Today was exceptionally hot - the kind of day where even the slightest physical effort results in overheating and the desire to go and sleep under a shady tree. Also the kind of day where scrambling around in a river sounds inviting.

The ghyll this time was “Ruddy Gill”, at the far end of Borrowdale past Seathwaite towards Great End. Parking at the farm in Seathwaite is always a gamble as you drive down the single track road looking for any space, seeing how long your nerve will hold - can I park right at the end or will I have to do some complex turning manoeuvre to come back and then put up with a half mile walk along the road?

I managed to park right by the farm. It might have been a hot sunny Sunday in the Lake District, but it was also half five so everyone was going home. The tourists leave at five and the locals come out to play

As it was so hot I wore just a pair of shorts and a thin baselayer. Even wearing this I was getting too hot walking up the track towards Stockley Bridge. So hot that we all decided to get in at this point rather than put up with walking along the path. So without breaking pace all four of us scrambled down the grassy slopes towards the water, waded in and then proceeded to test the depth, deciding a large boulder on the left could be jumped off. It was worth it just for the look of utter bafflement on the nearby tourists faces.

And the fun didn’t stop there. Unlike other ghylls, this one had lots of pools in it. I bet many walkers have eyed the pool right under the bridge before, but few must have dared to jump off the top into it. I’m six foot four, the pool was deeper than that and from experience I know I can jump at least four metres into water that comes up to my waist.

This carried on, with some rock-hopping until finally Ruddy Gill cascaded down the steep ravine we were now in. A short scramble lead us onto some flat slabs and off up the hillside. Here’s what the guidebook says about the next part:

Quote: Scrambles in the Lake District

Traverse the guardian pool on its left wall to reach a more difficult pool. It is possible but awkward, to traverse the steep left wall, but most people will prefer to climb out of the gill and re-enter just above at the top of the cascade

Why would anyone want to climb around a perfectly good pool? Here’s what my guidebook would say:

Quote: Wet Scrambles in the Lake District

Tighten the drawstring on your shorts, close all pockets on your rucksack and attempt to climb around the left of the pool to the middle on difficult sloping holds and slimy rock. Once at the middle, fall backwards into the water and swim across it before climbing up the waterfall in front of you. If you fall off, be sure to jump backwards to avoid the shallow water where the waterfall ends

You see, my style of ghyll scrambling is different to the “traditional” version. It seems I’m supposed to scramble up these things with the aim of being dry at the top. I have no idea why, ghyll scrambling is something to do when it’s too hot to do regular climbing.

Anyway, after jumping in several more pools, almost falling over and traipsing through some small parts too shallow to mention, the intrepid (and hopefully rather wet) scrambler will reach something I call “The Slot”. It’s a narrow channel cut into the river approximately five foot wide with a bridge running over the top. At the back end is a large waterfall with a small cave. Below this is a deep deep pool that is blocked with a submerged boulder. On the left is a small ledge and by swimming across the pool and climbing behind the waterfall it is possible to get onto this ledge. Unfortunately once on this ledge it is exceedingly difficult to get out of the slot. It’s possible to jump off the ledge back into the pool though, just don’t land on the boulder.

We continued upwards with no end in sight getting tired and after having a chat with some random people it was time to turn around and go back. On the way back there was the option of jumping into some of the pools again. I had one in mind… The Slot.

From the top it looks quite high and if done wrongly has the chance of either bouncing off the opposite wall like a pinball, or landing on the previously described submerged boulder. I’d been in there before so was fairly sure where the deep part was. All I had to do was step off and in I’d go. Peer pressure from the others almost made me jump in, but at the last microsecond I stopped. How frustrating! It’s like watching the children I take down our ghyll when they almost jump. At this point a hand usually sends them on their way and all is well.

Someone dared me to jump off the lower ledge into the water. I could do that, I’d been on there before. One two three splash. Easy. Now for the higher one. There was still an air of doubt from everyone else but I had my angle and a place to aim now so whatever was gluing my feet down before had worn off. In I went into the deep water once more. It was quite entertaining sitting on the boulder below watching the others knowing what was going through their heads They knew it was perfectly OK to do as I’d just done it, but at the same time they weren’t entirely convinced.

