Loughrigg View

Yesterday's cloud and rain gave way to freezing conditions overnight, and a sparkling day today. I climbed Loughrigg Fell to see one of my favourite Lakeland views and to admire the snow on the Langdale Pikes (right), Bow Fell (centre) and Crinkle Crags (left). The fierce north wind on the summit (335m / 1,099ft) was coming straight from the Arctic with significant wind chill. 

The large building in the foreground is "High Close", the Langdale Youth Hostel. It was formerly a Victorian mansion owned by a Yorkshire merchant and philanthropist named Edward Wheatley-Balme, and includes eleven acres of gardens now managed by the National Trust. It must be one of the most valuable of all the properties owned by the YHA, being almost slap bang in the centre of the UK's most popular National Park, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The village behind "High Close" is Chapel Stile, the actual geographical centre of the Lake District National Park.

I stayed at "High Close" many moons ago, on holiday with school friends after taking "O" levels. It was during this week that I fell in love with the Lakes. Little did I know that 43 years later I would be taking a photograph of the hostel from the fell above.