Sunrise from The Struggle

The Struggle leads from Ambleside in the Rothay Valley up to the Kirkstone Pass. With an altitude of 1,489 feet the Pass is the highest in the Lake District open to motor traffic. We used the Pass to take us to Patterdale in the Ullswater valley for another support point on the Wainrights 7 challenge mentioned on yesterday's blip.

This was taken at 6.20am as the sun rose to silhouette this Larch tree. Stustod has a great pictureof the Kirk Stone after which the Pass is named.

"Oh struggle, Oh struggle, so aptly named" according to the Lake District's own poet William Wordsworth. The road rises 1300 feet in some three and a half miles, a considerable undertaking before motorised transport. After a visit In 1908 US President Woodrow Wilson told his wife that his favorite walk in all of England was the "three mile steady almost unbroken ascent" from Ambleside to the top of The Kirkstone Pass.

Perhaps the most famous story of the pass is about Ruth Ray who left Patterdale to climb the Pass with her small child, on her way to see her sick father. As frequently happens, the weather turned suddenly for the worse, and snow began to fall. When she did not return, her husband went out looking for her. It was a viciously cold night that quickly deteriorated, and soon the husband was in some trouble as well. He would have died up there too, but he was rescued by a sheepdog, which led him back to the safety of a farmhouse.

In the morning, when the weather had abated a little, the husband and the dog's owner set off to look for Ruth and the baby. When they found them, his wife had succumbed to the elements, but she had wrapped the child in her shawl and by some miracle the baby had survived.

Fortunately the weather was much kinder this weekend. Although very cold overnight with a smattering of snow on the high summits but bright sunshine during daylight hours. A joy to be out :)