After that we walked back down the path, the horrid paved path that jars knee joints and twists ankles, to the car.

This was one of those outings that I’d do again. I like big pools and jumps, and the shallow rock hopping provided a bit of a change and a warmup when the water started to cool me down too much. Now I need to find a ghyll with some large slides in.

The valley of St Johns in the Vale winds it way along the bottom of a very steep valley linking Thirlmere and the road to Penrith together. Part way down this in the insanely steep hillside is a huge gorge carved from the rock. This is Sandbed Gill. It’s a huge ‘v’ shaped cleft in the hillside as if someone has swung an axe into the ground. So, given it’s so bleeding obvious, why did we drive past it twice before finding it and then almost go up the wrong river? I may have my Mountain Leader, but it doesn’t teach people how to navigate while driving along twisty roads. Reaching Castle Rock was our hint we’d probably gone wrong.

The other problem was that it contained no water. We expected huge waterfalls and running water, not a dry streambed and a few stagnant pools of green goo. It starts from the road though which is nice - just hop over the barbed-wire fence and off up the rocks.For the first few hundred metres it’s simple scrambling with a fence to negotiate. After that simple introduction the fun begins. The sides tower above and close in, and it doesn’t relent until an hour and a half later you escape its clutches at the top of the hill. I’ve seen places like this before and they’ve scared the crap out of me as I’ve always seen them from the top.

The climbing is excellent typical ghyll scrambing. That means greasy rounded rock, exposed climbing with the potential for really nasty falls into places nobody can get into. Climbing E3 might be technically hard and potentially dangerous, but unroped scrambing on loose rock in a ravine can be more fatal - as the various decomposing sheep corpses demonstrated. One sheep saw fit to decompose in a pool right at the top of a hard climb, and it wasn’t until pulling up on the large boulder at the end that we realised just why it was so sticky and slippy. Suddenly coming eyeball to eyesocket with a dead sheep is quite a surprise, not as surprising as finding a leech suckering its way up your arm though.

Some parts couldn’t be climbed directly and we had to escape up the sides and traverse along the hillside. At the time it was fairly straight forward - the simple climbing mentality of “I have to go this way because it’s the only way” takes over. Grass becomes a valid load bearing substance, loose things get pulled on very carefully and fingers become primed for the next hold. Once on safe ground it’s quite amazing at what someone clueless will totter around on quite happily without a care. It’s not that we don’t realise what we’re doing it’s more that by ignoring the obvious danger of falling off the task of staying attached becomes easier. Climbing’s all in your head - think about falling off and it probably will. Anyone can stand at the edge of a kerb with their toes poking over and not fall onto the road, so anyone can stand at the top of a 70m crag with their toes poking over the edge and not fall. The only difference is the height.

The top was interesting. Most ghylls gradually fade into the hillside and become swamp. This one ends in a small network of mini streams and then steep hillside. To get down there’s two options - go the direct route and fall down the crags around the sides of the ghyll, or walk right around the top of the hill to a large grassy bank. The long way has an exposed traverse across the top of a gully that now we know it exists, would make a good way off.

I can’t work out why I like ghyll scrambing. I think it’s the feeling of adventure. With a rock climb it’s either obvious where to go, or the guidebook will explain where the pitches go. In a ghyll I’m free to decide my own route, making it as hard or easy as I feel, getting wet or staying dry. Since I choose my own route, I’m never in a position of suddenly looking down and going “oh cack, how did I get here?”. I do like rock climbing, but again it needs to be more than wrenching myself up a hard route that I can see from the ground.

Wow, it’s a bit of a shock to the system this training stuff. After spending the winter standing up and occasionally dangling off Keswick climbing wall it’s a big change working here again. Either we’re scrambling around crags or up in trees at the high ropes course, or we’re being flushed down the ghyll on our backsides. I know how to do all of this, so my main function in the training was to be a guinea pig to “demonstrate” what to do.

