Carlisle & District Rambling & Fellwalking Club

Walk & Event Reports

Sunday 13th November 2016

Remembrance Sunday

Castle Crag

Reports by Peter Flynn & Tom  Fortune

Photos by Pete Rutland, John McKay

Adele Wagner

Peter's Report

You can imagine the scene.  Special edition of Who Wants to be a Multi-Millionaire.  The show has developed along the lines of Brain of Britain and this person’s special subject is Carlisle Ramblers.  Chris Tarrant still in charge.  The lights dim;  the cameras focus on the person in the hot chair (is it you?);  you can feel the tension in the air.  “Now for the first time on this show,  for a prize of £10,000,000.  How many people were on the “A” walk on Remembrance Sunday 2016?”  “13, then 11,  then 12,  then 7 then 14” “CORRECT”.   Huge cheers etc.  Absolutely true.  We started off with 13 leaving the Castle Crag service,  the walk leader (yours sincerely) had to abandon the walk at the top of Nitting Haws Crag – I thought I had recovered from a severe cold or whatever but clearly hadn’t.  Lauren came down with me.  The 11 continued with quite a long walk onto the ridge of Narrow Moor where they had lunch.  Beautiful clear weather and good views,  but this deteriorated somewhat with a slight mistiness.  Then,  as they got to Cat Bells (originally Cat Bield – the last crag in England where the wild cats roamed,   c. 1890’s) two things happened.  First of all it started to rain and then they met a stray member of the club “doing his own thing”.  That made 12.  They made their way along the ridge over Cat Bells and in two separate groups,  the first of 5 and the second, about 20 minutes later,  of the other 7, down into Portinscale.  The first 5 joined with the invalid and his carer in the tea shop, making the 7,  and when the others arrived,  a quick phone call had the wonderful effect of bringing the bus to collect all 14 of us in Portinscale,  A curious walk,  everybody seemed to enjoy it and the bus collecting us all saved a late, very wet trudge back to Keswick in the heavy rain.  

Tom's Report

We have been leading this walk for several years now and on most occasions have had a group of eighteen to twenty one which given the logistics of this particular day isn't the easiest group to manage with the necessity of regrouping several times and commencing the walk in a huge group that mingles with a large 'A' party  on the same path. Please note that this is not a complaint but merely an observation. So you can imagine our surprise when we disembarked the bus to find only four other club members   joining us for the day, and what a day! In keeping with the occasion the weather was glorious ( certainly compared to last year) and the service as always extremely somber and very moving. Afterwards the 6 of us set off on what was to be a lovely walk  that seemed like less of a club ramble and more like  an intimate day spent in the company of a group of old friends. You know who you are and our thanks for your excellent company. We hardly noticed the rain in the last hour or so, as a large part  of that period was spent in the cafe in Portinscale

Our thanks  for a great day out.

Tom & Chris