I climbed Scafell Pike with my old man and his mate Roger. I did it from Wastwater when I was sixteen and expected an easy climb, which couldn't have been further from the truth. We did one of Wainwright's favourites, starting at Seathwaite and walking up a long gill to Great End, a spectacular rock face at the north-eastern edge of Scafell. I was surprised after walks in the Pennines that there were no rock climbers around - I know the Lakes are geologically different, is the rock too friable?

Hard to get a sense of the scale from the photo, but it's pretty impressive. Wainwright says "This is the true Lakeland of the fellwalker, the sort of terrain that calls him back time after time, the sort of memory that haunts his long winter exile. It is not the pretty places - the flowery lanes of Grasmere or Derwentwater's wooded bays - that keep him restless in his bed; it is the magnificent ones. Places like Great End..."

I couldn't agree more.

Roger is a bit of a twitcher and wanted to see some ravens in their natural habitat, a bit of a rarity nowadays, and there they were, swooping and diving off the updrafts from the cliffs. Best of all, one of the new Eurofighters sped below us on training operations and disappeared behind the crags, the belated sonic boom sounding out from either side like something out of Mordor.

We went round the eastern side of Great End and clambered over acres of boulders and rubble cracked up by hundreds of thousands of years of frost erosion. My dad's on the left, Roger on the right

Roger fell between two boulders and sprained his wrist - lucky it wasn't his ankle, we'd have had to get the Mountain Rescue helicopter out. Actually, that would have been pretty cool.

From the top of Scafell Pike, the highest point in England, we could see Sellafield nuclear power station down on the Cumbrian coast, beyond that the Isle of Man in the middle of the Irish Sea (surprisingly near), and in the distance, faintly on the horizon, Ireland. To the north Scotland was clearly visible, and to the south I could make out Ingleborough in Yorkshire and Pendle in Lancashire. My dad reckoned you could see Wales "if you use your imagination a bit", but he's a bit of a joker like that. I have seen all the nations of the British Isles from one point before, from Snaefell on the Isle of Man - but not today.

My photos of all this show absolutely nothing. Crap camera, sorry.

The way down was the hardest and most visually stunning part of the walk. We climbed around the top of the glacial valley that separates Lingmell and Great Gable - big bloody mountains in their own right - which plunged very steeply, as glacial valleys do.

That's Lingmell on the left, in the background is High Seat, which I'm convinced I've climbed before though my dad can't remember it. Great Gable is on the far right.

I'm not a big fan of heights and found some of this section of the walk a bit nerve-racking. Any hill walkers out there will be familiar with the point where Walking suddenly becomes Scrambling, and what it's like to lose your way and think you have to hang onto a cliff by your fingertips, before backing up and finding a much easier route. I haven't got a photo of this bit as I was shitting myself, but my dad's got one of me clinging to a rock with a big false grin on my face, trying to look like I'm enjoying myself, screaming inside.

Great Gable from the top of the glacial valley, with High Seat behind. Again, I wish you could get a sense of the scale. Absolutely wonderful and I could have sat and looked at it for hours. Of all the views from the walk, we had this one for hours as we rounded the top of the glacial valley and it has really stayed with me.

Another view of Great Gable from a small tarn.

After we'd rounded the top of the valley it got a lot easier, following a different gill down to Seathwaite, where we started.

The stream in the gill started from Styhead Tarn, above. Some of the tarns and lakes in the Lake District are home to unique species of freshwater fish left behind after the ice age, which went on to evolve in isolation. I'm not sure if this is one of them. We saw what my dad reckoned might be rare wild flowers down a steep rock face earlier in the walk. The Lake District is a damn cool place.

I haven't done any proper hill walking like this since I was a teenager, but I intend to do a lot more after last week. It was one of the best days I've had in ages, and despite my vertigo I'm craving something a bit more challenging. Unfortunately mountains are a bit scarce in London but luckily I've got my dad up north who's keen on it himself. For the first time though I'm seriously considering learning how to drive so I can get out there myself.

I'm arranging another walk for bank holiday weekend, and can't wait.