I have to admit I did derive a small amount of pleasure watching the new people having their first dip in the ghyll The weather is warming up so there’s now a noticeable temperature difference between ghyll water and the air. I don’t know what’s going on with my fingers and toes, but after just a few minutes of being in cold water they go totally white and numb. The rest of me can be perfectly warm but my hands and feet just shut down. Normally if there’s warmth in your body it flows out to the extremities and everything stays warm. Some neoprene socks help, but after three hours of submersion I’m back to walking on blocks of ice.

It’s really strange when things thaw out too. The soft bits of my feet recover quite quickly, but the soles take a long time, so long that they can be numb and it feels like I’m walking on three blobs of rubber. Presumably this is because the inside of my feet can feel the soles pressing on them, rather than the whole thing working together. I hope the summer is warm, I’m done with feeling cold.

There’s some nasty flu-like thing going around at the moment. It’s been through three of us and I think it’s currently trying to make a home in my tonsils. I’ve got a slightly sore throat and feel quite tired. Then again it could just be a normal cold, and the tiredness could be from the past two weeks.

Went bouldering at the Bowderstone last night. I need to find some finger strength from somewhere as I know where to put my hands, I just can’t make them stay there.

Oh, and I finally managed to get the Wifi password this place has enabled. If it’s still working I’ll put these entries online. WPA is quite temperamental at best.

The new people have arrived. We took them down the ghyll today to show them how to run it. We’ll be taking them down the ghyll quite a lot so they can understand how to run it safely and what to do. As it’s the first time they’ve done it (except on the interview weekend) they’ve not yet made the transition from cold wonderment at the experience to someone who looks in charge. This was exactly the same when I was doing it this time last year. For the first few goes it’s really confusing, cold and noisy. After a while it just becomes cold and noisy.

Seems we’ve run out of sitework to do at the Centre. Following on from yesterday’s waterfall we went and did the Ghyll backwards. This, in itself, is no great deal and something I’ve done many times before on much more interesting ghylls. The best bit though was going into the “forbidden zone” between what we call the “top section” and the (imaginately named) “bottom section”.

In between these two sections is a deep gully with several large falls. The kind of thing we can’t take groups of kids in. It’s just the kind of thing a bunch of outdoor instructors can go in though

Climbing them was great. It’s not the same as regular rock climbing since everything is coated in slime. Knees come out, feet are planted on flat bits and there’s a lot of arm work involved. Occasionally someone falls off into a pool and then spends ten minutes determined to not let this little bit of rock beat them. Other, slightly colder, people decide to go around the side.

I took my camera in its bag to take some pictures and videos. We found a little sump under a boulder and I’ve got an excellent little video clip of Will pulling himself through it. I personally find the idea of going through submerged tunnels about as appealing as getting in a kayak.

Coming back down that section was strange. Some bits could be slid down, others had to be down-climbed, and a few parts required a rope. I didn’t do anything special with the rope, simply grabbing it and sliding off the edge. On the first drop this worked quite well, but on the second one the bag I was carrying began filling with water and my controlled lowering turned into a semi-controlled slide down the rope. Had my hands been dry they’d contain some nasty rope burns now.

In addition to this “middle” section, I’ve found some new ways to plummet off the first large drop we do do with groups. This drop is called “The Corkscrew” due to the way the water spirals around a groove in the rocks. At the top is a large flat rock which you throw the children off. Above this, around the right of the pool, is a higher ledge where the hillside stops being grass and turns into vertical rock. You can jump off this. Also, just behind the flat rock we use for child-launching, there is another ledge that’s set about two metres away from the edge. You can either do a running-jump off this, or just stand and leap off it. Either way, providing the jumper can go more than two metres horizontally, they’ll clear the proper edge of the drop and land in the water. I was getting too cold by then to be bothered trying, but the sight of their instructor leaping out the sky might interest one of the groups I have at the weekend

I need to learn how to do shallow dives. I could have a lot more fun if I was able to dive.

Today everyone walked up the valley towards Dale Head. If you follow the river coming from Dale Head Tarn there’s a waterfall marked on the map. It’s approximately 50m high and has a small waist-deep pool at the bottom.

