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  Now back home from Scotland and Cumbria, we have the job now of drying out the wet gear, washing clothes and checking out essentials for the next trip.

  It was certainly a very mixed bag of weather. Out of the 8 nights camping we had 5 nights of rain, one night clear skies and slight frost and 2 nights warm and dry.

  We managed to test out some new gear as previously posted and do some reviews for retailer OutdoorsLook. The highlight of the trip was certainly Merrick which, due to some fortune we managed to do on a beautiful day.

  The time in Cumbria was spent at Seathwaite in the Duddon Valley and primarily we were there to be Marshals in the Duddon Fell Race. We had one of the worst days for weather that i can remember.
Seven hours including walking up and down of thick hill fog, high wind, horizontal rain, no views, disintegrating official paperwork, a broken dictaphone, a broken flask and too busy on the radio to even take a photo. Oh and did i mention it was damned cold, shiveringly so.

The event is 18 miles and 6000ft of ascent and tops include, Harter Fell, Hardknott, Little Stand, Swirl How, Dow Crag, White Pike and Caw. The record time is 2 hours 44minutes. This year it was a time of 3hrs 8 mins.

  During the event there were 3 occasions where the Duddon and Coniston mountain rescue teams were called out.
 One for a M70, (That’s Male aged 70 and above) who had made it 3/4’s of the way round but had slipped and became hyperthermic on Dow Crag. I believe he was helped up to the Marshals on Dow who did a great job of getting him warm and calling the MRT who got him down and into hospital where he was later released ok.
  Second was a lady who had checked into White Pike and was coming back to race control which is at best 1/2 hour away. 2 hours later still no sign of the lady at race control and so the MRT was called to search. The lady turned up safely at race control shortly after and the rescue called off.
  Thirdly, a chap not involved in the event had slipped and broken an Ankle. He used his whistle and was found by a mountain biker who made sure he was ok and then via race control called out the MRT.

  The 3 of us on Swirl How were certainly pleased when we had double checked our numbers and were told it was ok for us to stand down and get off the mountain.

  So now i am going to start sorting the photo’s and i will post them as soon as i can.

I also found a large pair of HiTech boots at 3 Shires Stone. Possibly someone had changed shoes to drive and forgot to put them in the car. Or had said he wasn’t walking ever again and they can rot right here.

Anyway they were taken to Race Control and left with them.