Norman Hadley pays for his pleasures on a quick overnight raid to the roof of England, when not everything goes entirely to plan.

A very great man once said: there's no success like failure. Then again, Dylan might have been quoting Joan Baez. Either way, dear reader, you're wise enough to know that hills are never plain sailing, yes? We share our stories; we post our pictures. They may be cheesy summit grins, or pensive stares into the distance, posed in mimesis of Caspar David Friedrich's wanderer above a sea of mist. But you and I know there's always a story behind the glory. At some point between the tightening of laces and the Instagram-opportunity, our hero will have sunk thigh-deep into a bog, graunched an ankle or forgotten the matches. That's just hills. That's just life. They are, of course, the same thing, which is why we climb.

I mention this at the outset because I am in possession of a set of pictures in which a man will pitch his tent on the edge of a vast precipice so he can assume the all-conquering stance to survey his mist-wreathed domain. But he will also screw up along the way and it's only fair to you I should disclose this on his behalf.

Thwarted by an unusual obstacle

Let's begin, as tradition demands, at the beginning. This trip had tight constraints. It was a super-short, after-work raid on the fells at the outset of a Bank Holiday weekend at the start of half-term, returning on the Saturday morning. Just getting into the Lakes was destined to prove tricky, let alone getting parked or finding a free pitch.

However, I had a plan. Actually, I had three. Plans A and B involved vaulting Shap and entering the Lakes by the A66. But as soon as I joined the motorway, the gantry signs warned that a Very Bad Thing had happened near Penrith with delays of over an hour. I soon learned that the Very Bad Thing was a lorry shedding its load across the carriageway. The load in question was offal.  On the hottest day of the year so far. Pity the cleanup crew for that one.

Westward Ho

Plan C swung into action. I headed west and veered right at Duddon Bridge in search of that most elusive commodity:  Bank Holiday quiet. It was an unusually abundant year for blossom: everywhere was liberally bedecked with blizzards of white flowers. Sheets of bluebells still glowed like low gas-flames in the glades. Traffic was mercifully light: the biggest holdup was a herd of cattle lolling in the road, complete with calves. Closer inspection revealed that one of their number wasn't a cow at all but a donkey. Whether it knew it was a donkey was a question to ponder as I completed my drive to Cockley Beck.

Call it dumb luck or sound contingency-planning, but I managed to stash the car in exactly the pull-in I'd hoped for, without another vehicle in sight. The air was hot and still. The sky was perhaps a little more overcast than I'd hoped but the summits were clear. A cuckoo piped from the trees by the farm. A circuit of upper Eskdale beckoned, with a high camp somewhere along the ridge. A last check of the bum bag, a tug on the laces and I was away.

I dodged the notorious squelchfest of Moasdale by trotting up Hard Knott. This was a shirt-off job from the get go, summoning lungs and legs into action after a week shackled to a desk. Stiff stems of old bracken scratched at my calves. Any hopes for a cooling breeze at height soon faded.

From the summit, I loped down to the low grassy col at the top of Moasdale, with the siren call of the Scafells luring me north. Crossing Lingcove Beck proved easy, the water level low and the pace lazy. I skirted the tip of Esk Pike's South ridge to be confronted by the vast bog of Great Moss. This proved surprisingly firm, and crossing the Esk was like striding over a garden rill.

It is easy to get intimidated by the gigantic wall of contour lines piled above you here. I dug in and hauled myself up to the bottom of the dark slit of Foxes Tarn gully. This provided a welcome cool damp atmosphere and, even in this rubbly desolation, I found starry saxifrage, mountain wood sorrel and pink anemones sparkling among the grey stones.

After the tarn, which was reduced to the size of a duvet cover, a few zigzags of scree found me at the summit of Scafell with its birds' eye view of Wastwater. I chatted briefly to a camper at the top of Deep Ghyll, relating a memorable pitch in the same spot a year earlier.

I wanted to return to Mickledore via the West Wall Traverse, which I'd never descended before. The entry chute into Deep Ghyll proved uncomfortably marginal, trying  not to dislodge any stones on anyone lower down. Once in the Ghyll itself, I slithered down steep scree to gain the Traverse itself: an improbable goat-trod twisting through rock scenery reminiscent of a Lord of the Rings set. That led to precarious slithering down the apocalyptic gulch of Lords Rake and an undignified scrabble onto the Mickledore crest.