After trudging up the valley in the overcast weather which turned into proper rain as we got higher, we reached the bottom of the fall and made our way to the top via the path. Once at the top an abseil was set up and off people went. I began as the belayer, but once boredom and the cold set in I wanted to have a go and then put some drier clothes on and eat something. Everyone else seemed to be standing around like melons and all the harnesses were at the bottom.

After a quick shuffle of some ropes and karabiners I had myself attached to the abseil rope by a figure of eight and a prussik cord. I don’t like abseiling, it’s much more fun climbing and despite knowing it’s completely fine and safe I’m still very aware the only thing preventing me from dropping out the sky is one piece of rope. It’s like caving… it’s not natural.

The water at the bottom was quite deep. Dan found this out when, during the de-rigging, all the ropes were dropped from the top into the water where they sank. We stood there and went “oh yeah… that wasn’t the best idea we’ve had all day, was it?”.

My camera got damp and I didn’t want to use it, so in the afternoon I went into town and bought a waterproof bag for my camera. My BMC card has run out and the stoppy woman in the shop wouldn’t give me a discount. Nobody else seemed to care when I flashed it at them. I suppose I’d best phone the BMC and get a new one!

I have just climbed, scrambled, jumped and swam my way up Sour Milk Gill (Go through Borrowdale, out to Seathwaite and park at the farm as though you were going to walk up Green Gable. See the big waterfall on your right?). Compared to the other ghyll I did, this one is easier (supposedly being a Grade 2 scramble) but the climbing is more sustained and instead of there being one large waterfall to climb, there are several, with interesting slabs of slippy rock in between. The kind of slippy rock that’d make a great slide, if it weren’t for the certain death at the bottom in the form of boulders and shallow pools.

The water level was pretty low, once again allowing that wonderous Teflon coating to grow on the rocks. The slippy rocks make you concentrate more, crap yourself and hold on even tighter as your feet begin to ever so slightly move by themselves.

In quite a lot of places are exceedingly smooth V-shaped grooves, corners and channels that the water pours down. The best way to climb these seems to be to wedge a foot in the crack and lean on a side, then hope for the best. If you feel off-balance and like you’re going to slip, move quicker so gravity doesn’t notice.

I found a small leach making its way up my left arm, so I sent it flying back into the water. The cut fingers happened sometime when I was attempting to defy gravity and my vicelike grip on a rock suddenly shot off. Fortunately, for the entire rest of the route those fingers went kind of numb so I kept using them and didn’t notice the neat little slices in their ends (which match up if I bend my fingers in a certain way) until I was back here hanging up my wet clothing.

You see, these ghylls are all written down in guidebooks, just like climbs are. And just like climbs, you read the guidebook at the beginning and then make it up as you go along. So when you come across a large waterfall cascading down flat rocks, you tend to be half way up before noticing your route isn’t supposed to go that way. That’s when a little grade 2 scramble turns into something approaching VS as you shuffle across the rocks to easier ground.

And it’s definitely easier and more fun if you accept you will get soaked. Don’t pansy around trying to avoid the flow of the water, get right in there and fist-jam the back of the waterfall, there’s all sorts of wonderful holds hiding away behind the water. Just don’t look upwards or you’ll drown! Wet climbers don’t get hypothermia, you generate too much heat for that to happen. It also helps to treat this kind of thing as a rock climb rather than a hill walk, that subtle shift in your head means you look for things that are climbable, rather than places that you can stand up without holding on. The best bit is that you can pick your route, making it insanely stupid and hard, or easy, depending on your frame of mind at that moment.

This must make you a better climber too. After all, if you can solo up a 50m waterfall that contains slimy rock, no gear placements and bugger-all to hold onto, you can climb rock routes in the rain. It also makes you a more aware hill walker too. We got to the top soaked to the skin, I wasn’t wearing a wetsuit - just the stuff I’d be wearing if it were winter and I was out for a walk and we sat around for ten minutes looking at the view before walking back down the path into the valley. Being sodden isn’t that fun, but if you wear the right clothing you also won’t get cold and succumb to the elements.

