It’s been 15 years since I last visited Coniston. It’s a place where I began most of my early Lake District adventures, and the place where my single biggest outdoor camping fail took place in one particularly disastrous trip when I was 16. Back then, my good friend Chris (check out ”33 Miles of Juggling” on YouTube) was a much better navigator than me and had a great skill of finding paths in bad weather. We had a lot of bad weather.

However, in the intervening years, much has changed. I’ve qualified as a Mountain Leader and this means I’ve been pretty thoroughly tested on my navigation ability in tough circumstances. So I was eager to check out how I coped with what I remember to be a gruelling high level circuit on rocky ground. Furthermore, the cloud was in and the summits out of sight.

I seem to remember the ascent to Brown Pike taking forever but it was really ridiculously easy, and the ridgeline leading to Dow Crag was a lot more complex and rocky than I recall it to be. I arrived at Goats Hause and paused for sandwiches and soaked in the cloud. Or the cloud soaked me is more accurate. Memories flooded back.

It was above all strange being there on my own. I remember this circuit as a place where I went with family and good friends. Now it was just me – life takes its toll and things change. It felt like a walk through all of my formative years at once, a really strange experience.

The descent from Wetherlam was dramatic and pathless, much more challenging than I remember. Chris and I probably didn’t care much at the time. I have a vivid memory of relaxing on the summit of Wetherlam without a breath of wind in the air. I don’t think either of us even had a map let alone knew how to use one. It’s incredible, when you pause to think about it, how far we journey in life, isn’t it?