Bounding along England's roofline

After that, the spasmodic boulder-hopping over the Pike felt comparatively straightforward. I didn't pause at the summit but pressed on over the stony shoulders of Broad Crag and Ill Crag. It was getting on towards teatime and thoughts were tilting towards finding a pitch. From Ill Crag, there was no sign yet of any tents on Great End. Hopes began to rise, as hopes do. I detoured down the steps to the Calf Cove spring (my Old Faithful, my Lourdes) and knelt to fill the water bottles. Bless me, O bounteous waters. Grant me a summit free from other tents. Deliver me from snorers, late-night chatterers and disposable barbecue-toters.

Someone must have been listening, because Great End was deserted. This was remarkable  on a bright Bank Holiday. I reasoned that people might turn up later so laid claim to an eyrie on the very edge of the crag, by the exit of Central Gully. The only tents I could see were huddled around Sprinkling Tarn, far below. One, I noted disapprovingly, had a campfire. But I had the top to myself.

With time on my hands, I wandered the plateau, photographing the lengthening shadows. It was still too hot and windless for hot drinks so I guzzled as much water as I could, leaving just enough for cooking and morning coffee. Tea was delicious: Expedition Foods' Chicken, Parmesan and Basil risotto followed by their chocolate pudding. There was time for another patrol of the summit plateau and this time I discovered a couple of guys who had shown up after me but tactfully pitched well out of sight on the westward side.

Luck too good to last

Everything was going absurdly well, so it was obvious Fate was waiting round the next corner to deliver a humbling jab to the jaw. Idly laying out my kit, I noticed something missing. It wasn't something I had immediate need of, but it was a blow nonetheless.  My cagoule and overtrousers, squeezed into a small stuff-sack, had leapt free at some point between Cockley Beck and here.

This was a tad annoying. The overtrousers owed me nothing, being almost as tattered as their owner. But they'd be costly to replace and the jacket was an extremely expensive ultralight model that I'd had for barely a year. I quickly scrapped my plans to continue round the Eskdale skyline over Bowfell and Crinkle Crags in the morning. Instead, I would retrace my steps in the vain hope of finding the rogue waterproofs. But what were the chances of finding a rock-coloured, grapefruit-sized package in a landscape festooned with a billion rocks?

Also, that would be a lot of steps to retrace, especially as I had to be down to Cockley Beck for eight o'clock. I decided to pace out the first part straight away, as far back as Calf Cove. There was a chance that the kit had fallen out there, because I must have removed the bum bag to retrieve the larger water bottle. This preliminary search proved fruitless, so I returned to the tent to contemplate my stupidity. I knew I had stuffed the bag into an elasticated pocket and tied it on as a precaution but I had clearly not tethered it well enough. I started to think it must have popped out when I was slithering down Deep Ghyll, too focused on not coming to grief to notice part of my burden making a bid for freedom.

A soft nightfall

In the meantime, the mountains put on their evening spectacle. The sun sank behind the Merrick. The Isle of Man was moored peacefully offshore. Gable and Pillar transformed into dusky apricot silhouettes. The Langdale Pikes glowed  amber. Down in Central Gully, an unseen ring ouzel sang the simplest evensong. The Moon rose high and Venus shone in the west. I noted a few promising tufts of cloud assembling in the valleys. Maybe, just maybe, they would organise and link arms in the night.

I slept well. At least, I slept well for the first few hours. Some time around two, a brisk gusty wind snuck in unannounced from the south. The mountain forecast had mentioned nothing more than ten miles per hour but this was considerably more vigorous and persistent. So I dozed periodically as the flysheet flapped, knowing I needed a four o'clock alarm anyway. Sunrise was due at quarter to five and I was on a tight schedule to be back at Cockley Beck.

Into the larklight

When I lifted the zip at four, it was everything I could have hoped for. A pale lilac light suffused the land. There was no continuous inversion sheet but a big fluffy cloud lay below to the north. As I breakfasted on porridge and coffee, the sun peeked, exactly on schedule, over Sticks Pass. 

I packed up quickly, on the move before five in the hope I could be over the Pike before it got too busy. The ridge passed in a series of vignettes, with bright sun pouring through capricious swirls of mist. Everything turned yellow. When life gives you lemon-light, drink it in. Or something. On I trotted, back down to Mickledore. Back down the scree to Lords Rake and across the West Wall Traverse to the loose exit of Deep Ghyll. Still, there was no sign of my rain gear.

As I ran back across Great Moss, I started to write off the kit in my mind. You win some, you lose some. What was it that Kipling chap said about the twin impostors of triumph and disaster? All the same, I threw in a last crossing of Hard Knott, just in case. There was still no sign: too bad. Jogging down to the car for eight o'clock, absorbing the financial blow became as inevitable as the blows of heel strike: the price paid for the far greater spiritual hit. All I could do was keep on keeping on with the alternating exercise of those twin faculties: gratitude and fortitude, over and over. Just as alternating feet push forward until they can push no more.