(There's sheep in them thar hills.)
Truth be told, Nathan and I feel like we’d rather have come here to spend a week instead of dashing about all over the place. But then we wouldn’t have seen as much of London as we did, sooo… obviously we need to come back.
Anyway, we started out this morning with the familiar, dubious offering that is a Holiday Inn Express's idea of 'continental breakfast', and then headed out for Liverpool to take photos on Penny Lane (it’s a Beatles thing).
(Insert Beatles reference here.)
From there we went to Windermere, where I got my most intense UK hiking experience yet. Not so much because the hike was difficult (although it wasn’t exactly easy), but because I did it twice. See, our little cat herd had decided to hike up to Orrest Head, but of course part of the herd set out first- that being Heather and Elizabeth (who, in all fairness, only did so because Elizabeth was worried about slowing the rest of us down)- soon followed by a second part of the herd- that being Don and Barbara- finally followed by the rest of the herd who had been waiting for the second part of the herd to come back from the toilet before we got going (tricksy elders got the drop on us!). As soon as we realized what they’d done, the rest of us (Jeff, Ben, Curt, Alana, Nate, and I) scampered after them (Eel was being pushed in a buggy, lucky little monkey)- only to find ourselves at a fork in the trail. To the left was labeled, in large letters “Public Path”, but to the right, in eensy weensy letters, it said “Orrest Head View Point”.
(To the left)
(To the right, with Ben in the distance.)
Nathan didn’t see his parents to the right, so I was sent loping down the more winding left path to see if I could find them (me being, in the words of one of my fellow travelers, ‘the fittest one among us!’) I caught sight of them rounding a bend about twenty yards from me and hollered, “You’re going the wrong way!” to which Barbara replied, “But this is how Heather and Elizabeth went!” which put me in a bit of a spot. Finally I said, “Oh never mind- I’ll head back and let them know what’s going on.”
So I did.
It was decided that the rest of us would go ahead and head up the right path, but Jeff elected to wait at the fork. “They’ll be back eventually,” he assured us. So up we went on the switch-backing road, occasionally dodging traffic, until it finally turned into an actual trail, which made pushing the buggy a little more challenging, but not undoable.
(Taking an admittedly unnecessary break on the way up.)
Maybe fifteen minutes later we came up to where our trail joined with another trail, and who should be coming around the corner but Don and Barbara!
“Oh crap,” I said, then sprinted ahead to find Ben (I’d been hanging back with Curt and Eel, the better to “protect them from bears”) to ask him to use his phone to call Jeff and let him know to come on up- but then Elizabeth said sheepishly, “Um, I have the other phone…” (we’d bought two disposables for just such occasions…) So I told them to continue to the top while I went and got Jeff, and said that if I got down there and he was gone I’d come back up, so to wait for me.
And then I started running.
Well, not running exactly. If you’ve ever done any trail running you know that your descent is a lot more like a controlled fall/scramble than a run, and that’s what mine was like. I chose to go down the way that Heather and Elizabeth had come up, with the logic that if Jeff had gotten tired of waiting, that’s the way he’d head up. The trail was absolutely gorgeous, much prettier than the way we’d come up, as it sported views of forest and lake rather than people’s homes and sheep fields (which are a different kind of pretty, but are certainly not hard to find anywhere in the rural UK). It was also a bit more treacherous, but that was no matter. I passed a fork a time or two and hoped fervently I was picking the right one, which I apparently did because before too very long I recognized the bend in the trail where I’d earlier found Don and Barbara. I picked up the pace a little and then- ta da! There was Jeff, still patiently waiting.
“Why are you running?” he asked. (It wasn’t until later that I realized he must have thought something was wrong.)
“To get you!” I puffed to a stop next to him. “Turns out the two trails meet up- everyone’s at the top now.”
So back up we went, together.
The view from the top was absolutely breathtaking- you could see for miles in all directions. Forest, lake, hills- and of course plenty of sheep penned in by charming little stone walls. I did some yoga while I was up there, partially because I was in some need of some major stretching (I always am after a lot of travel) and partially because it just seemed the thing to do.
(See that? That's a LAKE. In a DISTRICT.)
(Downward Dog- so nice of Nate to snap a photo...)
(Catching my breath.)
I stayed behind a bit after everyone started down, communing with nature and generally being happy to be in fresh air again.
We left Windermere and headed north for Keswick, where we had a few rooms reserved at a hostel.
(There are cows as well as sheep.)
(But mostly sheep.)
Turns out Keswick is an utterly charming little town, complete with an open-air market (although we wouldn’t discover that until the following morning). The hostel itself was set right on a tiny river, and we sat there for a while watching ducks (including their fuzzy yellow and brown babies) go about their adorable business. Once we were checked in (and had rented towels, etc) we started up a load of laundry and then went in shifts to look for food.
I had the best veggie burger I’d ever had (it was made from actually vegetables, not just weird pressed grains) while Nate indulged in another round of fish and chips (not so good at the Portsmouth edition, but then he wasn’t expecting it to be).
(This is where the market would be, and where we found our food.)
Afterwards Nate and I teamed up to play some pool against Ben and Jeff, and won (I even managed to sink a few intentional shots- it was awesome), and then later Jeff and I ganged up against Ben (which should have been a sure thing since he sucks worse than I do, but right about the time Heather came in to watch Ben miraculously started sinking shots left and right; Jeff and I were a bit flabbergasted, and thoroughly trounced…).
Now the girls are in their tiny room, and the boys are in their slightly-less tiny room (how that happened I do not know) and I am in the top bunk not only because I always like the top bunk but because it seems prudent to give lower bunks to pregnant people and anyone over fifty.
Though it did sound like a lot of hiking. Seemed well worth it from all the pretty pictures.
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