Scafell Pike

We took a day “off” walking the Coast to Coast Trail today and spent it getting up Scafell Pike, the highest mountain in England. We’ve managed now to do the three highest mountains in England, Scotland and Wales (the three peaks). This one today was probably the hardest due to a combination of distance (from our trail head to the summit), difficulty of the trail (wet rock and loose scree) and weather. The day ended up being around 28 km round trip and 2000 meter elevation gain with lots of rain. From start to finish it was 9 hours.
We took a cab and started from the old Dungeon Ghyll hotel in the Great Langdale Valley. When we got to Esk Hause three hours later the trail split, and we headed towards Scafell Pike. There is a large boulder field to navigate and then you come out of it looking over a 150 meter drop before you can climb up again to the summit all of which involves lots of loose scree and boulder hopping. We took a different route back via the Corridor route as it looked like easier footing. The footing was easier but it was longer and there were a few spots where you had to use handholds to get around steep sections. It started to thunder and rain and then we had steady rain for the last three hours hiking down to where we started. We caught the last bus with ten minutes to go and made it back to Grasmere. We went for a nice dinner and are now in our room with sore feet and knees and thinking that we’ll never finish this Coast to Coast unless we stop doing these mountain side trips.Read more