Mid August and a group of particularly die hard old fogeys managed to tear themselves away from their work for long enough to grab a brief weekend in the Lakes...
Toby and James left Cambridge after the usual faff and eventually struggled into Sheffield to meet Pete about an hour late. Toby's rapid driving (oops, better slow down to 100) meant that Andy was only rating about 8/10 on the Pissed Off In Station scale when we finally met up with him in Darlington. On eventual arrival in Braithwaite campsite - the meeting point - was a bit of a nightmare: a campsite absolutely packed full of people with hardly a spare blade of grass to pitch a tent. A fruitless search for Jane and Tim ensued, after which somebody (I fear me) whispered 'Why don't we camp on top of Latrigg?' This, dear reader, was intended as a joke but half an hour later I shook my head with a certain amount of resignation as we struggled to transfer gear from sack to sack. The rain and wind howled around us at the car park behind Latrigg. An hour later and we had finally backpacked to a suitably exposed and slopey spot near the top of the hill, and had an epic faff putting up the tent. A comfortable night ensued, however, and it was with some sense of achievement that we finally drove back to the campsite and wasted the money we had saved on accommodation on a massive fry up in the campsite cafe.
On finally driving round to Mosedale, the weather had improved and we set off on a pleasant walk around some of the remoter Lakeland fells: Carrock Fell, High Pike, the Knott and Great Calva, arriving back at the head of Mosedale to a midgey but extremely pleasant riverside spot to pitch the tents. The only downside of the day's excursion was that hundreds of wasps also found the tops of these hills to be an ideal buzzing place. Dinner involved a strange ritual of walking round in circles attempting to avoid the midges: to any alien observers watching from outer space (or indeed to a few sheep who observed quizzically) it must have appeared that we were enacting some sort of bizarre play.
The pub was clearly required and after another knuckle whitening drive down the valley we were glad of a few beers: though I seem to recall they loosened my tongue to an extent that I regretted after giving away some embarrassing details of a wedding I had recently attended - a mistake I am not going to repeat here!
The following day dawned bright again and after watching some particularly stupid people drive a Cavalier into a nearby ditch and then have to haul it out we set off on different walks: Tim, Jane, Toby and Andy to walk around Bowscale Fell and then (for the latter two) up Sharp Edge on Blencathra while Pete and James felt some peculiar attraction to Mungrisdale Common at the head of the valley before rising to Blencathra by its easy North Ridge. At this point the weather deteriorated into a thunderstorm which crashed around right over our heads: not the best time to be on Sharp Edge! Fortunately nobody was injured and we returned to witness an impressive Andy faff: 37 minutes repacking a rucksack. The result: another nightmare dash across the Pennines to a train. All in all though a great break from the tedium of work in summertime...
Quotes: Hmm, can't remember many...
Last modified: Wednesday, 25 April 2007, at 19:58 (BST)