On the map, Gummer’s How looked nothing fancy: a lumpen little fell with
brownish sides and a pink summit. But I had a hunch that if I got to the
top, I’d see things.
It was one of those crisp, crystalline afternoons that can make January,
fleetingly, the best month of the year. Frost was crimping the gorse bushes
and some winter pixie had flung glitter over every sheep and dry-stone wall.
I was in the Lakes, and I wanted a big, spiky lungful of mountain air — but I
didn’t want to work too hard for it.
I pulled off the lakeside road at Fell Foot Park, parked up at Astley’s
Plantation and set off along the thin, brackeny track. It was a sharp climb,
but short, and in no time at all I was nearly 1,000ft above the lake,
clinging to the chimney-stack trig point on top of the fell and shouting
ecstatic expletives into the wind.
I couldn’t believe the gift I’d got for 20 minutes of easy-going exertion — a
million-mile view of England’s most beautiful mountainscape. I romped about
for 20 minutes, inhaling it all. Windermere glinted flintily, Grizedale
Forest tickled the Old Man of Coniston’s armpits, the Langdale Pikes
shoulder-barged along the horizon and the sun prepared to dunk itself in
Morecambe Bay. I’d like to tell you more about the view, but my specs blew
away.
Details: the ascent of Gummer’s How begins at grid ref SD389876, OS Explorer
map OL7. The Masons Arms (015395 68486, www.masonsarmsstrawberrybank.co.uk),
at nearby Strawberry Bank, does Cumbrian duck sausage and a glass of local
damson ale for £11. You’ve climbed a fell — you deserve it.
Here are five more simple — but rather wonderful — summits.
LEITH HILL, Surrey
This stretch of the North Downs was once nicknamed Little Switzerland, and
965ft Leith Hill is its Alp: the loftiest point in southeast England.
The best base camp is the Plough Inn (01306 711793), at Coldharbour, which
leaves you with just the last 150ft to climb — and there’s herby lamb stew
and home-brewed ale awaiting your return. It’s a 25-minute stomp up through
Christmassy pines on the waymarked Greensand Way, and at weekends you can
climb the picturesque turret that crowns the hill for a barnstorming view.
Squint hard and you might spot the London Eye, or a glimmer of sea through
the Shoreham Gap. Permission to yodel.
OS Explorer 146, grid ref TQ139432
BELAS KNAP, Gloucestershire
Say what you like about Stone Age man, he knew how to die in style. Belas Knap
is a killer example of a Neolithic burial mound — 180ft long and 14ft high,
a whopping green whale beached right on the rooftop of the Cotswold
escarpment. What makes it doubly evocative is that you have to walk to get
there. It’s a two-mile climb from the Saxon townlet of Winchcombe, but if
you can’t face the full distance, park on the lane by Corndean Wood, cross
the stile and tackle the steep 20-minute pull to the summit.
Your reward is the biggest view in the Cotswolds — across Sudeley Castle and
the Vale of Evesham, all the way to the Malverns. Then, if you’ve any sense,
it’s back to the wood-burner at the Old Corner Cupboard (01242 602303), in
Winchcombe.
OS Explorer OL45, grid ref SP021254()
THE ROACHES, Staffordshire
You’ll no longer bump into a yak roaming the Roaches — and the wallabies
hopped it years ago. But these fists of pinkish gritstone, spurting out of a
ridge in the quieter southwestern Peak District, still have a real
foreignness about them. Instead of the pastures and streams further east,
this is a wilderness of crags and heather rising 1,600ft — more Dartmoor
than Derbyshire.
The classic ascent is from Windygates, at the southern end, but for a quick
winter fix, start from the lane at Roach End, leaving just 300ft of climbing
to worry about. You’re rapidly on a wind-clattered tor overlooking Hen
Cloud, a miniature Rock of Gibraltar, and Shutlingsloe, the “Cheshire
Matterhorn”, with Snowdonia saying a hazy hello on the horizon.
The yak and wallabies, by the way, were escapees from an eccentric colonel’s
private zoo.
OS Explorer OL24, grid ref SK001639
MOEL-Y-GEST, Gwynedd
Crunched between Snowdonia and the sea, Moel-y-Gest is too big for its boots.
A mere 860ft high, it’s a hill that thinks it’s a mountain, with a shark’s
fin of silver slate slicing along the summit.
Cleverly, it has plonked itself next to the sea at Porthmadog, away from the
proper peaks, and the climb from the coast road at Morfa Bychan is a mere
mile, with an exciting bit of rock-hopping towards the top. Gaze backwards
across Tremadog Bay to Harlech Castle, or forwards for a stupendous cheat’s
view of Snowdonia — a frieze of snow-tipped peaks, looking icily unimpressed
by their upstart neighbour. There’s a short cut down off the eastern summit
to Porthmadog, where Spooners (01766 516032) specialises in real ales and
railway knick-knacks.
OS Explorer OL18, grid ref SH549389
CONIC HILL, Stirlingshire
Here is the perfect Highland curtain-raiser, just 45 minutes’ drive north of
Glasgow, a warty, knobbly (but never conical) sandstone sentinel at the foot
of Loch Lomond.
Strike out from the tourist information centre in Balmaha, where pleasure
boats pootle all year round, for the chest-expanding pull to the ridge,
neatly carved into a natural balcony of reddish rock.
And now look back across the loch. For summiting one miniature mountain,
you’ve earned yourself whole ranges of them: the Arran Hills, the Luss
Hills, the Arrochars... and Ben Lomond, striped in its winter tartan of
coppery bracken and deep-green pine.
On a lucky-weather day, the sun flashes off the loch, leapfrogging across its
string of jagged islands, and only the wood smoke rising from the log-fired
Oak Tree Inn (01360 870357) could ever lure you back down.
OS Explorer 347, grid ref NS432923
