Remembrance Day with a Difference

This week-end I am off to the Lake District, to the Wasdale / Eskdale area in fact to meet up with a group of friends of my good friend and Alps / Scotland buddy, Graeme.  The wintry feel may have gone for now but I'm still looking forward for a good week-end of walking and scrambling.  But this is a week-end with a difference because it is remembrance week-end and Sunday is 11/11.  So this year I am going to mark the occasion by attending the remembrance service on the top of Great Gable. This is a service with a proud history (acknowledgements to www.uktv.co.uk/eden):

After WWI a climbing club based in the Lake District wanted to create a memorial for members who died in the conflict. Deciding on a grand gesture, surviving clubmen purchased 3000 acres of high mountain in memory of their fallen comrades. Included in the purchase, among other peaks, was Great Gable, the most beautifully situated peak in the Lakes. In 1923 these hills were presented to the National Trust in perpetuity. Each year, a group of climbers ascends Great Gable for a Remembrance Sunday service (held on the second Sunday in November, the closest to Armistice Day on the 11th) and stands by the plaque that marks the summit. 

Over the years this non-denominational service has become one of the more popular and unusual Remembrance Sunday activities.  By 11am each year several hundred hardy souls will have gathered, regardless of the often inclement weather, to hear readings and observe a period of silence. 

 This year I shall be proud to be one of them.