The Beaufort wind scale neared eight recently as a gale blew up briefly, without warning, across the Lake District. Umbrellas were blown inside out in Keswick, slates flew off a roof in Rydal and laden clothes-lines snapped in Grasmere. Over Great End, Skiddaw and Blencathra it hurtled, sending cat's-paws racing across the lakes of Bassenthwaite, Derwentwater, Windermere, Coniston Water and fjord-like Ullswater. The few walkers on the skylines caught by its suddenness fought to don their top-most windproofs, the experienced ones quickly turning their back to the blast after first slipping an arm down a sleeve, then turning around some more to keep the fabric plastered to their backs and so slip the other arm down its sleeve too.
To someone like Steve Goacher, on a lake shore far below, such conditions quicken the pulse. This champion yachtsman and sail-maker in Bowness-on-Windermere is used to capricious air currents speeding down from the fells. "Watch the way the wind fans out sideways across the water, creating flat bits and choppy patches, which you try to pick your way between in your Flying Fifteen racing dinghy," he says. "It is exceptionally difficult where there are rocks just under the surface, as in places on Windermere." Incongruously, he adds, lighter breezes can produce thrills too, as the sailors try to mask the air current from their rivals with their sails.
It is with less sophistication that hilltop climbers view the wind, just glad to get down unscathed off the ridges. Strong winds, though, can be seen as a boon when pushing from behind as you ascend, say, Sty Head. Or even when it gusts into your face as you descend precipitous Crag Hill above Buttermere, grateful that it will not – from this direction, at least – precipitate a stumble into the abyss below.