Rivendell.
Hawker Hurricanes V6565 and V7742 on Slightside, and
Avro Anson DJ275 on Scafell.
(Distance covered =
7.7mile/Ascent =+946m)
I'd been contemplating a trip over to the Lakeland Fells for a while, specifically to the 6 crashsite that lay on Scafell and Scafell Pike; rather over ambitiously I had been planning on doing all six of these on one walk. When my eldest son Stuart asked if he could tag along I decided to just do the three on Scaffell.
To get to the car park next to Wha House Farm, where we were starting our walk up Scafell, it seemed like we had to drive up every steep pass in the lake district. The best one was the Hardknott Pass, which as well as being very steep was also narrow with several sharp bends thrown in. The little Panda coped very well with the inclines and the bends but her brakes didn't like the descents.
Amanda the Panda parked up in the small
carpark opposite Wha House Farm.
The start of the route to Scafell.
There was no 'walk in' as such to get the muscles warmed up on this Mountain, it was steep uphill right from the start especially the first half mile or so.
Climbing away from the carpark.
above and below:-After these pens the incline eased off a little. We didn't know if the single sheep in the pens had been put there or had managed to get itself stuck, so we left it where it was.
After passing a couple of sheep pens the initial steep incline eased off a bit and instead the path followed a not too arduous gradient and made its way steadily uphill for about a mile to an area that Stuart thought looked like Rivendell from the movie Lord of the Rings.
Above and next three photos:-Making our way up the slope towards Rivendell.
About to enter Rivendell.
Once we entered the area we were now referring to as 'Rivendell' the incline eased off some more and we were able to enjoy a mile of walking on virtually level ground. We could see a large boulder in the distance at the point where the path turned steeply uphill again, so we set that boulder as where we would stop and have some bait.
above and next 9 photos:-Some spectacular views from our traverse of Rivendell over to the large 'Bait stop Boulder'.
Looking back to our 'Bait stop Boulder' seen
near bottom left of the photo with two more people approaching it.
After our stop for refreshments it was another steep slog uphill for about half a mile towards the summit of Slightside then it would be time to leave the path and head off towards the area where the two Hurricanes crashed.
Horn Crag and Slight Side.
above and next two photos:-Some views taken on the ascent of Slightside.
Our search area, one of the Hurricanes collided towards the left of the crags.
We started finding bits of Hurricane a lot sooner than expected probably due to the fact they are scattered over a very large area especially V7742 which is the one that collided with a rockface higher up on the crags.
The first piece we came across.
After finding the first few pieces I continued contouring around the hillside to see if I could pick up wreckage trails from both Hurricanes while Stuart headed up the crag to look for where V7742 had collided with the rocks.
Stuart demonstrating how he has inherited his Dad's lack of fear of heights.
It was at this point I realised I had made the right decision in dropping the three wrecks on Scafell Pike from the days itinerary; we had spent so much time looking for and photographing pieces at this crashsite that we barely had enough time left to head further up Scafell to look for remains of the Avro Anson up there, never mind crossing over to the other side of the highest mountain in England to search for another three!
above and next two photos:-Making our way towards the summit of Scafell and the Avro Anson crashsite.
According to the grid reference I had the Anson had crashed not to far from Scafell summit on a very steep boulder and scree covered slope, which we had a very good view of as we approached. It looked like this was going to be a bit of a difficult one to locate so we split up and contoured around the slope in the hope of picking up the bottom end of a wreckage trail.
Stuart looking over to the area where the Anson crashed.
Stuart came across some pieces of Anson first, quite a way down the scee slope just before it dropped over a cliff. We could see further pieces a lot lower down in the How Beck so we contemplated walking down that way on the way back, but for now we followed the wreckage trail uphill to a burn out scar which indicated the point where Avro Anson DJ275 had sadly ended it's final journey.
Scorched ground and melted aluminium confirmed this was where DJ275 burnt out after the crash.
above and below:-The scree slopes leading down into How Beck.
After spending quite a bit of time finding pieces and taking photographs at this site as well it was very late in the day and the weather was threatening to take a turn for the worse. Because of this and the fact the descent down into Howe Beck didn't look very inviting we abandoned any ideas we had of going down to check out the wreckage down there, leaving those for another walk, possibly approaching from the bottom.
View across How Beck over to Long Green taken from just below Scafell Summit.
Above and below:-Two views of the Anson crashsite taken from Long Green. It's up near the top left in the photo above and circled in yellow in the photo below.
Retreating down from Scafell summit.
Now we wern't going down into How Beck our return route was all the way back down the tourist path; at least it would have been if we hadn't of saved a bit time and energy by walking around below Long Green and Slightside instead of going back over the top of them.
Above and below:-Looking back to a now gloomy Scafell summit.
As we descended the last half mile to the small carpark where we'd left Amanda the Panda our attention was drawn to the Hardknott pass which we could see in the distance. What got our attention was the painfull screaming eminating from the tyres of a couple of cars that were trying to negotiate the very steep and very sharp bends. We didn't go back over the Hardknott pass, instead we took the slightly longer route up the coast then over to Carlisle.
