High Street

We bravely tackled breakfast and were introduced to Chris's twin grand daughters who were all of three years old and intent on killing each other. The previous day we had bought the makings of a packed lunch for today's assault. I call it an assault because High Street is 3889ft of vertical assent [give or take a few feet]. It is steep too. Deepdale Hall was just across the valley from the start of the assent from the valley bottom to Boredale Hause, which I swear is the hardest part of the climb, then to Angle Tarn, The Knott and Rampsgill Head. These torturous delights we had tackled the previous year on the coast to coast. But what was new was the Straits of Riggindale, the summit of High Street and Thornthwaite Crag. We had intended to descend from Thornthwaite Crag into the valley of Hayeswater and stroll back to Deepdale. With a lot of huffing and puffing we got onto the High Street plateau but could not see more than twenty feet in front of us due to the cloud. This is what we should have seen.

We found the wall which we should have followed to find the trig point that marked the summit. Instead we followed the well worn path which led us to the massive stone pile that marks Thornthwaite Crag. As we could not see the path to navigate accurately we sat in the lee of the cairn at Thornthwaite Crag and had our butties in the hope that the clouds would lift so that we might find our way to the lip of Hayeswater valley and our path off the mountain. We were getting cold [it is only August after all] so decided to retrace our steps. This was a wise move but it gave us a long walk back. We had walked seven miles to get to Thornthwaite Crag via High Street but it was only a little over three miles from Thornthwaite Crag to Deepdale via Hayeswater. About ninety minutes after making our way down the weather started to lift but we where committed to retracing our steps.



The path you can see which seems to lead off the end of the wall on the left is the path across the Straits of Riggindale to the summit which is set well back from the edge of the corrie. The clouds are still covering Thornthwaite Crag but I bet it would have been thin enough to find the way.

The weather having cleared we were treated to Angle Tarn being utterly still reflecting a near mirror image of Angletarm Pikes with St Sunday's Crag in the distance.

H was knackered after the fourteen mile hike but Deepdale had lots of hot water and a deep bath which H took full advantage of. We did not make the full journey round but it was a stiff walk and I achieved a personal ambition to tick off High Street. This goal is offset by the fact High Street is so called because it was the roman road from Penrith to Ravenglass. There is section of the High Street plateau called the Racecourse because the farmers from Patterdale and Mardale, which are either side the High Street divide, used to meet for markets, fairs and racedays on the flat, albeit very lofty field halfway between the two communities.