Due to the sulkiness and foot-stamping of a twenty-something year old today's easyish walk turned into something rather more as we raced against the daylight.

I could have gone climbing on both saturday and sunday, but decided not to as I wasn't back to 100% fitness, instead choosing to join four other members on a walk up Striding Edge to the summit of Helvellyn and back down Swirral Edge.  One of the others had a cold so we agreed that we'd walk a bit slower than usual.  We didn't realise how slow this was actually to be until K began to stop repeatedly and ask how much further we'd got to go, so over all we wasted quite a lot of time waiting, encouraging, cajoling and not allowing her to be last. 

Striding Edge done, and I rather enjoyed it, it was decided that K wasn't going to cope well with the descent along Swirral and so we set off on a longer but easier route down.  Unfortunately it wasn't long before a navigational error was made and the wrong fork taken, and with the cloud down it wasn't realised for a short while until we'd descended a way into the wrong valley.  Yes, H and P had map and compass, but the cloud was right down and it's a frighteningly easy mistake to make.

When K was told that we'd have to go back up a fair way to regain the right path she point blank refused to do it, and so it was decided that K and boyfriend (who was at least a more experienced walker) would continue down and wait in the car park at the bottom to be collected later.  They could see where they were going and were happy to do that... in any case it would have been hopeless for K to have come with us, we'd never have got down before dark.

So us three had to retrace our steps to where we went wrong, very quickly, up very steep ground, and then complete the rest of the route at the same rapid pace, managing to get back to the hut just before it was dark.  We did have head torches, but I'd rather not have to use them like that.  Then of course H and P had to get in the car and go to collect the other two, which took them well over an hour and a half.

All's well that ends well, but it could have ended rather differently.

12.2 miles
2585 feet
5 hours 30 minutes
(with the last 6 miles being walked twice as quickly as the first 6)

p.s. see yesterday for the horrors of the M6