There is hardly anyone to disturb for miles, but we instinctively drop our voices to a museum whisper. The silence as the day ends on the summit of Helvellyn is flawless: no wind, no ambient rumble of aircraft, and when a raven passes high overhead we can hear its wings slicing the air with a lucid clarity.
All the major fells of the Lake District are arrayed on the horizons around us, their uppermost contours bathed in rich orange light. In the far north-west, across the Solway Firth, the sun is reddening and ripening as it sinks into Scotland. We take a perch on the edge of the rocky plateau, pull a hastily assembled dinner from our packs, and settle down to enjoy the spectacle of a sunset from the top of England’s third highest mountain.
It has been fantastically hot all day; too hot, in fact, to contemplate climbing fells in the full brunt of the day, which is a novel problem to have. We set off on this late-evening outing in part to try to sidestep the worst of it, but at about 8.30pm, as we scrambled over the warm rock of Striding Edge, the temperature was 27C. It is only now, as the sun descends into the silhouetted hills of Galloway, that a hint of coolness infuses the air.
We pick our way down the exposed and rocky Swirral Edge with embers of the sunset burning away in the northern sky. As we rejoin the wide path across Glenridding Common, the thought of the long drive home in the dark puts me on edge. I stride ahead, but my impatience soon dissipates.
The only sounds are the crunch of our footsteps, vague breezes, and water running over rock. Late evening moisture settles on the dry land, cooling my slightly sunburnt skin and uncorking the smells of moss and grass. I look back at the great glacial cirque that holds Red Tarn; diffuse but heady memories of other high camps and mountain dusks mingle together, and the particular ecstatic peace I always feel in these moments descends on me like dew.
