now are these the ultimate pushy parents?

[FluffyMummy123]

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Bracing. That's what my friend from London says about Scotland whenever she comes to visit. Another of her sayings is 'Bleak. I like bleak.'

goog god, soryr for little ones

so did their parents really push them over then?

what a pair of f..............g idiots.

yep, on a par with those idiots who went up snowdon with a 2 year old and got stuck.

mind you, me and dh once got rescued by boy scouts while hiking in Poland - oh the shame - well, we didn't actually admit we were lost, but pretended we tagged along on their 20km hike to the top of every mountain in the local area just for fun. it was in a snowstorm. we had only taken bottled water. obviously it had frozen. but to be fair, we had no kids then and are slightly more organised now

my parents often took us walking (in similar places to that) when I was 5 and younger. They left at midday - so it's not like they were deliberately going out at night with the children.

I presume the baby was in one of those 'carrier' things - and given that my mum used to walk me along the cliffs from Skinnigrove to Saltburn (and sometimes as far as Redcar) - for anyone that knows that part of the NE Coastline - when I was 5 and younger I don't quite see what the issue was......

But surely on the NE coastal walks you are not so far from civilisation as you would be at the top of a mountain?

Plus you need to leave a margin for error to make sure you can get home before dark, and leaving at midday to climb Scafell wouldn't leave much of one.

My dh is a big hillwalker (I'm a reluctant one) and he and his friends will always leave before light if they have a long day, so that they can minimise chances of getting lost and get home before dark.

oh they were the 'short' walks she used to take us on - when Dad wasn't working we went off into the Dales for longer ones. And actually on that part of the coast you are pretty isolated.

Dad and I got lost on the Cairngorm when I was about 15.....not entirely our fault - massive icesheet still there in the middle of June which we had to negotiate round - and we only left at lunchtime to do the walk .

People seem to be assuming that this was a 5yr old like your average 5yr old 'townie' who's hardly ever seen a hill let alone a Mountain. I couldn't tell you which mountains mum and dad took us up (usually one a fortnight) but we were certainly doing them by the time I was 5 - and we didn't leave the house until mid-morning. my DB and I could cope with it because we'd been doing it since we were out the pushchair.....my DS's wouldn't stand a chance - blimey a walk round the supermarket and all I get is "my legs are tired and are going to fall off"

Sunset that day (19 February) was at 17:26

Fit adults doing Scafell by the quickest route typically take 5 hours to go up and down again, if they are hurrying (e.g. as part of the Three Peaks Challenge).

A party involving a five-year-old could reasonably expect to take quite a bit longer than that (this is not assuming a "townie" 5yo who has never seen a mountain, this is assuming a 5yo who is smaller and slower than a very fit bloke in his 20s. And in this case the family were from Cornwall, an area with many great walking opportunities but no actual mountains.)

Therefore if they set off at midday they could not realistically expect to be down again before sunset, even if they didn't stop at any point to have something to eat.

The path down Scafell is notoriously (a) hard to find, and (b) slippery underfoot. This is not good if the light is beginning to fail. There's no indication that they left any word with anyone about where they were going or what they were doing, and there's very little mobile phone reception on Scafell.

Having just read that report, the family are clearly barmy. It appears that they were found and rescued only because another hiker used his brain. One dreads to think what would have happened had he not raised the alarm.

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You wonder whether when he met them earlier in the day he thought 'Hmm, better make sure this lot make it down again....'

Or maybe spotted the car seat for the baby.
Good call, anyway. tbh we always leave a note of where we have gone and when we estimate our return time on the dashboard, if doing anything upland or remote.

We use a mountain road in Scotland quite frequently and it's noticeable if someone leaves a car overnight. We once saw one still there late at night and I wanted to call the police but dh wouldn't let me. (Never thought to stop and see if there was a note!).

Next morning I was awoken by helicopters above us and, yup, they were going to the rescue of a couple who'd got lost. I've never forgiven dh for not letting me dial 999.