Himalaya training on Crook Peak!

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The weather has been very unpredictable recently with lots of rain and wind, so when Sue Winter, Jane Gurney and myself planned to climb Crook Peak, we were expecting bad weather!

When we woke on the morning of our walk, the sun was shining and the skies were blue, but you never can count on weather like that sticking around for even a couple of hours, so in our backpacks went waterproof trousers, extra coats, hats etc - just in case!

We all had heard several reports of an accident on the M5 that had shut the motorway, so we made the decision to go across country and follow the A38 all the way down to Cross.

Jane drove as Freddie (her dog) was coming along and he was very excited to be going out. I chose to sit on the back seat as Sue not being a dog lover would have found it horrifying that Freddie insisted on resting his head over the top of the seat to huff and puff on my neck. Bless him, he couldn't contain himself.

We arrived at Cross just off the A38 and the sun was still shining and the air was fairly warm, so we had a bit of a discussion about what to wear and what to carry. Off we set along the road to our first public footpath sign.

Cross is a very pretty village and there are so many houses and cottages along the way that are just beautiful. We then went through a gate into fields walking alongside a pretty ream with the hills ahead of us. The grass beneath us was very wet, but thankfully it wasn't coming from overhead! The walk takes you through several fields beside the ream and we kept looking at the water willing a water vole, rat or otter to come into view, but to no avail. We soon came to the small bridge over the water and headed diagonally through fields of sheep. Unusually, these sheep were not afraid of us, even though we had Freddie and at one stage I even had to shoo a rather large one out of the way as Freddie was getting a bit anxious. It was really weird. The stile at the end of this field was really infuriating as it didn't have a dog-friendly post to lift out and had barbed wire everywhere. So it took us longer than anticipated to get over as we had to encourage Freddie that he had to climb up the steps and over the top, which he found very hard to grasp! Finally, he understood and jumped over easily.

We then crossed the road and walked up into some woods where our climb was going to start. We were walking under shaded trees and looking out over the valley that was in the brilliant sunshine and it looked so beautiful. The path wasn't as muddy as expected, although it was a little slippery in places, but overall it was ok. The hill started off quite nicely, not too steep but it wasn't long before we could see the path ahead of us getting steeper and steeper. Out came the walking poles, deep breath and steady onwards. Hill climbing certainly warms you up and with the sun on our backs as we came out of the trees, it wasn't long before layers started coming off.

As we came out into the opening and level ground, we turned and looked behind us - the view was stunning all across to Cheddar and beyond. We still had a climb to get up onto the peak, but it wasn't quite so steep, although at the end we had a bit of rock-climbing to do. As we came onto the top, the wind picked up. From there, the views were 360 degrees, and stunning. We could see the traffic at a standstill on the southbound M5, both ways and thanked our lucky stars that we had avoided the motorway. We stopped for awhile and had a drink and snack, took lots of photos and then headed on down the hill before we had another long climb ahead of us onto Crook Peak.

By this time, the clouds were just starting to draw in and our view wasn't as clear as it could have been, but hey, it was a much better day than any of us had thought it was going to be, weather wise.

We then started our descent down the hill, into a wooded area, which was fairly rocky and you had to keep your eyes on the ground to make sure you didn't get caught out. As we came down into the woods, we saw horse chestnuts on the ground, so we were like little kids up Ham Green Orchard again, collecting as many as we could get into our pockets! Little things.......

At the bottom of the path, we joined the strawberry line back onto the A38, where we followed the pavement down the roadside back to the car, which we had left outside The New Inn (not stupid!).

We changed our muddy boots for more suitable footwear and went for lunch in the pub, which was absolutely delicious. Freddie was obviously not amused at being left in the back of the car because when we returned he had climbed over the back seat and was laid over our bags and coats!! Mud and dog hairs everywhere!! But he looked so sorry for himself that we couldn't be mad at him for long.

As we drove back home, it started spitting with rain. We certainly were very lucky with the weather that day.

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Comments

[Lucy Davies]

Crook Peak
Glad the training is going well Ang and enjoyed the photos on your trip up Crook Peak, Lucy x