Honsiter Hause to Keswick
Miles walked: 10
Highest point reached: 290m above sea level
At around four thirty in the morning of day two all six of us were rudely awoken by a cockerel crowing outside the youth hostel. Most of us managed to get back to sleep, but once I’m awake I tend to be awake for good, and so I spent the next couple of hours working my way through Family Guy episodes on my ipod. I don’t begrudge the cockerel it’s crowing however. Combined with the mountain rescue helicopter parked just outside the building it kept us amused for hours with endless innuendoes about cocks and choppers. Little things please little minds, and I’m afraid our minds are very little indeed.
After a rather nice full English breakfast we checked out of the hostel, impeded only by the incompitance of Sam, Dave, and the two Richs; who in the space of 12 hours had somehow managed to loose one of the two room keys that the hostel possessed. Bloody idiots. I fully expected the Hostel manager to charge us £40 for a replacement, especially as he had been rather officious about our group youth hostel membership card when we first checked in. but surprisingly he just waved it off and told us to post it to him if we found it in or backpacks when we got home.
Day two’s walk was intended to be a very easy eight mile stroll with no hills or difficult terrain to trouble us. However as we meandered our way towards Borrowdale we saw a rugged looking peak jutting out of the landscape.
If we thought that the scenery before had been reminiscent of Lord of the Rings, then what we saw in front us was straight from the mountains of Gondor. A quick look at the map revealed that it was called Castle Crag, which basically settled it. We were going to take a detour and climb the bugger.
It wasn’t quite as hard as the photos above would indicate. But it was a bit of a scramble at times, especially up a steep slope of loose slate.
Still, as was the trend throughout the walk, the view from the top was definitely worth it.
The rest of the day was fairly straight forward, with a steep decent down the side of Castle Crag and a gentle eight miles or so along the side of Derwent water, funnily enough the only lake we really came across in out tour of the Lake District.
As we got closer to Keswick, our destination for the night, the footpaths became more and more busy with day trippers out for a relaxing stroll by the lakeside. As a consequence our massive backpacks, silly hats, and walking sticks started to look more and more out of place and ridiculous. By the time we reached the town center we looked like complete and utter pillocks, knocking over old ladies with our packs , and accidentally poking small children in the eye with our sticks.
I didn’t care for Keswick all that much. It probably didn’t help that it was a sunny bank holiday weekend, but it was completely bursting to the seams with thousands of tourists. And it had that underlying air of menace and resentment that many small tourist towns have at night. What upset me more however is that we arrived in the town just as the doors of the infamous Keswick pencil museum was closing. Damn you sunday closing hours. Damn you to hell.
Keswick Youth Hostel however was very nice, and after a few pints and a curry we all retired to bed and tried not to think about the big bloody hill we were due to climb tomorrow.
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on May 29th, 2009 at 9:05 am
Arjans last blog post..Walchsee: training and having fun
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on May 29th, 2009 at 10:27 am
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on May 29th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
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on May 29th, 2009 at 8:24 pm
Laura McIntyres last blog post..Life After Kids
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on May 31st, 2009 at 9:09 am
Oli – And hopefully the slates on your roof are much less likely to tumble off.
Xbox – We were actually discussing coming to holland next year for our walking trip. It’s flat you see.
Laura – I’m getting fatigued writing about them too.
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on Jun 2nd, 2009 at 12:44 pm
We did the South Downs in March (I broke my walking boots in – it hurt) and spent one of our favourite holidays walking around the Lake District a few years back.
We’re currently gearing up for a walking holiday around Arran at the end of June which is itself a practise run for all the hiking we’ll be doing in Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Big Sur and various South American countries we’ll be in from October onwards.
I LOVE hiking altho not too sure how much I’m going to love the altitude sickness. Ah well.
LBB x
LBBs last blog post..I’ve been a bit crap…
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on Jun 2nd, 2009 at 10:24 pm
arjans last blog post..Walchsee: training and having fun
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on Jun 2nd, 2009 at 10:27 pm
People dropping down dead?
Xbox4NappyRashs last blog post..Feline literature from Guantanamo
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on Jun 3rd, 2009 at 10:21 am
But that was a very extreme circumstance, normally like you know we’ve got English weather ;)
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on Jun 3rd, 2009 at 2:33 pm
Arjan & Xbox – The Holland walk might be for 2011. We’ve got this romantic idea of having each walk we do start from where we finished he previous one. So next year might be Hadriens Wall, ending in Newcastle, and then we might get a ferry from there to holland or something. The details are yet to be worked out:) Although that Pieterpad looks tempting.
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on Jun 3rd, 2009 at 6:23 pm
Like Bugs Bunny just had CPR.
Xbox4NappyRashs last blog post..Feline literature from Guantanamo
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on Jun 3rd, 2009 at 11:37 pm
arjans last blog post..Walchsee: training and having fun
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