Twelve Kilometres in Freezing Fog
Fog all day. Not the drifting sort that lifts by eleven, but a flat grey ceiling at about 250 metres that stayed put. The forecast had promised it would clear. I went anyway, partly out of stubbornness and partly because I had promised to take the neighbour’s dog, who does not read forecasts.
Above the wall line the paths on the moor are faint at the best of times and in fog they vanish entirely. I did the whole middle section on bearings: 1.1 km on 040° to the sheepfold, 700 m on 115° to the stream junction, then follow the stream. I count double paces, 65 to the hundred metres on flat ground, and it worked within about 50 metres each time. The sheepfold appeared out of the murk exactly where it should have, which is always slightly astonishing. The dog ranged out to about twenty paces and then became a grey smudge, so he went on the lead.
Temperature hovered around minus 2 °C the whole time. Every blade of grass had a crust of rime and my jacket hood grew a fringe of ice from my breath. The flask of tea was the best thing I have drunk this winter. The sandwich was not. I had left it in the outer pocket of the pack and by midday it was a cold slab with a frozen smear of butter. Lesson: food in the middle of the pack, next to your back, in winter.
Distance 12.3 km, 3 h 55 moving, 410 m of ascent that I never saw. No views at all. I would not call it a good walk by the usual measure, but the navigation worked and that gives a quiet satisfaction nothing else does. It is the only time I really trust the compass over my own sense of direction, and the compass has yet to be wrong.
The dog slept in the car before I had the boots off. Back home, the fog lifted at four in the afternoon, naturally.