Features of Our Walks

On our CLOG visit to Scales in the Lake District we enjoyed a number of walks, both high and low level, with distances extending to about 15 miles, and heights reaching between 850 and 950 metres above sea level. For most of the time the weather was good and not too hot - nice for walking on the Cumbrian Fells. On this page you will see some "vital statistics", designed for those of us who also appreciate a quantitative approach to life's activities.

Here are some of us on Blencathra (868 m), with Keswick, Derwent Water and Cat Bells in the background. The clouds in our picture seem to heighten that "atmospheric" effect. In the event we only had a short sharp shower for which we were of course well prepared!
Thank you to our lady photographer, whoever she may be!
There's generally a sense of camaraderie on mountain hikes, and this often manifests itself - as here - as a helpful, "I'll photograph you if you photograph me".

Now prepare ye for some plots and graphs. Not too overwhelming, but hopefully quite interesting! You will see here:

• How far are Scales and Keswick from Home?
• Outline Maps of Our Walks
• Height Profiles of Our Walks
• Some Facts and Figures
• Average Rising and Falling Gradients
• Less Quantifiable Considerations
• Timing & Speed
• Track Files
• Postscript


• Please Read Me! Thankyou!

How far are Scales and Keswick from Home?

To start with, our starting point on most days was Scales. We assume here the front door of the "White Horse Inn". For our walks starting from Keswick we assume the main entrance to the "Booths" store at the Bus Station. The figures you see here are based on a bit of Spherical Geometry, taking the centre of London as the intersection of The Strand, Whitehall and Cockspur Street. This intersection is often referred to as Charing Cross, not to be confused with the Victorian Eleanor Cross itself nor the station in front of which it stands.

Scales and Keswick both lie about 250 miles north north-west of the centre of London.

For Stockportians, we consider that the GPS centre of their great metropolis is where High Street and Saint Petersgate meet. As you can see, Stockportians - lucky they - are much closer to the Lake District than their compatriots from the Capital.

Scales and Keswick both lie about 91 miles north north-west of the centre of Stockport.

Of course, all these distances and bearings are as the hypothetical crow (cornix hypothetica) flies. For us mere earthlings the actual distance is of course longer, for, unlike our esteemed avian friend cornix hypothetica, we have the little issue of negotiating bumps, curves and sundry diversions in the landscape as we travel from A to B.

Cornix Hypothetica (our hypothetical crow)
comes in to land after a gruelling 250 mile flight - "straight line" of course!

Outline Maps of Our Walks

First of all, here is a summary of the walks with distances rounded to the nearest mile. As you see, some were linear, others circular. Circularity, of course, often implies less bus journeys and can make the return correspondingly less constrained by timetables. Usually a good thing. Makes life that bit more relaxing!

Walk Summary: Nature and Approximate Mileages.

Below you see the outline maps of our walks. I plotted our walks by hand on my return home. Of course, I tried to be reasonably accurate. Even OS maps, on which I based my plots, may not show all the required detail, but, apart from missing out the southern ascent path to Clough Head from the Coach Road, appear to give the requisite degree of accuracy in this case. The numbers which appear in bus-route fashion, relate the walk to the particular day in June.

Outline Map of Walks

And now something which some of you may find quite interesting. The map grid scales here translate to 1.112 Km per 0.01° latitude and a mean of 0.644 Km per 0.01° longitude (WGS84 standard), both when using 6371.0 Km as the volumetric mean radius of the earth. Fine and potentially useful, but it is also interesting to compare the present longitude distance-to-degree ratio with that for walks in other parts of England. It you do this, you will see that the further north you go, the less Km per degree longitude you get. Once you get to the Lake District the reduction in this ratio compared to that for walks in the south-east is already noticeable; for example, in Guildford, South West of London, we have a slightly greater mean distance of 0.697 Km (as opposed to 0.644 Km) per 0.01° longitude. As you see, it's a difference of 53 metres per 0.01° longitude.

In addition, because we don't live on a flat earth - unless you are a convinced "flat-earther" - maps are inevitably a distortion of what is. In other words, it's all a matter of mapping a curvaceous surface onto a flat surface. We don't want to carry curvaceous representations of the terrain on our walks, do we? In our case, the northern length of our map grid is stretched out by something like an extra 0.30 %, to make it the same on the page as the length of the southern part of our map grid. Not that much for hiking purposes really! Can't complain.

Height Profiles of Our Walks

Our highest points on our walks described here were Great Dodd (Saturday June 4) and Blencathra (Sunday June 5), respectively, at 857 m and 868 m above the mean sea level as defined in OS maps (readings at Newlyn, Cornwall). The slight discrepancy between the heights of the peaks and what the OS gives us may be due to my plotting or to the nature of the - actually very good - on-line plotting tool that I use.

Height Profile

As in the outline maps, so here too in the above height plots, the numbers of course relate the walk to the particular day in June. The above height plots use a true origin for the vertical elevation (height) axis, so as not to lose track of reality. What a worthy aim!

Some Facts and Figures

Here are some "vital statistics" in metric and imperial units. The total length of the walk is measured on the surface of the WSG84 spheroid. However, as we saw above, we can consider this without undue loss of accuracy as being on a conceptual "flat" plane at mean sea level, using the OS Newlyn sea level reference as explained on OS "hiking" maps. There you are!

