A walk up Rest Dodd and The Nab from Brotherswater

It’s a dank grey day in Lakeland with a cloud filled leaden sky hovering worryingly over it. A day where the monochrome clouds threaten to descend to earth and smother the tops with their blanket of invisibility. Having a self imposed rule that I will see the view from each summit as opposed to only the hand in front of my face has inevitably meant some return visits on my journey through the Wainwright’s. This is because the weather does what it wants and does not seem the slightest bit interested in my needs, wants or desires. If we were in a relationship it would not be a happy one. It’s all good exercise though and as the saying goes, a cloudy day on the hill is still better than a good day in the office, not that I have had occasion to visit the office recently. And so it is in this frame of mind that I set off, more in hope than anticipation towards Rest Dodd and The Nab.

I’m back at Sykeside, which is like a second home so I tread the now familiar path from the campsite alongside Brothers Water to the equally familiar village of Hartsop. A good gravel track leads all the way up to Hayeswater, formally a reservoir but left to its own devices in 2005 when it’s services were no longer required by the good people of Penrith.

I take a break just across from the footbridge and reminisce about passing this way many years ago in the middle of the night on route to High Raise whilst taking part in light the lakes. The wind blew, the mist came in and it started raining heavily. At light up time, 2am, we were soaked through, thoroughly cold and miserable and the only sorry looking light we saw was our own meagre effort. Still, to paraphrase Quint in Jaws ‘we delivered the light’.

The track is left once over the bridge and a footpath is followed upwards. Crossing the super highway of the Coast to Coast path it continues up through the grass which is soft underfoot, to the modestly cairned summit of Rest Dodd. The summit sits on a broad, grassy and gently curved plateau giving the impression that you are standing on an island of green, detached from the summits you can see all around you. Ullswater can be seen though, and my next hill, The Nab is below me to the north across the flat ground of peat hags which look formidable.

Compared to the ascent, the descent to the wall marking the Dalemain Estate is steep. Once at the wall I walk alongside it for a short distance until there is a natural gap where it drops down into Rampsgill.

Wainwright shouldn’t really have included The Nab in his 214 as it is private land situated wholly within Martindale Deer Forest. He says as much in his chapter on the hill saying he “carried out his explorations surreptitiously and without permission”. Deer have few enough places in England to call their own without hoards of walkers disturbing them and I did wonder whether to omit this particular Wainwright. There is however a permissive path to the summit that goes there and back from the wall so this is the route I took.

The peat hags, although looking formidable turn out to be reasonably easy to negotiate as it has been very dry. Another memory flits through my mind as I cross them of sinking knee deep with every step for hours on end in the squelching quagmire that is The Cheviot whilst walking the Pennine Way in the 80’s.

The Nab stands in regal isolation between the valleys of Rampsgill and Bannerdale in what is surely one of the quietest areas of Lakeland. Ahead is Martindale with Ullswater in the distance and behind, across the brown gridline patterns of peat, is Rest Dodd, higher and bulkier than The Nab. There is not a deer to be seen. Not one. Anywhere.

I retrace my steps and do however see my first humans of the day, a couple of cheery, brightly clad older ladies heading for the summit. Once back at the wall I follow it as it slopes upwards and over the northern ridge of Rest Dodd and then down its western slopes, joining up again with the Coast to Coast Highway. The path turns rocky for a while and I step off it at Satura Crag to have a bite to eat whilst enjoying the fine view down the length of Bannerdale. It has even brightened up a little with the cloud cover looking less foreboding.

Leaving Satura Crag I head across towards Brock Crags and join a good path, one I have taken before that leads easily and effortlessly down to the Filter House and from there back to Hartsop village. It was a dull weather day today, not great for photography but it stayed dry and the clouds behaved themselves. Maybe we would get on after all. They’d have to buy me flowers though.

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