Mad Dogs and Englishmen (and adopted Scotsmen)

If you are a bit of a fan of rocky scrambling and water then the Lake District has a plethora of streams and ghylls to play about in. If you’ve read the 2 volumes of “Scrambles in the Lake District” you’ll note that the author describes routes in terms of staying out of the water, climbing on slippery rocks with socks over boots/trainers and occasional refreshing wades. Myself, GM and ED I like to think we were the pioneers back in the 80’s of the slightly more adventurous approach of getting as wet as possible and climbing the waterfalls direct and then jumping/swimming our way back down. This “new” sport was primarily forged in the Esk valley and the upper Esk Gorge where we spent many happy summer afternoons playing in the rivers and generally messing about in the water. This has been popularised by numerous outdoor companies as a “team building” activity called Ghyll Scramblkingy and it’s even been on mainstream TV. We were there first though and have been dabbling in this rather daft and hugely entertaining bit of outdoor fun ever since

Reason for this preamble is that on the recent adults only weekend myself and GM, fed up with wandering about in the pishing rain decided on a spot of ghyll scrambling – may as well be wet and have fun we figured. We headed for Launchy Ghyll, one of a number of ghylls tumbling into the west side of Thirlmere. Suitably attired in wetsuits and with a middle-aged tourist couple watching in puzzlement at what we were up to we headed to the bottom and set off.

Safe to say it’s not really a trip that can generate much in the way of words except to say its enormous fun albeit rather cold. Most of the lower part of the river is small falls so it’s simply a matter of trying to climb in the full force of the water and see if you get washed away or not.

The rock is astonishingly slippery so you pick up a huge amount of bangs and bruises. As it climbs the falls become steeper and more serious and as there was a huge amount of water in the ghyll we had to bail out about halfway up.

Coming down there were some great looking narrow sections but there was just too much water for a safe waterslide. The pools aren’t seep enough for any jumps so we had to be content with some coccyx breaking slides down the stream bed and some flops and floats into the peaty brown water

Thirlmere where the ghyll enters the lake

Best way to get a feel for this madness is to watch the video collection below – apologies for the many clips of GM’s arse!

As a footnote GM tells me (spookily enough while I was writing this) that Launchy Ghyll is out-of-bounds for ghyll scrambling. Something to do with United Utilities who own the land trying to protect a SSSI. I find that hard to believe but perhaps I’m just a cynical old git when it comes to big business and the outdoors. Anyway just in case anybody reading this blog who might be mad enough to give this a try you might want to read the links below just in case

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=jNU_hqnPRmgC&pg=PA173&lpg=PA173&dq=launchy+gill+scrambling&source=bl&ots=og_YbbpcUF&sig=g5aJDFdTqnWxZJaar3LGYM6X5fQ&hl=en&ei=P0CwTobCBsaO8gOb7LzJAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&sqi=2&ved=0CEsQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=launchy%20gill%20scrambling&f=false

http://www.frcc.co.uk/crag_print.asp?crag_id=502

And on a final note the “adopted Scotsman” in the title is GM. He’s Home Counties born and bred but since he’s lived in Scotland for over 10 years he think’s he Scottish. This mainly consists of saying “aye”, “ach” and “och” at appropriate times and eating haggis, although he hasn’t yet shouted “freeeeedom” at passers by or painted his face blue. I should point out that since I moved to rural Herefordshire I don’t say “ooh aare”, I don’t have webbed hands/feet and I haven’t built any long-term relationships with the wool-bearers.