The following is a guest post.
Over the Hill is a series of articles based on interviews with people over fifty enjoying life and getting the most out of living in Britain.
Via Ferrata. The name alone sends shivers down my flat, sea-level, Texan spine. The “Iron Way” is a series of rungs, ladders, bridges, and steel cables fixed to the side of a mountain face. These paths originated in Italy and Europe, but the English Lake District also boasts their own version of the Via Ferrata. Using the original miner’s track at the Honister Slate mine, the VF website boasts that the average person on the street can become a mountaineer! *gulp*
Knowing a little of the Via Ferrata, I was pretty astonished when my friend Judith told me her 79 year old father, Bryan Scales, had completed the track last year! Bryan made the trek with his two daughters: Yvonne Grant and Judith Yates, their husbands: Neil and Colin, and grandson James Grant. Upon arrival, the guide looked over their small group and asked Bryan, “Are you going too?”
The group laughed and told the guide, “The trip was his idea!”
How it all came to this…
Bryan Scales was 11 years old when the Second World War ended. Though he lived in Yorkshire, he spent holidays with his grandparents who lived along the Lancashire coast. “My parents would visit, driving a hired car, and we would all go on day trips to the Trough of Bowland, or north to the Lake District.”
He loved the freedom and isolation from the rush and bustle of his hometown. Walking and biking became his passion. But, Bryan soon learned that the outdoors could be more dangerous than he’d ever imagined! On a trip to view the Grossglockner (the highest mountain in Austria) across the Pasterze glacier, he and a few of his friends slithered down onto the glacier. They looked down into one of the many very deep fissures in the ice and were duly impressed. They then walked around to find a better view and saw that they had been standing on a 6-inch thick shelf overhanging the chasm! They froze, then ran to the edge of the glacier and scrambled up the loose rock back to the waiting bus.
Later, at University, Bryan met his future wife, Dorothy, who also had a passion for the outdoors. Many times, they rode their tandem bike to new adventures. Later, they used public transport and youth hostels to get around the Pennines, the Scottish border, and the Yorkshire Moors and Dales. Though Bryan’s job took them to Cheshire, he and his wife never gave up walking and determined to walk at least 6 hours a day whenever possible. They began making circular walks (the longest of which was 18 miles) that would return them to a comfortable base.
As Bryan and Dorothy got older, alternate days became “rest days”. In 2004, they had a look around the Honister Slate Mine in the Lake District and read that there was an effort underway to rejuvenate the mine with a mile-long zip wire, but the city council turned down the idea. Whispers of a Via Ferrata, though, were enough to whet his appetite for more information!
In 2007, Mark Weir (a local entrepreneur) opened the very first Via Ferrata in the UK at the Honister Slate Mine in Cumbria.
Sadly, on December 5th, 2012 Dorothy passed away. So, in 2013, Bryan and his family went to the Lake District to scatter her ashes on the hills she loved to walk so much. And, to sign up for the Via Ferrata!
There are two versions of the walk, and they chose the easier one to accommodate the desires of most of the group.
“The walk takes about an hour with an extra 15 minutes to walk back down to the shop and café,” says Bryan. “The most worrying part was climbing around the large knobble overhanging a rather frightening drop of a few hundred feet.”
Bryan Scales © Judith Yates
They were attached with a couple of karabiners, but even so, the sound of ice sheets falling down the other side of the gully and bouncing off rocks 500 feet below was unnerving. “You just have to trust your hands, feet, eyes, ears, and the two karabiners!”
I asked Bryan if the Via Ferrata was what he expected. He said it was exciting, but he enjoyed it and (sounding just like a man!) that it was what he’d expected.
I’m sitting here in my sea-level home, in my sea-level chair at my sea-level computer and I’m thinking that if I was 79, being lashed to the side of a mountain wouldn’t exactly be my idea of a relaxing way to spend the day. My bet is that what Bryan isn’t letting on is that it was a pretty darn amazing thing for a 79 year old gent to have done. If he was here, I’d pin a medal on him because at my tender age of…. let’s just say, at my tender age… I don’t think you could get me near the Via Ferrata. The shop, maybe. Possibly the café. But nowhere near two karabiners and a steel cable up the side of a mountain!
I see this as an incredible accomplishment, and one Bryan Scales can be very proud of.
As we were winding up the interview, I asked Bryan if, at age 80, he’d do the Via Ferrata again.
“YES!” he said. In all caps.
Victory Jump © Judith Yates
Postscript: The Honister Slate Mine is open 7 days a week from 9 to 5 for tours. The Via Ferrata hours vary. Please check www.honister-slate-mine.co.uk to book yourself (and/or your parents) for a unique experience in the Cumbrian Lake District!
Joy Owen is a travel author and experienced adventurer (travel is always an adventure!). She has lived in England and minored in British History. Her passions include traveling Britain, travel planning/packing, British history, storytelling, public speaking, mentoring and training. She writes at www.wanderingengland.blogspot.com and at www.wainwright.org.uk
