith Bridge in the sunshine

I was a little nervous of competing with Margaret, she's a powerful and very experienced walker….whereas I'm a wuss. I needn't have worried. Margaret was getting over a bad dose of lurgy and consequently I was just about able to keep up with her in her weakened state.

At NY335032: ‘Evidence of an old school?’

We set off from the campsite at around midday and started picking off various checks. Two heads are certainly better than one on this event.

At NY328031: ‘What is special about this tree?’

The weather was glorious and we both really enjoyed navigating the fells and dealing with the questions. A tea shop appeared, well it was a tea garden really.

Tea-shop: bearing 10degE, range 80 metres and closing

Well, it would be rude not to....so we did. A large pot of tea and a couple of freshly baked scones were ordered and demolished as we sat in the warm sunshine. We probably spent the best part of an hour enjoying our break.

Alan take note: this was in danger of turning into a Daunder. You should come next year!

Slater Bridge

Colwith Falls

We trundled through High Colwith, then close to Little Langdale, before heading south through the many disused quarries towards Tilberthwaite.

Searching

We slowly but surely ticked off the checks one by one.  Our late start (and long tea break!) meant that we didn't tick off all the checks we wanted to on Saturday.

Fading light

At 8pm we came to a halt as the light was fading. Searching out a campspot we found a suitably flat spot adjacent to a disused quarry at Low Tilberthwaite, plenty big enough for our two tents. Inside the steep and high walls of the quarry and on it's grassy floor, were half a dozen tents – all fellow treasure hunters. There was insufficient space to fit our tents into the protected enclave so we made do with the grassy patch outside. But we had the better view from our tents:

A mainly dry but quite breezy night followed. The breeze was a bit of a worry because the ground only allowed tent pegs an inch or two into the ground. Sliding the pegs into the ground at a very shallow angle was the only way to hold our tents anything like taught. Fortunately the tents stayed up all night.

The disused quarry at Low Tilberthwaite

Next morning the happy campers awoke to a very light drizzle. Breakfasted, tents down and all packed up, the Treasure Hunters set off to continue their searches for checks.

Packed and ready to roll

Before the rain started in earnest

Margaret and I had A Plan (Ho-ho!) to pick up three fairly high scoring checks close to our overnight pitch. We stashed our packs and set off, unburdened, to navigate our way to the checks and after some faffing, successfully solved the clues.

NY305007: What is found at the end of this short gully? Ans: A cave.

By this time the drizzle had turned to rain -  and it was getting heavier. Two more checks were picked up quite easily, at High Yewdale and up the road at Glen Mary Bridge.

No pies, and it certainly wasn’t sunny!

Over to Tarn Hows and then Knipe Fold had more points successfully collected before we had to head back to base in order to beat the 2pm deadline. Arriving after this time would incur a heavy points penalty. A fruitless struggle to grab one last check very close to the event base, meant we arrived just inside the time allowed – just a minute or two to spare. 
We presented our answers to Colin, the organiser and course-planner of the event. Colin must have spent months putting the Treasure Hunt together, he worked really hard to make it such a success.

 Colin Smith pointing out where Treasure Hunt participants went wrong

Colin presenting the worthy ‘winners’, Bruce & Harry, with their award

It was good to see that Bruce and Harry ‘won’ the event – they are past organisers of the Treasure Hunt and I felt it was fitting they finished ahead of the rest of the field.

 

Some of the checks we used

There were many more checks, these were just the ones we used. I’ve no idea of our mileage or ascent, neither were excessive.

My kit caused me a fairly major problem over the weekend – I got absolutely wet through. The heavy rain on Sunday somehow worked it’s way through my ‘waterproofs’. The relevant kit was my Paramo Velez Adventure Light smock and Berghaus Goretex Paclight overtrousers. In addition to ME getting wet through, some of the contents of my Golite Pinnacle rucksack were soaked, in spite of a waterproof rucksack cover. The problem needs further investigation.
In spite of my sogginess I’d enjoyed myself. I think Margaret did – the other competitors certainly did. Thanks go to Colin Smith of the Backpackers Club for working so hard to put on such a successful event. Oh, and to Margaret too, her navigation skills certainly helped us complete the route efficiently – and having that extra head and extra pair of eyes made all the difference to our end result.
The next morning I was to fly to Madrid (the one in Spain) to walk a section of the Via de la Plata so I needed to get home to pack. The sogginess of my rucksack contents extended to my (paper) Driving Licence….the same Driving Licence I was to need the next day in order to pick up my hire car in Madrid. Oh well…. 

Oh, and that fence....23 nails - the bottom left section was only secured by one nail. Go back and check if you don't believe me!
More pictures are here.