"Walk facts and figures"

It's of course fine to say that on our Great Dodd walk we reached about 852 metres above sea level and descended to 136 metres above sea level (i.e. a height difference of 716 metres), but what's the significance of that? Probably, of greater interest when it comes to considering personal achievements, is the total ascent - which usually requires greater effort than the descent. For our Great Dodd walk, the total ascent and descent (same start and end point) was 937 metres - approaching ONE kilometre, which as expected, was greater than the difference of 716 metres between maximum and minimum heights above mean sea level.

Average Rising and Falling Gradients

And here, for the numerical fun of it, are the average gradients we overcame on our walks. The rising and falling (negative) gradients are both averaged over the distances given, with level stretches having rises and falls of less than ± ½ metre.

Rising and Falling Gradients

Of course, these are gradients and level stretches AVERAGED over the walk in question. Thus, allowing for rounding errors, the three aggregate distances for the (1) ascent, (2) level and (3) descent sections, should add up to the total walk distance. The three measures are thus averages. So, for example, when climbing Clough Head from the Old Coach Road, for part of our stretch we had an average ascent gradient of 19.11 % over 1.491 metres (see also height profile 4, above, for a visual impression), whereas the total averaged ascent gradient for our Great Dodd walk was 11.03 % over 8.49 Km. Many of us, including yours truly try to take steep gradients with a modicum of gentleness and catching of breath. The aim is for healthy enjoyment, especially when the weather is fine and when we are close to the longest day of the year with time on our side!

What sort of gradients might you encounter in the world at large? Well, Hertfordshire County Council recommends that its roads should not have longitudinal gradients of more than 5%. Railways? One of the steepest adhesion (no rack-and-pinion) railways in the world, in Austria, has a maximum gradient of 11.6% (Pöstlingberg, Linz, if you wish to pay a visit). By way of further interest, the clockwise route of the Fairfield Horseshoe in the Lake District has a total distance of 15.62 Km (9.71 miles), with the following calculations: an average rising gradient of 14.66% over 6.589 Km, a level part over 0.345 Km, and an average falling gradient of 11.11% over 8.676 Km. This is already seen by many as really quite challenging. So, looking at our walks, we did quite well, fitness-wise!

Less Quantifiable Considerations

On any walk there are considerations which are very real but tantalizingly out of ready reach of those who wish to espouse a numerical approach to many of life's activities. Here are three considerations for starters.

• Weather: We had good walking weather for our main walks, with only some short sharp showers for which we were of course well prepared. Sun and some cloud for most of the time. Walking temperature was excellent - not too not, not too cold. I didn't have the chance to keep temperature readings, but why get too concerned with such figures when we are enjoying ourselves?


• Ground Conditions: These were normally quite good, apart from the boggy stretch between the Old Coach Road and Highgate (on the way to Scales) - care was needed here. I escaped sinking without trace in the mire. All in a day's work.


• Signposting: This was often of the nature "here's a footpath" or "here's a bridleway", although the Lake District seems to fare better on the "path naming front" than other places in the Kingdom. Many of us, of course, had compasses and OS maps to tell us where we were headed - preparedness is always a good ploy! Signposts were usually at expected heights, bearing in mind the average height of us earthlings, but the signposting off the Old Coach Road was definitely a low level job. Perhaps this was to get around a local shortage of wood, or perhaps to be resilient to the wind and the rain, or perhaps, just to test the visual acuity of visitors.

An interesting example of local low-level signposting.
(By the way, it looks like Great Mell Fell in the left background.)

Timing and Speed

It's one thing to discuss the terrain over which we walk. It's quite another to ask how we personally respond to walking over that terrain. There are a number of considerations, of which timing and speed can be taken as starting points. I don't have the timings to hand for our walks, but some modest observations could be useful.

• Timing: It was close to the longest day so we had a comfortable start in daylight; typically, we aimed to start between 09:30 and 10:00. What about the return times? On our Great Dodd walk we got back to Scales at about 20:20, however, on other days, our return was at least two hours earlier, so that we did not have to eat too late - we wanted a good night's sleep for the next day, after all!


• Speed: Our speed was probably less than the 2 to 2½ mph on the flat. We were in mountainous regions after all, and ascents - and sometimes also descents - require diligence and dedication. So there you are!

Track Files

If you are keen to see our walks superimposed on an Ordnance Survey® (OS) map or on another system such as Google Maps®, then you can use the following files to do so. As mentioned above, the numerical data in these files, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 respectively, have been hand-plotted by me from memory (no GPS!) on my return home. The data are based on WGS84. Of course, for copyright reasons, I do not show the OS-based or Google-based maps here.

Postscript

Any map is an approximate representation of what is, and my plotting thereon certainly is. Practicality and scale are relevant considerations. We are not dealing with a planning application calling for detailed spatial descriptions of intricate boundaries. For us in the hiking community, the degrees of accuracy and precision should be just enough to give us useable and helpful knowledge of the terrain about us and beneath our feet. I hope my humble endeavours on this page are in this respect interesting for, and useful to, you my reader!