At the back o’ beyond: Skiddaw House (470 m.)

Sights and shapes on the paths to Skiddaw House hostel (470 m.), round the back of Skiddaw (931 m.) and Lonscale Fell (715 m.), it’s accessible on the Cumbria Way from Mosedale, Glenderaterra or Candleseaves Bog.
Skiddaw House was built circa 1829 as the gamekeeper’s lodge for Skiddaw Forest (hunting reserve), then it was run by the YHA as “Britain’s highest hostel”, currently it is open to private groups only. Skiddaw House is out of sight of towns and villages so it seems a long way from anywhere, plus the facilities are basic. Even now it is well out of the range of the mobile phone networks, which - rather charmingly - peter out just beyond the gate to the fells. You do indeed feel you are “At the back o’ beyond” as the slogan on the YHA’s Skiddaw House postcard used to say.

Cumbria Way, Glenderaterra Beck and Blencathra (865 m.)