I spent last weekend in the Lake District, on Saturday ascending both Scafell and the Pike, England’s two highest mountains.

The 964m Scafell, though lower than the Pike, is a much more technical ascent with hard to negotiate gullies, among them Lord’s Rake, where I discovered three lumps of icy snow. My findings, that I later Tweeted, attracted the attention of Iain Cameron, who, with a team of volunteers, maps and measures all British snow patches that survive through the summer.

I’ve read about Iain’s findings in the Royal Meteorological Society‘s journal Weather but to find one of these surviving patches myself enabled me to empathise just why he and others find the task of mapping and measuring them fascinating, a sort of first-hand insight into how the UK’s climate varies from year to year.

On descending from Scafell I thought I’d seen further patches lower down but these turned out to be melted puddles on the moorland that were reflecting white against the bright sky.

It was a cracking weekend weatherwise. Though the wind on Sunday was fairly brisk at the top of Hellvellyn it didn’t impact much on the conditions. Two dry days in a row with excellent visibility are rare at any time of year in the Lakes. I can’t wait to return.