Days 5 & 6 in the Lakes

Wednesday morning came around and my first waking thought was that the rain that was hammering on the tent wasn’t expected.

My second thought was that we needed to make a move, and quickly. We had learned on arrival that the road to Wasdale Head was to be closed again at 9am so we needed to be away before then.

It was 8.30am as we left the Wasdale Head road, just as the roadwork trucks were arriving. Phew – just in time.

After taking the long route up to Keswick we had something of a lazy morning, once again doing the drooling-over-gear thing (couldn’t resist a pair of those sunglasses that roll up into a film-style canister; the more dangerous purchase was a copy of Three Peaks, Ten Tors – there’s always the danger that I’ll start to think that walking across Wales in a day is a sensible thing to do).

Keeping up our near-100% record, the C&CC site told us on our arrival that they were too waterlogged to accommodate us, a fact that I challenged in that we stayed there last March when half the site was under water and this March when it was a mud-bath. They did relent and offer us a small pitch in between other tents, but it was a little too cosy for my liking so we high-tailed it up to Castlerigg Farm instead, from where we spent the afternoon pottering around (and reading about ridiculous challenge walks, some of which started sounding a bit too interesting).

Wednesday afternoon also saw our first contact with the outside world. Having been cut off from phone and radio reception for a few days and having not seen a newspaper, we had no idea that parts of the country were in significant trouble under feet of water.

We had certainly been lucky. Okay, we’d seen a bit of rain, but I’ve certainly experienced far worse weather in that area.

Thursday was the last day of our holiday, and there’s not much to say about it. The weather was rather showery and we took a bit of an amble around the valley, in the area between Bassenthwaite and Keswick. All was going well until we were just about half way around the circular route we had devised, then just as Husband was thinking that his knee was better, always a foolhardly line of thought, his leg fell off again. Suddenly he couldn’t bend it at all. And there we were at the furthest point from the car.

Still, I needed a bit of a jog … so off I trotted along the main roads, dodging the cars (most of which refused to give me a wide berth, even on straight sections with nothing coming the other way) to retrieve the car and then to retrieve Husband. It was nearly a plan that went horribly wrong when I set off without liberating the car keys from Husband’s bag – that could have been a bit of a disaster had I not realised so soon.

It was then a quick trip down to the Flock Inn Tea Rooms at Yew Tree Farm in Rosthwaite for tea, lamb stew and a leg of lamb, before we were on our way to Ma-in-Law’s for a couple of days before heading on home to drape tents and sleeping bags around the house.