Читать книгу Great Mountain Days in the Pennines. 50 classic hillwalking routes онлайн

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The ascent route uses an old corpse road linking the church and graveyard at Kirkland with the distant community of Garrigill. In the 17th century, one funeral party, caught in a blizzard high on the mountainside, abandoned its burden, scurrying back to Garrigill and returning only two weeks later for the coffin when it was finally considered safe to retrieve it. The mourners then brought the coffin back to Garrigill, where it was buried in a piece of glebe land. The land was subsequently consecrated by the Bishop of Durham as a burial ground, and thus the need for the corpse road came to an end.

In fine weather, the mountain has an avuncular appearance, and seems a calm, endearing place to visit. Alas, all is not as it seems, for its repertoire of dirty tricks includes subzero temperatures on at least a third of the days of the year, rain on two-thirds, and snow often well into summer. If that isn’t enough, its pièce de résistance is a phenomenon known as the Helm Wind, a remarkably ferocious and localised gusting of the wind.