Day 9
Trip Start
Jul 31, 2011
1
9
13
Trip End
Aug 12, 2011
Coniston, England, United Kingdom
Monday, August 8, 2011
We make our packed lunches and load up the car with walking boots and raincoats and drive up to the Northern Lakes.
The Keswick jeweller shows the Crew 3 other watches similar to hers and all of them change to a Spanish date at 2pm. He gives her a refund. We drive to the Bowderstone car park at the bottom of Derwentwater and have our packed lunch while assessing the weather. It is raining quite hard now.
The shower passes and the biggest vote is for Catbells. We drive to find a parking place on the roadside and start our walk in bright sunshine. We start on the Catbells Terrace path
and walk back towards the Hause Gate climb to the top. The ship’s dog barks at anyone else on the path and is attacked by a big dog coming the other way. From the way the dog’s owner kicked at it with her walking boots she knew it was aggressive. The ship’s dog yelped loudly and rolled down the fellside when she could get away. The Captain climbed down and lifted her back through the bracken. The other dog’s owner waited to check that she was OK, saying, "It was her barking, he gets a bit excited sometimes." The ship’s dog is a bit quiet and doesn’t bark so much for the next half an hour and then the shock wears off.
We get very hot climbing up to Hause Gate and when we get to the top the wind is very strong so we cool down quickly and put our coats on. The ship’s dog is put on a lead due to the presence of sheep on the fellside. We climb the last slopes to the top of Catbells and take photos. We haven’t done this walk for several years. All the crew were carried up as babies and scrambled up as toddlers. They all did it themselves this year and the Mate was the slowest!
As the wind was so strong the Captain decided to take what might have been a path or a sheep path down the side of the slope to walk in shelter. Very quickly we came to a very steep, slippery section where we had to slither and slide for quite a long way. By the time we had all got down some of the crew were laughing hysterically and some had very dirty bottoms (on the outside of the trousers).
We walked back to the car with the sense that it had been an exiting walk. As it was so late in the day we decided to stop at Booth’s supermarket and buy a picnic. We bought slices of quiche, salad and a tub of The Lakes ice cream and cornets. The lady on the checkout suggested a place to picnic that was not far away. We followed her instructions to drive out of Booths, past the rugby club to the Derwentwater campsite. We parked in the lane where there is a back entrance to Crow Park and we carried our picnic past the grazing sheep to the Lake shore. We sat on a fallen tree trunk seat and enjoyed our picnic with the view down the lake to the Jaws of Borrowdale. Due to the breeze it was too cold for ice cream so we took it back to the car to have back at the cottage.
The journey back was much more comfortable having eaten. The Captain always makes the most of the winding, hilly route back to simulate the effect of a Galaxy at sea in rolling waves. He accelerates into all the hump-back rises on the dual carriageway to get squeals from the crew.
Returning safely to the cottage we enjoy our melted Raspberry Pavlova ice cream and have a relaxing evening watching the last of our Pink Panther films. It is terrible. They managed to make a film after Peter Sellers’ death by using out-takes and old clips as flashbacks. Probably funnier if you haven’t just seen the old ones!
