English: A Story of Marmite, Queuing and Weather. Ben Fogle
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heat that the chocolate eggs were melting. November can be hotter than June, and winter often doesn’t arrive until February. We are more likely to have snow at Easter than Christmas. We can wear T-shirts in November. It’s all topsy-turvy, and that is what we love to talk about. Even within England, some regions are more susceptible than others to certain kinds of weather as the air masses jostle for dominance. North-west England is buffeted by the maritime polar air mass, which can bring frequent showers at any time of the year. North-east England is more exposed to the continental polar air mass, which brings cold dry air. The south and south-east are closest to the continental tropical air mass, which carries warm dry air. The south-west is the area most exposed to the maritime tropical air mass, which ushers in warm moist air. Wet, dry, warm, cold, it is a proper maelstrom. ‘There’s a lot of weather about today,’ meteorological sages like to say mysteriously, as if the skies are full of gods of the elements whimsically calling the shots with thunderbolts and winds, lightning and storms. No wonder so many folk sayings ‘reading the weather’ remain popular. ‘Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight. Red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning’ first appears in the Bible in the Gospel of Matthew but has led to variations such as ‘Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. Red sky in the morning, sailor’s warning’. ‘Rain before seven, fine by eleven’ is another which emphasizes the variability of the weather systems passing over our green and pleasant land.
Lucy has presented hundreds if not thousands of weather reports over a decade. ‘The thing about being a weather girl is that the weather always leads,’ she smiles. ‘We are merely the messengers, we can’t change the weather.’
While it’s fair to say I will probably never become a weatherman, at least Lucy has a warm studio in which she can shelter from the worst of the elements, which is a lot more than can be said for what is arguably England’s most extreme forecasting job, that of the Fell Top Assessor. This was the next port of call in my English weather odyssey.
A bitter wind ripped across the car park as I made my way to the waiting Land Rover. It was midwinter and I was joining a man with one of the most unusual weather jobs in England.
I have always loved the Lake District. I will never forget the first time we went there as a family. I couldn’t believe that England had such a magical, watery landscape. I still get that childhood excitement whenever I visit as I hurtle back to my childhood. It is the location of Swallows and Amazons.
But today I was in the Helvellyn range of mountains, between Thirlmere and Ullswater, ready to climb Helvellyn itself. It is a dramatic, rugged mountain – at 3,117ft the third-highest point in England – and from its summit, on a clear day, you can see Scotland and Wales. Alfred Wainwright, the celebrated fell walker and guide book author, described one ridge to Helvellyn Plateau as ‘all bare rock, a succession of jagged fangs ending in a black tower’, which makes the fact that there have been a number of fatalities on the mountain over the years understandable.
The rocks of Helvellyn were forged in the heat of an ancient volcano some 450 million years ago. It inspires poetry as well as respect for its dangers. Coleridge and Wordsworth both wrote about it. This is the final stanza of Wordsworth’s poem ‘To ——, on Her First Ascent to the Summit of Helvellyn’:
For the power of hills is on thee,
As was witnessed through thine eye
Then, when old Helvellyn won thee
To confess their majesty!
The mountain has attracted lots of odd adventurers. In 1926, one man landed and took off from the summit in a small plane. Today, though, Helvellyn is arguably best known for one of the strangest weather-forecasting jobs in the world: that of the Fell Top Assessor, whose role is to assess both meteorological and ground conditions to provide an accurate local forecast for the estimated 15 million visitors to the Lake District National Park each year. The key is to check the ground underfoot and predict avalanche risks.
Dressed in multiple layers against the bitter wind, soon we were in the cloud as the temperature plummeted and the trail became increasingly icy. Thick grey cloud clung to the Cumbrian valleys. Drystone walls disappeared into the gloom as we began our hike. We were forced to strap crampons to our boots as we ascended the snow and ice. Gripping my ice axe in one hand, we beat into the wind that had dropped the temperature to a freezing minus 9°C. Ice formed on my eyelashes as we continued past half a dozen hardy mountaineers.
Soon we had reached the summit, where the Fell Top Assessor’s real work begins. He pulled his tiny notebook from his jacket and assessed the conditions. Tiny horizontal icicles, known as hard rime, had formed on every surface, including us. These miniature formations of spiky ice grow into the wind, giving an indication of the prevailing winds on the summit. Wind speed and wind chill measured, within minutes he had gathered the necessary data, and after a quick mug of tepid tea from a Thermos flask, we began our descent.
Every day, come rain or shine, wind or snow, storm or hurricane, the Fell Top Assessor climbs the peak to report on weather conditions from the summit. That’s every day. Working seven days on and seven days off, the two assessors will take it in turns to make the daily climb, often braving temperatures as low as minus 16°C. It is estimated that the fell top assessors climb the equivalent of Everest every two weeks.
Unsurprisingly, candidates must have ‘considerable winter mountaineering experience and skills, preferably with a mountaineering qualification’, according to the job description, which continues, ‘You will provide information and advice to other fell users to ensure safe and responsible use of the mountain. You will also identify and carry out basic rights of way maintenance on the routes.’ Other skills required include the ability to write concise reports, assess snow and ice conditions and use a map and compass.
Jon Bennet, who has been a fell top assessor on Helvellyn for eight years, says: ‘Fell top assessing is the best job, and to be out in the hills doing something as worthwhile as this is a perfect combination.’ The job is not without its perils, however, as several walkers have lost their lives on the peak in recent years.
In October 2016 Robert Pascoe, a 24-year-old RAF engineer, was killed when he lost his footing while walking with a companion on the Striding Edge side of Helvellyn and fell 650ft down the mountain. In 2010, Alan Burns, thirty-nine, from Preston, Lancashire, suffered fatal head injuries in a fall from Swirral Edge. Three days later, Philip Ashton, forty-three, from St Helens, Merseyside, fell from the same ridge while walking with friends and died later in hospital.
Yet Helvellyn is one of the most popular fells with walkers in winter and summer, attracting ramblers and experienced mountaineers who come to enjoy the views and the diverse topography. And the Striding Edge route to the summit is one of the busiest.
And as far as jobs go, being the Fell Top Assessor probably beats sitting in front of a computer screen for eight hours a day. At least, that’s what the adventurer in me thinks. More generally, the job tells me that English people are prepared to go to any extreme to provide others with the most precise information about the weather.
‘What’s the weather like?’ asked my mother as I clung to the side of a tiny rowing boat in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. I was on a satellite phone, 1,500 miles from land, and my mother was asking about the weather.
‘Warm, a little rain, beautiful cloud formations,’ I answered. ‘What about you? Is it cold?’
‘Freezing, I had to scrape a thick layer of ice off the car.’
‘We’re expecting rain later.’ I replied.
I was six weeks into a gruelling and frankly rather dangerous bid to row across the Atlantic Ocean, and my rare link to the outside world via satellite phone was dominated by chats about the weather. How English is that?
We love to talk about the weather. It’s all about the weather. I have lost count of the number of conversations I have had around the world that have been about weather. And now here I was on one of my most dangerous trips, and my mother’s main concern was the prevailing weather conditions.
The first