Clachaig Gully doesn’t sound as insane and nasty any more. Maybe one day…

It was so hot today! Instead of going climbing or something as usual, some of us decided to go ghyll scrambling. This wasn’t the same as what we do with groups though. This was more interesting. For a start we were going up the river not down with the flow of water.

Originally we set off to do Sour Milk Gill (seems there’s more than one way to spell Ghyll), which is supposed to be a good grade 2 scramble with many ways to escape should the slippery rocks start to get too slippy for comfort. Driving along the road under Cat Bells we noticed the sun wouldn’t be shining on us, making the water rather cold. Just across the lake though we could see Ashness Ghyll shining in the sun (well, it wasn’t since it’s not rained properly for a while now). Deciding sunshine was good when getting wet, we drove around the lake to have a go.

It was a fairly unique experience, totally unlike other things I’ve done. Normally when doing this sort of thing you peruse the guidebook, decide if you like it, ask someone who’s done it before and generally have some clue about where you’re going and what to expect. All we’d been told about Ashness Ghyll was that “It’s a good thing if you like that sort of thing, yeah go up it if you want”. Ropes? do we need them? Nah, probably not, it’ll be right.

The first several hundred metres are fairly straight forward wanderings over the rather dry river bed. Nothing too taxing. There were a few small waterfalls to scramble up, but even those were quite tame. Slippery as ice, but quite tame and doable if you took the obvious routes up them. Quite doable if you purposefully chose the most difficult ways also. You’re about now wondering whether there’s anything more fun you could be doing as it’s all a bit boring.

Then we came to the big one. It first comes into view as a big crag in the distance. When you get next to it it starts to take form. Overall it must be 60-70m high with water running down in two tiers. The water splashing down the rocks causing them to be covered in the most slippery black slime imaginable. One look at this stuff had you slipping over. Some slime scratches off the rock with your feet, revealing fresh grippy rock below. Other slime sticks to your feet making your boots have extra grip. The black stuff we found has you almost looking for a Teflon logo on each rock. Up in the distance we spotted two other people who’d also decided to come and have a go. They had ropes.

Hmm… things were starting to look serious now. They had ropes, we didn’t. Were they being overly safe or were we trying to become another entry in this year’s Mountain Rescue report? After a little decision, some thinking, the realisation we were rock climbers and that this was rock and that it had to be climbed, we did what thousands of other people have done over the years when presented with new rock to climb and no guidebook. We took the line of least resistance to the nearest ledge. If we’d had a piece of hemp rope it’d probably have matched the first ascent of the ghyll.

And it was all fairly simple climbing and quite possible to avoid the death slime. We climbed quite easily to the top of the first waterfall, and with a bit of careful balancing and bum-shuffling, made it across the flow and onto the other side. The right-hand side being less vertical than the left now.

A short scramble of quite exposed, but easy ground lead us to a very slippy ledge where the belayer from the other group was stood. Nothing sharpens the senses like standing on a slimy ledge 30m from the ground next to a person tied to a tree. After a short exchange of pleasentaries we managed to learn that he’d never done this before and that he thought the route went upwards (duh!) and to the left. Seeing his rope go that way, and not hearing any shouts from his lead, we shuffled around and followed the rope.

What we saw was quite interesting. First there was the other end of the rope, attached to which was a drenched and slightly scared looking person. There was also the cause for her current state too - a big trench that runs back into the hillside for 20m with a 2m high step half way along. Just at the entrance of this trench (which is walled in by the same Teflon coated rocks previously mentioned) is another step formed by some large stones blocking the thing up. Unless you have Spiderman-like qualities you need to climb up the sides. This bit was actually pretty hard, requiring some very fine footwork (in waterlogged walking boots clinging to rounded holds coated in slime) and that ability of a worried climber to hold onto anything very very tightly. A few short off-balance moves performed very quickly make you end up on the top of the first step, feeling a bit happier. It helps that now when you look behind you there’s a floor, and not the area’s largest water slide with free broken legs attraction.

