The Lowest Mountain

For a long time it was suspected that Calf Top in the Yorkshire Dales may reach the height threshold for mountain status – 2,000 feet.  A GPS survey in 2010 concluded that the summit was short by 2 centimetres but the adoption by the Ordnance Survey of a new geoid model in 2016 updated the height to exceed 2,000 feet by just 6 millimetres!

Starting from Barbon Village Hall car park – make sure that you a donation to the honesty box – and looking up I saw that Calf Top was in cloud but otherwise the weather was pretty benign and I hoped for a good track to the summit.  The lower meadows through Barbon Park looked very nice but were a bit of a quagmire although the squelching was easily escaped by gaining just a little altitude.

It was a fairly steep pull up to Eskholme Pike Cairn but after reaching this waypoint in less than an hour the gradient eased as I neared the cloud base but the breeze started to pick up.  Most of the steep walking was now behind me even though less than half of the ascent had been done.  The walk to the summit was easy despite a small boggy area to cross and being in cloud from the 400 metre contour.  The final yards used the fence and ruined wall to handrail unerringly to the trig point as the wind blew from the west with the cloud clear to see as it travelled across my path.

Just below the summit I met two fellrunners coming down.  These were the first people I had seen on the hill on any of my three post-lockdown days out this year.

I reached the star-adorned trig point and then crossed the fence to the true summit marked by a small cairn.  With summit photos taken I soon departed after putting my gloves on in the cooling wind.

Calf Top summit trig point

I dropped out of the cloud below Castle Knott only to re-enter it near the top of that minor summit before quickly dropping out again.  Descending to Eskholme Pike Cairn afforded good views of Barbon and obvious rain in the direction of Lancaster.

Although the walk lasted just over 4 hours I still felt justified to treat myself on the way home.  Greggs have a magnificent jam doughnut called the “Pink Jammie”; I heartily recommended it!

Calf Top was my final southern Dales summit and it felt like a milestone had been reached.  For the rest of the year I’ll be concentrating on the remaining Pennine summits and ticking the Cheviot summits would be a welcome bonus.  I’m just hoping that the forthcoming summer weather is accommodating!