Another Lake District bank holiday

Monday 25th - Tuesday 26th August 2014

Lake District

We've finally managed to get some time off together in between work, hen dos, triathlons and various other fun runs that were messy in some way, and as the weather forecast was much better for the Lake District than home, we've come up here for a few days.

I was not ready to go on the Sunday, after spending the Saturday night drinking wine and the Sunday morning sleeping in, so we finally set off on Monday morning. It was throwing it down with rain at home and most of the way up the M6, so we weren't very optimistic about getting some decent weather. But once we turned off the motorway for the Southern Lakes, the rain stopped and things started looking better.

As it was a Bank Holiday Monday, we'd decided to do a walk up one of the lesser known hills - Weatherlam to try and avoid the crowds. This walk was a dual tick list hill, and was also supposed to be an easy, fairly short afternoon walk, so that we had plenty of energy left for a big walk up a more famous hill on the Tuesday once the bank holidayers had gone home.

By the time we'd actually got to the start point (which was at a slightly cheating height of nearly 400m on the Wrynose Pass), it was lunch time, so we had our cheese sandwiches in George, listening to the wind whistling through the pass and wondering what we were letting ourselves in for.

We finally set off at about 1.30pm. The first half of the walk (i.e. up to the summit at about 800m) was pretty straightforward. Uphill but on easy paths with just the wind to make things a bit hard going. We ticked 3 hills off our list of Wainwright's - Great Carrs, Swirl How and Weatherlam - so only 180 hills left to do now. We stopped to look at the remains of a crashed plane but didn't linger long at the summits as it was feeling pretty cold considering it is still supposed to be summer.

The way down proved to be much harder than the way up. We started going down the wrong path, but soon realised our mistake and managed to get onto the right path by stumbling across a swamp and hole ridden hillside. But then no sooner had we joined the right path, but at the point where we were supposed to turn off onto a new path, there was no visible path. We turned off nevertheless, and despite the GPS saying we were standing on the path for most of the way down, it was no better that the swampy hillside from earlier. To top things off, the final part of the walk involved going back uphill by quite a long way and back on ourselves, walking past George who was both below and behind us. I got fed up towards the end and we struck out across the hill and took a short cut. We arrived back at George with shaky achey legs, and Claire's knee had started playing up again.

We'd planned to stop over for the first night in one of many free wild camping spots we'd spotted on our last visit to the Lakes. When we arrived at our number one choice there was another car there, but she said she wasn't stopping so we were able to park up for the night. We had our dinner of meatballs and Smash followed by Minstrels, and I was fast asleep for 10pm.

After the sort of dream that is usually brought on by cheese or a lot of alcohol of which I'd had neither (it was a very vivid apocalyptic dream where people kept committing suicide because I wanted to charge my phone), we got up at about 8.30am. We'd already abandoned our big walk plans because of Claire's knee, so we had a leisurely breakfast and then drove off to Ennerdale Water. This took a lot longer than expected because of a sheep jam on the road.

The weather was perfect, much warmer than the previous day, with less wind and lots of sun. We had our packed lunch on a bench overlooking the lake and the hills we'd climbed on our last trip here, and then set off for a walk round the lake. This was about 6 or 7 miles and fairly flat, and should only have taken a couple of hours were it not for all the wild blackberries growing alongside the path. I think I have had my 5 a day today anyway.

When we got back to George we headed straight over towards Keswick, found a campsite, had showers and went to the pub for dinner and drinks. We've now come back to George because we're so full and think we might get in trouble for undoing our trousers and slobbing out in the pub.

Tomorrow Claire has to work (in Keswick), so I am going for a walk on my own. The forecast is good and I'm thinking of giving Blencathra another try in the hope of getting a view of something other than clouds from the top.

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