To climb the second step you could probably hand-jam and grunt your way up the flow of water… if you can hold your breath long enough. My attempts resulted in getting half way, looking up to see where the route went, and getting my nose rinsed out. The other people had joined me at this point and with a lot of shuffling, one of them managed to lean on one side and shuffle his knees up the other side and escape out the top. I tried this but didn’t fit. Instead, after faffing around for five minutes, I climbed out the side at the top of the previous step. This is the advantage of not having a rope. If you’re tied to each other, you have to follow where the first person went. If you can’t actually climb the way they went you have a small problem that quickly turns into a big problem.

Climbing is weird. No person made the rock I was climbing on, and the natural process of erosion doesn’t take into account the loonacy of people wanting to climb rocks. However, when you climb an otherwise unclimbable slippy wall using the only foot-hold and only hand-holds that exist - holds that are in the exact right place to ensure you are balanced and well attached to the rock - you can’t help wonder if someone before you had a hammer and chisel.

Once you’ve clawed your way out the top of the trench there’s a short crawl (literally, you’re still in climbing mode at this point - three points of contact remember!) up a slab that’d make a great slide if it weren’t for the large drop below it and onto the top. Once on the top you can stand and admire the sun setting behind Cat Bells and the nice view of Skiddaw.

According to a guidebook I have, Ashness Ghyll is a Grade 3(s) scramble, with the book describing it with a series of pitches, all of which mention ropes and belays. In perfect conditions with dry rock and rock boots, the climbing parts would be probably graded at Moderate. With the actual conditions and the random footwear worn by people ghyll scrambling, it’d push the grade up to V.Diff.

Now I want to go and do some more. It’s good training for when it starts to rain part way up a proper rock route. Next time we’ll take a piece of rope and a few bits of climbing gear.

Just had the second of this week’s Ghyll Scramble session. Eight kids, me and Will, another of the instructors went for a jump, slide and wander down the ghyll. The weather was nice and sunny, the water was surprisingly cold.

There’s a technique for running a good Ghyll session. The technique is to do it quickly with no faff so people don’t hang around getting cold and upset. If you’re slow and faff around at the top of the jumps it gives people time to think, and the last thing you want someone to do is think since the things they usually think of begin with “I can’t do that…”. So you stand someone at the top of a jump, the other instructor having just demonstrated it, and you “guide” them into it with a big push. Before the next one has time to go “erk! that looks nasty!” they’re stood at the edge and are being pushed into it. It sounds quite harsh and brutal throwing people into water off ledges, but the edges of ledges are often quite slippy and the last thing you want is someone to slide off the wrong way and hurt themselves.

My game has a level definition file. I’ve worked out how to draw the laser, so now I just have to make it work.

The Audioscrobbler uploading I have from Amarok seems to be broken. I hope Audioscrobbler’s not on Vodafone’s retarded content control list. Today, Vodafone’s random proxy server has decided my website is OK to visit. It used to work, and now it doesn’t and I’ve not changed anything so I think it’s someone else’s fault I’ve pushed 10,000 tracks into Audioscrobbler though, which is quite a lot of music!

I’d like to buy a radio scanner. Being in the great outdoors, there’s got to be loads of radio chatter sleeting through the air. I’ve seen the Mountain Rescue helicopter flying around, various jets and things plus the hills seem to be full of people with those personal walkie-talkies yammering rubbish at each other. Somehow I need to visit a Maplins…

Today I visited civilisation (also known as Glasgow). I spent the day wandering round the city centre and then bought a new mobile phone. This one is on Vodafone so it works up here. I’ll cancel my Cellnet one sometime soon. The phone I bought is a Nokia 7650 with a camera, massive screen, and all sorts of gubbins. I’m about to see if this PC has realised I enabled its IR port and then I’ll try and make my PC talk to the phone.

I also have GPRS for faster internet access. Or at least that’s what I hope. I may have to get a modem plugged into my PC at home as it’s cheaper to phone a landline than an 0845 number.

I also went to the Glasgow Science Centre which was fun, and the SECC to visit some outdoor exhibition which was full of caravans and wasn’t that thrilling. I did however buy some neoprene boots and gloves. After yesterday’s walk up a river where my feet went totally numb and I managed to lose a shoe I think I bought the right things. Fortunately my feet were so numb I could walk over stones without noticing.