Verdes Adventure Therapy: Winter is here! Skiddaw, 6th December 2008

Well, it's time to get the crampons out. After a week of good snow the Lakes are again covered in acres of fun.

Paul B, John D and Davie headed up to Skiddaw to try and take advantage and to bag another first for Dicko.

The drive across was ok, the A66 having been closed earlier in the week, but the fun really started as we drove up the track to the Latrigg car park. As we ascended in Davie's apparently un -eco, Chelsea tractor (see earlier post for rant) we started to pass more and more cars parked in various states of abandon by the road side.

Sure, the road is very steep and sure, it was covered in ice but why were they abandoned so low down?

After a period of passing no cars and wondering if perhaps we had bitten off more than we could chew, we spotted 4 or 5 cars at the car park, windscreens reflecting in the sun.

Phew... 'the remainder of the road can't be that bad' we thought as we crossed another frozen stream across the road.

When we did finally arrive at the car park, to the amazement and wonder of the struggling pedestrians, we realised why they were so perplexed; the cars had been frozen in from the night before (or days before!) and had been abandoned by their drivers. The car park was pure ice and empty (see pic below.. zoom in and see the ice and the walkers avoiding it.)

Moral of the story is: ignore the assholes who put dumbass stickers on your windscreen - Discovery wins every time.

To prove a point, we turned the car on the ice rink and parked up in pride of place.

The rest was easy:

Yomp to the top of Skiddaw, through good quantities of snow, piccys on top, slippy and treacherous descent, with Paul using Davie's poles and Davie falling on his arse in the mud because he didn't have poles.