Soho House is a brand with bona fide British celebrity and royal bragging rights: Prince Harry and Meghan Markle had their first date at one in London. Soho Farmhouse, the brand's countryside inn a two-hour drive outside London, has hosted everyone from former U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron to Princess Eugenie and (my personal favorite) top-selling U.K. band Girls Aloud.
My Lake District adventure: a climb, a walk and a swim
18.08.2023 - 12:31 / theguardian.com
In the dining room of the Wasdale Head Inn, explorer and climber Leo Houlding is inspecting the walls, looking back 150 years to the origins of mountain adventure as a sport. On a shelf is a stack of old hobnail boots, a pair of ice axes crossed above a brace of canvas haversacks, and glorious black-and-white photographs of the pioneers: the tweedy chaps who first came up with the nonsensical notion that scaling rock faces and mountains might be fun.
Leo is a man who has conquered some of the most remote and challenging rock walls on Earth, and yet he is in awe, pointing out the archaic equipment to his two children, Freya, nine, and Jackson, six. “What they did,” he says, “without climbing shoes or anything like modern gear, is amazing.”
Leo, Freya, Jackson and I are going to scale a classic – arguably the route that started it all: the 18-metre Napes Needle, an igneous rock formation that projects from the vertiginous sides of Great Gable above Wasdale. In 1886 Walter Parry Haskett Smith came here, alone, and climbed the needle.
When a photograph of a figure on top of the pillar was displayed in a London shop window a few years later it caused a sensation, inspiring a generation of climbers. Leo is the modern equivalent, an inspiration for anyone wanting adventure. His new book, Closer to the Edge, catalogues his exploits.
Adventure, those old-timers had realised, can be good for you and, what’s more, you don’t have to go far to find it. I’m hoping to discover fresh challenges within the UK, and not just climbing: I want to kayak, scramble, walk and swim, too.
For inspiration I’ll turn to pioneers such as mountaineer Haskett Smith and books like Classic Rock, a 1978 collection by influential writer and photographer Ken Wilson – but also to more recent publications like the series of Wild guides. In each of four areas across the country I’ll find new experiences and ideas.
Before the climb, however, I decide on an adventurous route into the Lakes, walking across the shifting sands of Morecambe Bay. This area, 120 square miles of it, has claimed many lives over the years, but the treacherous tidal flats can be crossed with a guide, local fisher Michael Wilson, who leads walks across from Arnside to Grange-over-Sands for various charities most weekends. I’m here with Ali Pretty who is leading Bay Lines – Beach of Dreams, a creative project celebrating the coastline, pathways and stories of Morecambe Bay.
Arriving at Arnside, I’m astonished to find about 500 people waiting for Michael, who needs a loudhailer to give the safety briefing. “If anyone gets stuck, leave them.”
Laughter.
“I’m serious. If there’s any rescuing to be done, the tractors will go to them.” That’s the second surprise, two veteran
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