Trail’s most experienced in-house mountaineer settles his nerves in the pub before packing KitKat and Paracord for an epic first ascent of the finest peak in the North York Moors, ROSEBERRY TOPPING.
Many years ago (sometimes referred to as the 1980s) I heard the words ‘Roseberry Topping’ for the first time. I instinctively said “yes please”, expecting a delicious sauce to accompany my dessert. Alas, as with so many things in life, I’d got the wrong end of the stick. It turned out that Roseberry Topping was a mountain. Now, the seminal peaks call out to you, don’t they, towering as they do over your imagination. But it was only after years of climbing mountains all over our glorious lands that I eventually noticed a polite hand raised in the back of my mountain ambitions, a hand in the shape of Roseberry Topping.
How could I have been so blind for so long? Because it appeared there was, after all, a decent mountain in the North York Moors. A mountain of character, with classic form. A hill with personality. A mound that wouldn’t require much effort to climb and, equally as important, with a pub at the foot of it. And that pub, The King’s Head, would make the perfect base camp. Once I’d found my way to it, I stockpiled provisions, waxed my boots, and got a hearty meal. Summit day had long been anticipated, and I thought sleep would be slow to seduce me, as the excitement at the thought of the next day’s climb would keep me awake into the small hours. As it happens, I fell asleep in minutes.
On opening the curtains of my base camp 5-star room, a clear sky silhouetted Roseberry Topping’s distinctive lines; the weather window would allow a push for the top. First things first – breakfast with all the trimmings, as I didn’t want to run out of energy halfway up the thing. Summit days are always hard on the body and it was as early as 10am when I checked out of the pub, my rucksack bulging with a flask of coffee, a 12 pack of orange KitKats and 4m of Paracord (just in case!).
All the preparation in the world can never prepare you for the reality of a situation. So, as ever, I treated summit day with as much respect and trepidation as I did on my first ever mountain climb. On negotiating the tricky kissing gate, I arrived at the true foot of the mountain. From here on in contour lines would be climbed, and the only way was up.
Mountains always have a way of humbling even the largest of egos, and Roseberry Topping was humbling mine straight away. I’d started the climb steadily – I knew not to overexert myself in the initial stages of a ‘significant’ climb like this
