Whiteless Pike

It’s September 2020 and after a year full of lockdowns, cancelled holidays and just general chaos, I unexpectedly found myself in the Lake District for a week. Day one was spent near Borrowdale, the second in the wonderful Newlands. For the third, I had a lovely horseshoe walk around Grasmoor lined up. After starting with Whiteside, I revisited Hopegill Head, went high up to Grasmoor, got a bit bored at Wandope, and then headed for the final fell on my ridge walk – Whiteless Pike.

There are 26 letters in the alphabet. That means that there’s lots of options for the first letter of a fell name. 26 to be precise. Yet there’s not a single Wainwright that starts with an X, a J, or a Q.

In contrast there are 11 that start with the letter W. 5% of all Wainwrights start with a W. Mind you, 25 (12%) start with a B, and a whopping 29 (14%) start with an S. So what does that tell you?

So yeah, 11 fells start with the letter W. And I was about to visit my third in one day. And the second to start with “White” for that matter. (Yeah, I know. You’re wondering how many fells start with the word “white”. The answer is three. The other is White Side in the Eastern Fells.)

But if Whiteside had a side of it that was white (hint: it doesn’t), from it’s name it was clear that Whiteless Pike would have not a spec of white on it at all.

Didn’t stop me looking though.

The top of Whiteless Pike was less than a mile from nearby Wandhope. A nice, grassy path ran along the top of the ridge between them. I almost skipped along it, enjoying that feeling of going down hill. I wasn’t going down hill by much, this was true. But after a day with plenty of steep climbs, it felt rather good to be losing height again. My legs certainly felt the difference.

Being only two miles from Buttermere, Whiteless Pike had a grand view of the village’s two watery neighbours; Buttermere (lake) and Crummock Water glistening gently in the sun. It was a splendid sight. Buttermere was becoming one of those places that I didn’t think I would ever tire of seeing. Having only visited for the first time the year before, it was becoming one of my favourite parts of the Lake. It would certainly be a wrench when I got to the point of running out of fells to climb there. Although that would – of course – be an incentive to finish all the Wainwrights so I had an excuse to come back.

Anyway, it was a fine place to sit down on. A perfect fell to end the day. But there was one more place I needed to go…